Chapter 3

I froze. It was only four. Had my ex arrived early?

I turned to look, and it was Amelia.

My mother's face broke into an instant smile, and she hurried over.

"You're here, Amelia. Lawrence told me something came up at your company. I thought you'd be late. I didn't expect you so soon."

Mavis climbed out right behind Amelia and stepped forward, planting herself between my mother and Amelia, that smile of hers cold and empty.

"Don't let Lawrence fool you, ma'am."

"It wasn't Amelia who got held up. It was Lawrence throwing a tantrum, refusing to play the bride-fetching games."

"He left Amelia at home all alone and just ran off here by himself!"

The whole scene went silent in an instant, every guest's eyes swinging to me, curious and probing.

The smile stiffened on my mother's face. She reached up and grabbed my ear, furious and frantic.

"What is wrong with you? The wedding games are just for luck and fun."

"Everyone else can go along with it. Why can't you play along too? Do you have to make such an ugly scene?"

The pain had me pleading for mercy, but I couldn't bring myself to tell her what their little game actually was.

If I said it, she would only be angrier, and more hurt.

The Fox parents came off the car with dark faces, and their first words were nothing but accusation.

"Lawrence, we really misjudged you."

"We only asked you to bark a few times. It's nothing. Do you have to blow it up like this and humiliate Amelia in front of everyone?"

I let out a bitter laugh. To them, grinding a person's dignity into the ground was a trifle not even worth mentioning?

My mother let go of my ear at once, staring at Amelia in disbelief.

"Amelia, you actually made Lawrence bark like a dog?"

Amelia's face turned awkward, and Cecil gave a cold snort.

"Amelia's the president. Lawrence is just a hired hand on three thousand a month, a kept man."

"A few barks and he gets to marry Amelia, climb a whole class up. A deal that sweet, why wouldn't he take it?"

I stared at Amelia in disbelief.

"Amelia, this is the story you've been telling about me?"

Back when the Fox family was on the edge of bankruptcy, I put in the core technology I'd spent years developing, for a forty-nine percent stake.

I ran the business with Amelia day and night, drank myself sick at every dinner meeting, and pulled the Fox family back from the cliff's edge.

Without me, there would be no thriving Fox Group today, and no glorious president's chair for Amelia.

As for the three thousand a month, that was Amelia's idea. She said the company needed capital to expand.

So all my dividends went straight back into keeping the company running, and I kept only a small base salary for everyday expenses.

For our future, I gave everything I had, held nothing back.

But it never once crossed my mind that everything I'd given would end up as material she used to belittle me to the world.

Amelia's eyes flickered away, then she lifted her head and threw it all back on me without a shred of shame.

"Lawrence, don't think that just because you stood by me when the company was struggling, you can put on airs and talk back to me at every turn."

"At work you fight me on everything, you never fall in line with my decisions."

"So today I'm using the wedding to smooth out that temper of yours, to teach you to behave and listen. What's wrong with that?"

It all came clear to me. No wonder she was so set on humiliating me at the wedding.

She'd been sitting on this resentment for a long time, because I held my ground at the company and refused to blindly follow her calls.

When we'd talked about the wedding, she'd told me to sign over every share I held to her.

At the time I thought she just wanted to feel secure.

Only now did I understand. She meant to use the wedding to strip away every last chip I had.

To leave me with nothing, to reduce me to something dependent on her, hers to control.

But buried in that share transfer contract was one crucial clause.

The transfer would only take effect once the wedding was successfully held.

This wedding, I wasn't going to have it.

Everything she'd so carefully schemed for would come to nothing.

Cecil spoke like he was granting a favor.

"The wedding's about to start. There's no time for ninety-nine barks."

"Just bark three times now, the wedding goes ahead as planned, and you can bark out the rest slowly on the wedding night."

A roar of laughter went up all around.

"Ha, barking on the wedding night. Now that's something."

"He's living off a woman anyway, what face has he got left to worry about? Just bark already."

I was so furious my eyes nearly split. I was about to tell them to dream on.

But my mother's face went suddenly bloodless, and her body crumpled softly to the ground.