Chapter 3

The wedding? I could hardly believe Mia still thought I'd marry her. In her dreams.

I was already looking forward to the day she found out Evermont Group had gone bankrupt. I wanted to see the look on her face when she finally realized what she'd lost.

After selling the house, I started thinking about the employees who worked at Evermont Group. I'd personally recruited most of the company's core technical talent and spent years building the team from the ground up.

Now that I was leaving, I figured the least I could do was give them a choice about whether they wanted to come with me.

The conversation went more smoothly than I'd expected. More than half the employees were willing to leave with me, and once they made up their minds, the resignations started coming in one after another.

By the end of it, nearly 100 employees had walked away from Evermont Group.

Mia had been dreaming about taking Evermont Group public. Now, with the company's key talent gone and my investment pulled, that dream was nothing more than a fantasy.

Some of my belongings were still in my office, so I went back to get them. But before I could reach the door, I heard voices coming from inside.

"Mia, it's okay. Come on. Run away with me one more time today. Last time, Adrian managed to clean up the mess after we ran off from the wedding. I'm sure he can handle it again."

Mia hesitated for a moment before finally giving in.

"Fine. I'll run away with you again. Besides, that lovesick idiot Adrian would forgive me no matter how many times I ran away from my own wedding."

I stopped in my tracks.

The two of them were actually planning to run away from the wedding again.

I couldn't believe it. She really thought I'd still be waiting around for her to marry me today.

I pushed the door open.

Mia visibly panicked when she saw me.

"When did you get here? You didn't hear anything just now, did you?"

I didn't even bother looking at her.

"I'm just here to get my things. Where's my grandfather's photo?"

It was a picture of the three of us taken when Mia and I got engaged. After Grandpa passed away, only a few of his things were left behind, and every single one of them was precious to me.

Ethan casually tapped the ash from his cigarette.

"Adrian, you mean this photo?"

My heart dropped when I saw it.

He had been using Grandpa's picture as an ashtray.

Before I could react, a glowing ember fell onto the photograph. The corner caught fire, and the flames quickly spread across the paper. I rushed forward, but by the time I got there, Grandpa's face had already been burned away.

I grabbed Ethan by the collar, my eyes burning with rage.

"That's one of the few photos I have of Grandpa! Ethan, you destroyed the last thing I had to remember him by!"

Ethan sneered.

"Something to remember Grandpa by? You just wanted to use him to guilt Mia into marrying you sooner, didn't you? You and your grandfather were always using guilt to pressure her. It's disgusting!"

Grandpa had genuinely cared about Mia. He had even poured his own resources into helping her build Evermont Group.

Hearing Ethan reduce Grandpa's kindness to nothing more than emotional blackmail was more than I could take.

He'd dared to mock Grandpa's sincere intentions.

I'd had enough. I swung my fist at him.

"How dare you talk about Grandpa like that?"

My punch sent Ethan crashing to the floor. I raised my fist to hit him again, but Mia grabbed my wrist.

"Enough! It's just a photograph! Do you really have to make such a big deal out of it?" she screamed. "Let Ethan go! Or I swear, I'm calling off this wedding!"

Before I could say another word, she slapped me hard across the left cheek.

I staggered backward several steps and slammed into the sharp corner of the desk. A dull pain shot through me as I struggled to catch my breath.

I stared at Mia in disbelief.

She stood protectively in front of Ethan, glaring at me with open hatred.

"Adrian, you'll pay for what you did today! Before the day ends, I'll make you the laughingstock of the entire city!"

I watched as Mia and Ethan walked away, then smiled to myself.

She thought that running away from our wedding yet again would turn me into the laughingstock of the entire city. What she didn't realize was that I had never intended to go through with the wedding in the first place.

With the 50 million dollars I'd pulled from Evermont Group and the company's core technical team now on my side, I returned to my own company.

As for who would end up being the laughingstock of the entire city, we'd just have to wait and see.

…

Third-Person POV

Mia ran away from her wedding again.

She and Ethan spent the entire night together, but this time, not a single message came from Adrian. The wedding livestream never started either.

That's when it finally hit her—she'd gone too far this time.

She hurried back to the house Adrian had bought for the two of them, intending to swallow her pride and apologize.

But the moment she arrived, she discovered that the house had already been sold to someone else.

Panic immediately set in.

She called her assistant, Elliot Harper, and demanded to know where Adrian had gone. Elliot's voice trembled on the other end of the line.

"Ms. Lawson, the 50-million-dollar investment in the company was just withdrawn! And Adrian just took more than a hundred of our core technical employees with him. Now the rest of our shareholders are pulling out too. Evermont Group is on the verge of bankruptcy and liquidation!"