2: 2
Early the next morning.
The call from the wedding coordinator came through fast and frantic.
"Miss Turner, the old heritage house your parents left you, someone's tearing down the fencing! Our whole lawn-ceremony setup is destroyed!"
I threw off the covers and rushed out of the bedroom. Mark was coming toward me carrying a homemade breakfast.
I stared him down, my voice shaking.
"The ceremony site. Did you send people to tear it down?"
He gently held out the warm milk to me, and admitted it with a smile. "Don't panic. I told the crew to go."
"Why!" I looked at him, disbelieving.
Mark pressed his hands to my shoulders and pushed me back toward the room.
"Come on, drink your milk first, and I'll explain everything."
"Rowena and I talked it over, we'd lend the house to her as a warehouse for now—"
"Let go of me!"
I shoved his hands off hard and looked at him coldly.
"That house is what my parents left me. It's mine!"
"I don't have time for your reasons right now." With that, I pushed him out the door.
Half an hour later, I took a cab back to the old heritage house.
In the yard, the roses my parents had planted were ripped out by the roots, and the wall covered in photos of me and my parents had been scraped to pieces.
This was supposed to be where I held my lawn wedding next month. Now it was rubble.
The crew foreman handed me a short-term land lease contract.
In the box for the authorizing signatory was Mark's name.
Shaking with rage, I ran over and threw my body in front of the excavator's tracks.
Mark appeared out of nowhere, wrapping his arms tight around me from behind, kissing my hair like it pained him.
"Come on, I've already booked the top ballroom at a hotel for the wedding."
"This house is just sitting empty, going to waste. Better to let Rowena use it as a shipping warehouse for her online store for now."
"I promise, afterward I'll have it restored to exactly the way it was."
Rowena climbed out of his car.
She was clutching a bankruptcy liquidation notice, looking at me timidly.
"I really can't afford a warehouse anymore. I have no choice but to trouble you and borrow the old house for a month."
She walked over and took my hand, but her foot crushed the frame holding the photo of me and my parents.
Before I could say a word, tears started rolling down her face, one after another.
"I've got nowhere left to turn. I've even thought about dying. Take pity on me, I'm begging you!"
Just then, two vans screeched to a stop out front.
Several vicious-looking men charged into the yard with steel pipes, shouting.
"Rowena Cox, pay up! Or we smash your goods today!"
In an instant the whole thing spiraled out of control.
The one in front swung his pipe down at Rowena.
Mark yanked Rowena into his arms, and on pure instinct shoved me out, right into their path.
A dull, heavy thud. The pipe scraped hard across my left shoulder, and blood soaked through my white shirt in seconds.
Mark checked over the untouched Rowena in his arms, anxious, then turned and snapped at me.
"Camille, why are you just standing there like an idiot? Don't you know how to dodge!"
Searing pain tore out of my shoulder as I struggled to push myself up.
Looking at the wreckage all around me, at the fiancé who had shoved me toward the thugs to protect his first love, I laughed out of sheer despair.
Mark took off his coat and wrapped it around the shivering Rowena.
Then he came over, looked at my bleeding shoulder, and his voice went soft again.
"It's chaos here. Take a cab to the hospital yourself and get it bandaged. Rowena's shaken up, I'll take her away first."
He turned, shielding Rowena as he got her into the car and left, without another glance at me.
I watched their backs disappear, then dialed the black-market broker.
"This old heritage house. Five hundred thousand, title transferred today, cash in hand now. Whoever wires first gets to lock the land down."
Then I hung up and immediately called the wedding company.
"The wedding booking at The Peninsula Hotel. Cancel all of it."
