Chapter 3 - The Unraveling of the GroomThe panic among the family members escalated from stunned silence into chaotic, open warfare.
Uncle Arthur, a burly man in an ill-fitting gray suit who had spent the last hour loudly bragging about how well Hunter’s corporate career was going to support the family, stood up from his folding chair so fast he knocked it over onto the grass.
“This is a setup!” Arthur roared, pointing a thick, stubby finger at my chest. “She’s trying to humiliate us! Hunter, you worthless idiot, what kind of lunatic woman did you bring into our home? Fix this right now or get out of our sight!”
Hunter looked like a man standing on the edge of a burning skyscraper with no parachute. Sweat beaded heavily along his hairline, staining his custom collar a dark, damp gray. He looked at his mother, then at his furious uncle, and finally back at me, his eyes wide with a desperate, pathetic mixture of anger and pleading.
“Briana… please,” Hunter whispered, taking two tentative steps toward me, his voice trembling with manufactured vulnerability. “We talked about building a life together. We talked about a family. Are you really going to throw away three years of love over a mother’s foolish pride? My mother is old. She gets set in her ways. She didn't mean it literally—she just wanted to see if you respected our family customs.”
I stared at him. Really stared at him.
It was astonishing how a man could look so physically polished on the outside while being completely hollow on the inside. Every word he uttered was calculated not to express genuine remorse, but to salvage whatever fraction of his financial survival remained within his grasp.
“Customs?” I arched an eyebrow, my voice dripping with disdain. “Is that what you call demanding that your bride crawl on the dirt like an animal while you stand there and nod like a trained dog? And let’s be entirely clear about our history, Hunter. What three years of love are we talking about?”
I reached into the leather folio I had brought with me from the car, pulled out a thick stack of printed bank statements, and tossed them carelessly onto the grass at his feet. The papers fluttered down like autumn leaves, scattering white pages across the manicured turf.
“Read them, Hunter,” I said coldly. “Those are the itemized wire transfers from my personal accounts over the past thirty-six months. Fifty thousand for your first crypto venture that went belly-up in six months. Eighty thousand to cover your luxury apartment lease in the city while you claimed you were ‘networking with investors.’ One hundred and twenty thousand to settle your private credit card debts in Singapore. Total sum: over one million, eight hundred thousand dollars.”
The murmur among the guests turned sharp and analytical. Several corporate friends of mine standing near the back pulled out their phones to record every second of the wreckage.
“He didn't build a startup, ladies and gentlemen,” I announced, turning back to address the entire courtyard. “He ran a high-end lifestyle scam funded entirely by my design consulting fees, while maintaining a separate apartment downtown for the woman he was actually planning to spend his weekends with.”
May you like
The color drained entirely from Hunter’s face. He froze, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “How… how do you know about that?”
“Did you really think a woman who manages multi-million-dollar corporate mergers wouldn’t notice a recurring five-thousand-dollar monthly charge to an upscale boutique hotel near the financial district?” I smiled sharply. “I knew about your little apartment in Tribeca six months ago, Hunter. I just wanted to see how long you could keep up the act before your greed finally tripped your own trap.”
