Chapter 4 - The Corporate CoupBrenda recovered her breath just long enough to let out a piercing shriek of absolute rage.
“You scheming, cold-hearted witch!” she screamed, lunging forward with her fingernails extended toward my face. “You planned this! You came here just to destroy our family! Hunter, do something! Beat her! Take her phone!”
Before Brenda could cover the distance between us, two tall, sharply dressed men in dark suits stepped out from behind the rented catering tent. They were my corporate security detail—men I had hired specifically for today, anticipating that a family of opportunistic grifters wouldn't go down without a physical fight.
They intercepted Brenda effortlessly, pinning her arms gently to her sides while she flailed and cursed like a fishwife.
“Unhand me! Let me go! Police! Help!” Brenda shrieked, kicking her sensible orthopedic shoes off into the grass.
Hunter made a pathetic half-hearted motion to rescue his mother, but my lead security guard simply gave him a cold, heavy-lidded stare that made Hunter instantly retract his hands and step backward into a folding chair.
“Let’s review the actual itinerary for today,” I said, walking slowly over to the wedding altar where the floral arrangements were beginning to droop in the afternoon heat.
I picked up the heavy, velvet-bound marriage certificate folder resting on the podium. Without hesitation, I opened it, ripped the official state marriage license cleanly down the center into four equal pieces, and let the fragments drift down onto the grass like confetti.
“The wedding is officially canceled,” I declared, my voice echoing across the courtyard with absolute finality. “And as for the reception dinner scheduled for this evening at the Grand Meridian Hotel in downtown Hanoi—don't worry about canceling the catering. I already called them this morning. I upgraded the reservation to a corporate liquidation seminar celebrating the foreclosure of Thorne Real Holdings.”
Hunter let out a strangled groan, dropping heavily onto the grass beside his mother’s discarded shoes. His entire world—his social standing, his financial safety net, his lavish lifestyle, and his parasitic security blanket—had disintegrated in less than twenty minutes.
“You can’t do this, Briana,” Hunter sobbed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched whine as he looked up at me from the dirt. “We’ve been together for three years! We have history! You can’t just ruin my life over a stupid family tradition!”
“I didn't ruin your life, Hunter,” I replied, looking down at him with an expression of profound, chilling indifference. “I simply stopped funding it.”
I turned on my heel, my silk train sweeping past the broken floral arches, and walked toward the waiting Lincoln town car parked at the end of the gravel driveway.
As I opened the car door and slid into the cool, leather-scented interior, I looked back one last time at the weathered farmhouse. Brenda was still screaming obscenities at the security guards, and Hunter was sitting in the dirt with his head in his hands, finally realizing the true cost of his greed.
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I pulled my phone from my clutch, tapped the screen, and dialed my chief legal counsel in downtown Hanoi.
“Initiate foreclosure proceedings on the Willow Creek property,” I said smoothly as the car engine hummed to life. “And make sure the eviction notice is delivered by eight o'clock tomorrow morning.”
