CHAPTER 4 – THE SEAM THAT BROKE
The argument moved too fast and too quietly for the guests to fully follow.
Ethan turned Lila toward him again, anger and confusion fighting across his face. “Don’t defend him,” he snapped. “You carry his name. You live off what he stole.”
Lila shook her head, crying harder now. “I never defended him.”
He moved closer, gripping near her arms and collar area, trying to force her to look at him. She twisted away, desperate, and her back brushed against the edge of a wooden chair near the floral aisle.
There was a tearing sound.
Soft.
Sharp.
Devastating.
The back seam of her white lace wedding dress split open.
Lila gasped and reached behind herself at once, trying to pull the torn fabric together. Her whole body changed. It was no longer just embarrassment. It was panic. Her breathing grew ragged. She looked less like a bride with a wardrobe disaster and more like someone suddenly stripped of armor.
The room went silent.
No nudity was exposed, only the upper back beneath torn lace—but that was enough.
“Please,” she whispered, voice cracked with terror. “Don’t look.”
Ethan’s hand froze in midair.
At first he only saw pale skin and the chaotic tear in the white lace. Then his eyes adjusted.
And he saw the scars.
Old.
Healed.
Non-gory.
Unmistakable.
Lines crossing her upper back like faded lightning. Marks that had not come from accident or clumsiness. Marks no loving home could explain away.
The sound in Ethan’s chest was almost like losing air.
Lila bowed her head and clutched the torn fabric against herself, but the truth was already visible.
“Those are from him,” she whispered.
Not from a stranger.
Not from some unknown danger.
From Victor Ashford.
Ethan stepped back as if the floor had shifted.
For months he had imagined Victor as the monster who ruined his parents.
He had never imagined what Victor might have been inside his own house.
And in that instant, Ethan understood the horror of what he had done.
He had dragged another victim into his revenge.
He had married a wounded woman to punish the man who wounded her.
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The groom’s rage did not vanish.
It turned inward.
