Chapter 3

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

I turned to look, and it was Bryan.

My mother's face lit up in an instant, and she hurried over to greet him.

"You're here, Bryan? Olivia told me you'd been held up at the office. I thought you'd be a little late, but here you are already."

Christian Vance climbed out of the car right behind Bryan, stepped up, and planted himself between my mother and Bryan, a thin smile that never reached his eyes.

"Ma'am, don't let Olivia fool you."

"Bryan wasn't held up at all. Olivia threw a tantrum and refused to play the wedding games."

"She even said she wanted to call off the engagement, and just came running over here on her own!"

The whole scene went quiet in a heartbeat, and every guest's eyes swung onto me, startled and prying.

My mother's smile froze on her face. She reached back and grabbed me by the ear, furious and flustered.

"What is wrong with you, child? The wedding games are just for luck and a bit of fun."

"Everyone else can play along. Why can't you? Why make such an ugly scene over it?"

The pain had me begging for mercy, but I didn't dare tell her what their little game actually was.

If I did, she'd only be angrier, only more hurt.

Bryan's parents came off the car with grim faces, and the first thing out of their mouths was blame.

"Olivia, 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 embarrass Bryan in front of everyone?"

I laughed out of pure anger. In their eyes, trampling on a person's dignity was something not even worth mentioning?

My mother let go of my ear at once and looked at Bryan in disbelief.

"Bryan, you actually told Olivia to bark like a dog?"

Bryan's face went stiff and awkward. Delilah let out a cold snort.

"Bryan is the president. Olivia is just a working girl making three thousand a month."

"Bark a few times and she gets to marry up, to Bryan no less, and jump right over her class. A good deal like that, why on earth wouldn't she take it?"

I stared at Bryan, unable to believe it.

"Bryan, this is really the story you're spinning about me?"

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

I ran the business with Bryan day and night, drank myself sick at every dinner, and dragged the Simmons family back from the cliff's edge.

Without me, there'd be no thriving Simmons Group today, and certainly no glorious president's chair for Bryan.

As for the three thousand a month, that came from Bryan. He'd talked it over with me, 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 daily expenses.

For the sake of our future, I gave everything, held nothing back.

But it had never once crossed my mind that everything I gave would end up as material for him to run me down in front of others.

Bryan's eyes shifted away, then he lifted his head and turned it all back on me without a shred of shame.

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

"At the company you fight me on everything, you won't fall in line with my decisions."

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

Then it hit me. No wonder she was so set on humiliating me at the wedding.

He'd resented me for a long time, for holding my ground at the company, for refusing to blindly follow his calls.

When we were discussing the wedding earlier, he'd told me to sign over every share I held to her.

At the time I thought he only wanted to save face.

Only now did I understand. He wanted to use the wedding to strip away every last bargaining chip I had.

To leave me with nothing, reduced to something that clung to him, a dependent he could squeeze at will.

But that share transfer contract had one crucial clause buried in it.

The transfer would only take legal effect once the wedding was carried out successfully.

This wedding, today, I wasn't going through with it.

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

Delilah spoke as if granting me a favor.

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

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

Roaring laughter broke out all around us.

"Ha, barking on the wedding night, now that's rich."

"She's living off a man anyway. What face has she got left to care about? Just bark already."

I was so furious my eyes felt ready to split. I opened my mouth to tell them to dream on.

But my mother's face drained of color all at once, and her body crumpled softly to the ground.