1

“Seraphine Anderson, do you take Arthur Ashford to be your lawfully wedded husband? To love and cherish him, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”

A smile brighter than the crystal chandeliers lit up Seraphine's face. Tears shimmered in her eyes as she looked straight at the man she had loved for the last two years.

“Yes.” she whispered, her voice steady despite the emotion swelling in her chest. “I do.”

The pastor smiled before turning to the groom.

“Arthur Ashford, do you take Seraphine Anderson to be your lawfully wedded wife? To love and cherish her, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”

Silence.

Seraphine's smile faltered.

“Arthur...?” she called softly, searching his face.

He didn't answer.

The room grew strangely still. Every guest waited, holding their breath. Every camera remained fixed on the couple standing beneath the heavy floral arch.

Arthur slowly lifted the microphone to his lips. His expression didn't change as he spoke two words.

“I don't.”

The words echoed like a gunshot through the ballroom.

For one endless moment, no one moved. No one breathed. Seraphine stared at him, her brain completely unable to process what she had just heard.

“…What?” Her voice came out barely above a whisper. “Arthur... what did you just say?”

The happiness that had filled her chest only seconds ago shattered so completely she could almost hear the pieces hitting the floor.

“This... this isn't funny.” She forced a weak, painful laugh, her fingers trembling against his. “Please tell me this is some kind of sick joke.”

Arthur looked down at her. His eyes were entirely different now.

Cold. Detached. Almost bored.

“No,” he said evenly. “It's not a joke.” He held her gaze without a single trace of guilt. “I refuse to marry a woman like you.”

The words hit harder than any physical blow. Seraphine's breath caught in her throat. The white bouquet slipped from her numb fingers, landing with a soft thud on the marble floor.

“Arthur, you bastard!”

Mark Anderson shot to his feet, his booming voice shattering the stunned silence. “What the hell do you think you're doing to my daughter?”

Arthur let out a quiet laugh. It wasn't the warm, rumbling sound Seraphine had fallen in love with. This one was sharp. Cruel.

He turned toward the older man. “Mr. Anderson.”

Both Seraphine and her father froze.

Mr. Anderson.

Not Dad. Not the man Arthur had called family for the past two years. The sheer distance in those two words made Seraphine's stomach drop.

Arthur smiled, but his eyes remained dead. “Tell me... do you remember the Ashford family? The family whose land was stolen in Ashwood Ridge.”

The name settled over the ballroom like a suffocating storm cloud. Mark Anderson's face drained of color. His lips parted, but nothing came out.

“Dad?” Seraphine turned to him, panic clawing at her throat. “What is he talking about?”

Her father didn't answer. He simply stared at Arthur, his chest heaving.

Arthur took one slow, deliberate step forward. The reporters at the back immediately surged closer, their cameras flashing nonstop, capturing every second of the nightmare.

“I suppose a man like you wouldn't remember,” Arthur said, his tone almost conversational. “After all, forcing dozens of families off their land was just another Tuesday business deal to you. You were too busy celebrating the profits from your luxury resort to notice the lives you crushed under your wingtips.”

“Arthur, enough!” Mark's voice cracked. His hand gripped the back of a nearby chair so tightly his knuckles turned white. “You've said enough.”

Arthur laughed again, but there was nothing amused about it. “Enough?” His eyes burned with years of buried hatred. “My father begged for 'enough' when your men tore our factory apart. My father begged for justice after you bought off everyone who was supposed to protect us.”

He took another step closer, his voice rising for the first time. “The courts. The officials. Every single person who could have stopped you. You took everything from us, Mark. Our home. Our livelihood. Our future.”

Seraphine slowly looked back at her father. Her vision blurred with hot tears. She wanted him to scream. She wanted him to deny it, to tell Arthur he was wrong, to tell everyone this was a twisted lie.

Instead, Mark lowered his head. His broad shoulders began to tremble.

That silence was louder than any confession.

Seraphine felt something fundamental inside her break.

Arthur looked at the older man with undisguised contempt. “Two weeks after your company seized our land…” His voice dropped, becoming frighteningly quiet. “My father hanged himself inside the home you stole from us.”

A collective gasp rippled through the hundreds of elite guests.

“And my mother…” Arthur swallowed hard, forcing the next words past his teeth. “She lost her mind. She never came back. She has spent the last fourteen years rotting in a psychiatric hospital.”

The ballroom fell deathly silent.

Arthur slowly lowered his hand. The microphone slipped from his fingers, crashing onto the marble floor with a sharp, metallic clang that vibrated through the room.

He looked at Seraphine one last time. She stood frozen in her white wedding gown, tears streaming silently down her pale face. For a fraction of a second, something flickered in his gray eyes. Regret. Pain. But it was quickly buried beneath a decade of suffocating hatred.

“For the last two years,” he said quietly, his voice carrying effortlessly through the hushed room, “I've lived for one purpose.” He shifted his gaze back to Mark Anderson. “To make you feel exactly what it felt like. To watch your entire world collapse. To watch your daughter's future disappear right in front of your eyes.”

He took one final step back, away from the altar, away from her.

“Right here. In the place you chose to celebrate your perfect life.” Arthur's eyes never left Mark's. “And now... we're finally even.”