Semua Bab After the Don Chose To Save the Bridesmaid, the Wedding’s Off: Bab 1 - Bab 8

“Miss Sutton, the Don says he’s tied up again today. He says you should get an early night and not wait up for him.”“He also wants you to keep up with your recovery. The wedding can’t be pushed back any further.”The maid chattered on beside me, but I just stared out the window, my eyes empty.Ever since the kidnapping, Adrian had kept me in a private hospital for half a month.And in that half a month, he’d come to see me barely two or three times.Once, I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Why did you save Nina?”Adrian was very calm. “Because the family behind her is powerful. If she’d died because of me, the fallout would have been ugly.”I looked at him. “So you weren’t afraid I’d actually die?”He gave a soft laugh at that. “You’re my fiancée. That fact alone is enough. They’d never let you die.”He said it with such certainty, as if all of it had already been figured into his plans.But the day he came for me, he’d been the one who fell apart.The night they took me, I truly th

The allergic reaction was worse than I’d imagined.That night my fever wouldn’t break, and an angry rash spread across my skin.The doctor said I needed rest, that I couldn’t be exposed to any triggers for at least a week. But the wedding was only three days away.Once the news made it back to the estate, the Vale family’s people came to the hospital fast.They stood outside my room, voices low behind a half-closed door.“Everyone coming to the wedding is the cream of the city. Looking like she does now, how is Miss Sutton supposed to show her face?”“The Don’s wedding can’t become a joke. Better to postpone it, wait until she’s recovered.”“It’s already been postponed once. She really is nothing but trouble.”I lay in bed listening, and couldn’t even be bothered to open my eyes.Not long after, Adrian came.When he pushed the door open, the room went silent at once.A few of the family elders started to speak, but Adrian swept them with one cold look.“She is my bride.”“Anyone who sa

Getting away from the wedding went more smoothly than I’d expected.Maybe because everyone was waiting for a beautiful bride, and my rash had been bad enough to hide what I really looked like.I reached the airport and sat in the departure lounge, waiting for my flight to the coast of Portugal.Outside, the sun had climbed to its highest point, and as I watched plane after plane cut across it, a thousand feelings welled up in my chest.Because money had always been tight growing up, I’d spent my whole life longing to travel to a place like that.Now I was really going, not to arrive somewhere, but to escape a relationship that had gone rotten.I’d told Adrian once that I wanted to travel the world.His position meant he couldn’t always be at my side out in the open, but back then he’d loved me.Loved me enough to make a promise: that across all the long years ahead, he’d travel the whole world at my side.Back then I hadn’t believed him, and I’d laughed and called him a liar. For the f

By the time I reached the coast of Portugal, the sky had almost gone dark.Because I’d left in such a rush, I had almost nothing on me except the pearl earrings I hadn’t had time to take off.Adrian had won them for me at an auction.He’d said they suited me.I stared at myself in the mirror for a long time, and in the end I took them off and carried them to a local pawn shop.When the appraiser named a price, I stood there stunned for a while.That much money was enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about getting by for a long time.After everything, I was still trading on what Adrian had left behind to buy myself a new life.But this time, I didn’t refuse it out of pride.I just let out a sigh, then used the money to buy a small apartment by the sea.When I pushed the windows open, there was nothing but a wide sweep of blue sea.Life suddenly slowed way down.I’d go to the market nearby in the mornings for flowers, spend afternoons reading on the terrace, and walk along the coastline