The Child Was Never His

Calista's POV: My fiancé was a man of endless surprises, every detail of our wedding was decided by scratch-off tickets. I scratched off the first one, the main wedding color, white. "That's wonderful, white is my favorite!" I said. He smiled faintly. "As long as you love it, darling. There are more surprises to come." Delighted, I scratched off the second wedding dress style. "This... why is it a funeral shroud?" My voice shook violently. Third one wedding bouquet. I scratched it with a heavy heart, it was a funeral wreath. I stared at him in disbelief, yet he calmly pushed the final scratch-off ticket and a gift box toward me. The moment I opened the box, a choking stench hit me. I gagged involuntarily. Inside was a charred rat. "If your father hadn't betrayed the Dockland Gang brothers all those years ago, Lenora Ashby's father would never have burned to death. That fire should have wiped your whole family out. Every second I've spent with you these past five years has made me sick." Seeing me weeping in terror, Caelum Reeves let out a cold laugh. "You didn't honestly think you'd get to marry me, did you? You gave me your first time. Who else would take you now?" He made a phone call, his tone turning gentle, as if he were a completely different person. "Lenora, everything I've done today is for you. It's all about making things right for you." Five years of love dissolved in an instant into the most ridiculous farce. What he didn't know was that my father also died in a fire five years ago, during a top-secret undercover operation. ***** Tearful, I hadn't yet recovered from the staggering shock. My phone rang. It was my best friend, Eira Ravenscroft. "We're throwing you a bachelorette party, get over here now!" I answered with a sob, which she picked up right away. "Did you and Caelum fight? It's fine. He'll come around and make it up to you tomorrow anyway, he always backs down first." 'Is that true? But this time, he never will.' I slid down the cold wall until I was sitting on the floor. My heart felt as though it were being twisted by a thousand blades; the pain was almost suffocating. When my father died, I locked myself in my room and cried until I passed out. My father's identity as an undercover agent was top secret. All that grief had to be borne entirely by my mother and me. Yet even when I said nothing at all, Caelum Reeves would still cook me warm porridge every day and sit quietly by my side. When I stayed up late finishing design drafts, he'd silently set a cup of warm milk beside me. I once thought meeting him at the lowest point of my life was the greatest salvation I would ever know. 'But looking back now, was there also seething hatred mixed into every bowl of that porridge?' 'Was every act of kindness nothing more than a performance, a way to get close to me so he could take his revenge?' On my screen, Eira kept sending group photos from the party and the location pin. All my closest friends were there. Unable to turn down their kindness any longer, I pulled myself together and went. But the moment I stepped inside, everywhere I looked were blue roses, and the air carried the scent of a forest after rain. It was the fragrance Caelum and I had created and blended together so many times. Five years ago, he'd taken me hiking in the woods when I was at my lowest. We'd walked hand in hand through a violent storm, and then the sunrise spilled out in streaks of orange, grand and breathtaking. He'd looked at me with such tenderness and told me, "The world is wide; nothing is impossible to get past." We'd always said our wedding should carry that same classic scent, the one that meant everything to us. Now, surrounded by that familiar fragrance, I felt sick again and again. Hanging prominently at the center of the room was an exquisite wedding poster. The off-the-shoulder satin gown, the style I'd always loved most. The lavender-pink diamond ring, the one he'd won by placing the highest bid at auction, promising it would belong only to me. The silver pearl tiara, one I'd designed myself, poured endless care into every detail. The layout, the order of events, Caelum and I had imagined and refined every part of this wedding together, night after night. But the bride standing where I should be was Lenora Ashby. The moment Lenora saw me from the altar, she instinctively stepped in front of the child behind her. She feigned surprise, her eyes brimming with hurt. "What are you doing here? We didn't invite you..." My voice wavered as I spoke, bewildered, "I didn't know this was... I didn't understand—" Before I could finish, Caelum cut me off coldly. "You didn't know? Was I talking to thin air just now? Either way, I will never give you another chance to hurt Lenora or my son." A bone-deep cold flooded through me. Four years ago, Lenora had appeared with a newborn baby. She'd told everyone her heart was broken, she couldn't trust anyone, and she would raise the child on her own. The truth was, that child was hers and his. "Like father, like daughter. Could a traitor and a betrayer possibly raise anything good?" Eira, who had just been begging me to come, stood nearby looking at me with pure disgust. When she'd been heartbroken, I'd stayed by her side every day, terrified she'd do something to hurt herself. When her mother fell seriously ill, I'd pulled strings and run every errand to get her an appointment with the leading specialist. "Keep your family's blood-stained money, it makes me sick. Stop acting with that pitiful face of yours!" From the crowd, Dashiell Laurent fixed me with an icy stare and spoke each word slowly and clearly. It was my father who had risked his life to rescue him, infiltrating the human traffickers' hideout under a false name. For ten years, our family supported his education without fail. Why then, did every familiar face turn against me now? Lenora's eyes filled with tears and spilled over. The crowd melted with sympathy, urging me to leave at once. "Don't be so ungrateful!" "Your father owes Lenora's family, you can't even begin to make amends!" Caelum looked down on me, not a flicker of old affection in his eyes, only cruelty. "You speak of Lenora's pain at losing someone she loved five years ago. All you saw was a charred rat. Don't play the victim here."