So I waited. Like a fool.
I looked toward the back of the church, seeking an exit, seeking air.
In the last pew, shrouded in the shadows of the choir loft, sat a man who didn’t belong.
Julian Thorne.
He was the CEO of Titan Corp, the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate where Ryan worked as a mid-level manager. Ryan had sent him an invitation as a “Hail Mary,” never expecting him to come. Julian Thorne didn’t go to weddings. He didn’t go to parties. He was a phantom—a brilliant, ruthless, reclusive billionaire who ran the city from the top of his glass tower.
Yet, here he was.
He was dressed in a black suit that absorbed the light around him. He wasn’t looking at his phone. He wasn’t looking at the exit. He was looking directly at me.
His gaze was intense, unblinking. It didn’t hold the pity I saw in the eyes of the other guests. It held something else. Anticipation. Calculation. It was the look of a grandmaster watching a pawn move into a trap.
I felt a shiver run down my spine, unrelated to the air conditioning. I knew Julian Thorne. Or rather, I knew of him. And I knew he had a scar on his right hand, hidden now by his gloves. I knew because I was the one who had bandaged it three years ago, on a rainy highway, amidst twisted metal and flames.
But he couldn’t possibly remember me. To him, I was just a blur of scrubs and bandages in the night. To him, I was just the fiancée of his employee.
The heavy oak doors at the back of the church groaned open.
The crowd gasped. Heads turned, expecting the groom.
But it wasn’t Ryan.
It was Mrs. Vance. She had quietly slipped away from the front row during my daze and was now walking up the center aisle. She held a wireless microphone in one hand and a large, brimming glass of red wine in the other.
She didn’t look like a worried mother. She looked like a performer taking the stage.
She ascended the marble steps to the altar, her heels clicking loudly. She turned to the crowd, her back to me.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, her voice booming through the speakers, “I apologize for the delay. But I have an announcement to make.”
She turned slowly to face me. The smile was gone, replaced by a sneer of pure malice.
“There will be no wedding today,” she said. “At least, not this wedding.”
