Gone After The 28th Wedding Chapter 02
Cassandra’s POV
“Insufficient funds. Please use a different card.”
The automated voice grated like a rusted saw.
“That’s impossible – there’s ten thousand dollars in that account-”
“It’s frozen.” The nurse flung the card back at me. “Step aside. People here are actually dying.”
Frozen. Only Vincent had that authority.
That was my life on that card.
I dialled his number. One ring. Two. Busy tone.
The pain in my kidneys pressed in like wet cement. I
bit through it, flagged a cab, and headed straight for Romano Group.
The executive office door was ajar.
Amelia’s voice drifted out before I touched it.
“Vincent, Cassandra must hate me… if it’ll calm her down, I’ll leave…”
Then his – tender in a way I hadn’t heard in years.
“Don’t be silly. She and I are nothing but a debt. You’re the only one I love.”
A debt.
I pushed the door open.
Amelia was nestled in his arms. The moment she saw me, the warmth in Vincent’s eyes turned to frost.
“Who let you in? Get out.”
“Unfreeze my card.” I gripped the doorframe. “I need treatment.”
“Treatment. Right.” He crossed the room in three strides and seized my jaw – hard enough to crack bone. “Was it you who called my father? Is that why he went after the Rosewoods?”
Amelia slid from the chair to her knees, sobbing. “Don just cut off every one of our business ties. My father’s threatening to jump. My family’s disowning me…
Vincent’s eyes reddened. When he turned back to me, his gaze was a pair of blades.
“My father just gave me an ultimatum marry you this month, or the entire Rosewood family disappears from Seren City.”
“I only called him to end the engagement-”
“Enough!” Amelia shrieked, pointing in my face. “You went to Don on purpose! How can you be this vicious!”
The words had barely left her mouth when she clutched her chest and went white. “My heart… it hurts…”
“Amelia!” Vincent caught her, then spun on me. “You know she has a heart condition. If anything happens to her, I’ll make you pay with your life.”
I was dizzy too. I was dying too. He couldn’t see it.
“Vincent… even just part of it…” I barely managed. “I’m really sick.”
“Sick?” Disgust flooded his face. “Why aren’t you dead yet?”
He pulled a thick fold of bills from his wallet and threw them at me. Cash hit my face; sharp edges split the corner of my eye. Green notes fluttered to the floor.
“Take it and get out. Did you think your parents saving my family gave you a leash around my neck forever? That money’s more than enough to buy those two worthless lives.”
The roar in my ears drowned everything out.
He could humiliate me. But he didn’t get to price my parents.
I crouched and gathered the bills in silence.
“Even if we marry,” he said, already walking out with Amelia in his arms, “all you’ll ever have is a body. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll have my heart.”
That night, I was thrown out of the estate.
To save every dollar for treatment, I took a mouldy basement and two jobs. At four in the morning, I gutted fish at the seafood market – ice water soaking into the wounds on my hands. At eight at night, I cleaned vomit off bar floors while men stuffed tips into my collar for sport.
Half a month in, I was curled up in bed with the pain when my phone lit up.
Amelia’s latest post. She wore a pink diamond tiara and smiled like someone who’d never suffered a day in her life.
Vincent’s birthday gift – “Angel’s Tears,” $8 million. He says I’m his princess.
Eight million dollars.
I stared at my shredded hands. I’d been clawing through filth for a few hundred dollars just to stay alive, and he’d spent ten thousand lifetimes of my treatment money to make her smile.
Three days later, the seafood market.
Pain hit like a lightning strike. I was hauling a crate of frozen goods when my legs gave out and I collided with an expensive bespoke suit.
That cologne. I knew it before I even looked up.
Vincent stared down at me: gaunt, reeking of fish, barely the person he once knew. Shock moved across his face before he could stop it.
“Cassandra?”
“Could you move, sir.” I reached past him for the scattered fish. Lose any of it and I’d lose today’s wages. “You’re in my way.”
His hand closed around my wrist like a vice. He dragged me to the kerb and threw me into the
passenger seat without a word, indifferent to the stench clinging to me.
“Let go – what are you doing?”
Vincent floored the accelerator. A cold, unhinged
smile curled at the corner of his mouth.
“City hall.”
He turned his head, and his voice came from somewhere dark and final.
“You’ve been dreaming of marrying me, haven’t you? Willing to back Amelia into a corner just to force my hand? Congratulations, Cassandra. Today, I’m making you Mrs. Romano.