Chapter 5 - The Stolen Ring
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Before I could reach forward to grab the fraudulent document, Celine appeared at my left side like a shadow. Her fingers clamped down hard around my left hand, her manicured acrylic nails digging painfully into my swollen skin.
“And this,” Celine said, her voice shaking with ugly, unbridled pleasure, “belongs to the Ashcroft family.”
She twisted her grip hard.
A sharp spike of pain shot through my hand as she violently ripped my wedding ring over my swollen knuckle. The sharp edge of the massive diamond tore the skin. I gasped, stumbling backward and clutching my bleeding finger against my chest. Celine held the glittering ring high in the air, as if she had just seized a stolen crown from an imposter.
“You don’t deserve to wear his name,” Celine spat, her face contorted in a sneer.
The whispers in the pews became louder, a buzzing hive of gossip.
“She cheated?”
“Pregnant too… how shameless.”
“Poor Lucian. He never knew.”
“Was the entire marriage a fraud?”
The beautiful stained-glass windows of the cathedral blurred as tears filled my eyes. I was widowed, heavily pregnant, bleeding, and being humiliated beside the man I loved, while hundreds of the most powerful people in the country watched my dignity being stripped away like fabric from a wound. I frantically searched the faces in the front pews for one single person willing to stand up and defend me.
Board members looked down at their shoes. Family friends froze, pretending they were deaf. A prominent senator’s wife pressed a gloved hand to her mouth but did not move an inch. Wealth had trained every single one of them to wait until power decisively chose a side before acting.
Victoria lifted one elegant, gloved hand toward the hired pallbearers standing in the shadows.
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“Remove her from the premises immediately.”
That was the exact moment the massive front doors of the cathedral slammed shut. The booming sound thundered through the nave like a gavel of final judgment.
