Chapter 2

Natalie froze, searching my face for any sign that I was just sulking.

After all, we'd been married for five years. To us, the wedding was only a formality.

It had never once occurred to her that I'd waited five whole years for this one wedding.

Just as she hesitated, about to step toward me, Brett suddenly grabbed her arm. "Nolan, you've hated me ever since you got married, but there's no need to make a scene and embarrass Natalie."

Natalie's gaze turned cold at once. Nothing made her angrier than being threatened.

"Nolan, you're the one who told me to look after Brett. You said it wasn't easy for him, being on his own in this city. And now you're turning around and suspecting the two of us?

"You got to play the good guy the whole time! How is my family supposed to show our faces now?"

In an instant, I became the target of everyone's scorn.

The guests turned contemptuous stares on me.

Agnes, who'd kept silent all along, spoke up viciously, "I always said a man from a humble family wasn't fit to marry into ours. Somebody, bring out the family rod!"

Natalie glanced hesitantly at her mother, but in the end, she chose to say nothing.

A second later, bodyguards rushed over and pinned me down. I couldn't believe what was happening.

Desperate to protect me, my mother grabbed a chair and swung it at the bodyguards. "You'd beat someone right out in the open? Let go of my son!"

The moment she finished speaking, Natalie gave them a look, and the bodyguards dragged my mother out of the banquet hall.

"Marilyn, you saw for yourself how far he went," Natalie said. "We Knights have our own rules. I can't let him run his mouth like this!"

The instant the three-foot rod struck my back, I pitched forward onto the floor in a sorry heap.

The rod had been custom-made. After only three strokes, blood had soaked the back of my white shirt red.

Involuntary tears poured down my face.

Back when Natalie had gone behind her mother's back to register our marriage, she'd taken ten brutal strokes herself.

Afterward, her face had gone completely white, sweat pouring off her like rain, but she'd still grinned at me. "As long as I get to marry you, any beating is worth it."

She knew exactly what it felt like, yet she could still bear to make me go through that same despair.

My blood-soaked wedding suit weighed on me like lead.

I was tossed onto the floor like garbage, blood gushing out beneath me.

I dragged myself over, grabbed the hem of Natalie's dress, and begged, "Take me... take me to the hospital."

But the moment the words left my mouth, Brett groaned and leaned against her. "Natalie, my head hurts so much. It feels like it's splitting open."

Natalie hurried to hold him up and didn't spare me another glance.

The crowd scattered.

By the time a passerby got me to the hospital, the doctor regretfully told me my lower back had been broken.

"Did you run into some enemy or something? Who would hit someone this hard?"

I laughed bitterly and said nothing.

Tears slid silently from the corners of my eyes. Nothing could hurt more than this.

I called my lawyer and asked him to draw up divorce papers.

I'd drifted into a groggy sleep when a phone call from my mother jolted me awake. "Nolan, come back right now! A bunch of people just showed up out of nowhere, and they're trying to tear down our old house!"