Chapter 3

I held up the catering boy' s phone, my hand steady despite the fury coursing through me. I pressed play.

"Look at this," I commanded, my voice cutting through the quiet room. "Look at what your precious Isabella really did."

The video began. The small screen showed Isabella, alone, her face a mask of cold calculation. It showed her deliberately ripping the shoulder of her dress. It showed her waiting, watching, until our fathers ambled into view. Then, the performance began.

Liam and Ethan watched, their expressions unreadable for a second. I saw a flicker of confusion in Liam' s eyes, a slight frown on Ethan' s face. For a single, fleeting moment, I felt a spark of hope. They would see the truth. They had to.

But then Isabella, who had been feigning sleep, let out a soft whimper. She stirred, looking up at Liam with wide, innocent eyes filled with manufactured fear.

"Liam... what is that?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Why are they showing you that? Are they trying to trick you?"

That was all it took.

The flicker of doubt in Liam' s eyes vanished, replaced by a surge of protective rage. He didn' t look at the phone again. He looked at me.

"How dare you?" he snarled.

Before I could react, he lunged forward and slapped the phone from my hand. It hit the far wall with a sickening crack, the screen shattering into a spiderweb of blackness. The proof was gone.

Then, his hand connected with my face.

The force of the slap snapped my head to the side. The sound echoed in the sterile room. My cheek stung, a hot, blooming pain that was nothing compared to the agony in my heart.

"You lying bitch!" Liam yelled, his face contorted with fury. "You forge a video to frame an innocent woman after your father assaulted her? You have no shame!"

"It' s not forged!" Sophia screamed, rushing to my side. "We saw it! She tore her own dress!"

Ethan stepped in front of Sophia, blocking her way. He was bigger than her, his presence overwhelming and menacing.

"Shut up," he spat. "You and your friend are pathetic. Can' t accept that your fathers were disgusting predators, so you cook up this insane story."

Isabella started to cry, real tears this time, but they were tears of triumph. She buried her face in Liam' s chest.

"Make them stop, Liam," she sobbed. "They' re scaring me. They' re just like their fathers."

That sent Liam over the edge. He grabbed the front of my bloody wedding dress, pulling me so close I could see the tiny broken blood vessels in his eyes.

"You will never speak of this again," he hissed, his breath hot on my face. "You will go home, you will wash the blood off your dress, and you will forget this ever happened. You will learn your place."

My cheek throbbed. The world felt tilted, unreal. I had married this man just hours ago. I had vowed to love and honor him. And he was looking at me like I was something he' d scraped off the bottom of his shoe. The pain in my face was a dull ache, but the pain of his betrayal was a gaping wound. I felt hollow, scraped out. There was nothing left inside but grief and a cold, vast emptiness.

Sophia was crying openly now, her shoulders shaking with a mixture of rage and utter despair.

"Our fathers are dead!" she shrieked at Ethan, her voice raw. "They are dead because of her lie! And you just stand there? You believe her over me? Over your wife?"

Ethan' s face twisted into a cruel sneer. He glanced down at the floor, at an imaginary spot where our fathers might have stood.

"They deserved it," he said, his voice dripping with contempt. "And if you keep this up, you' ll get what you deserve too."

He was talking about my father. My kind, gentle father who used to read me stories at night and who cried at my high school graduation. Ethan was talking about his corpse as if it were garbage. The casual cruelty of his words, the complete lack of humanity, was more shocking than the slap. It was a glimpse into a darkness I never knew existed.