Chapter 2 The Bridegrooms Betrayal
Aria
For a second, I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. The words hung in the air between us, toxic and radioactive. The ultimate humiliation.
He wasn't just discarding me; he was trying to buy the last scrap of my dignity, reducing four years of love and hard work to a transaction in a hotel bathroom five minutes before he married another woman.
The roar in my ears was deafening. It was the sound of every dream I’d ever had shattering.
I didn't think. I just reacted.
My hand connected with his cheek with a sound like a cracking whip.
It was a solid, satisfying slap that turned his head to the side and left my palm stinging.
Jess stumbled back, eyes wide, clutching his cheek. The perfect golden prince looked shocked, human.
"You bastard," I choked out, tears blinding me instantly. "You soulless, arrogant bastard."
"Get out!" he roared, his composure shattering. "Security! Get her out of here!"
I didn't need to be told twice. The shame was a physical weight, crushing my lungs. I grabbed the handle of my stupid, broken suitcase and fled.
I ran back down the plush hallway, not waiting for the elevator. I hit the stairs, my suitcase thwump-thwumping down every step behind me like a deranged pet.
I burst out onto the mezzanine level, blinded by tears, gasping for air, just needing to get out, away from the scent of orchids and money.
I wasn't looking where I was going. I was running full tilt, head down, a sob tearing from my throat.
I hit something solid.
It was like running into a brick wall wrapped in silk. The impact stopped me dead, knocking the breath from my lungs and sending my suitcase skittering across the marble floor.
I stumbled back, flailing for balance, my hands instinctively grabbing at the obstacle to keep from falling.
There was a sharp tearing sound.
I gasped, looking down. In my desperate attempt to stay upright, my hand had snagged on something sharp on the man’s cuff. The thin, worn fabric of my t-shirt had given way, ripping from the neckline almost to my naval.
Horror washed over me. I stood there in the middle of the mezzanine of the most expensive hotel in the city, my bra exposed, my cheap clothes shredded, my face wet with tears.
I slowly looked up at the object I had collided with.
It was a man. A towering, terrifyingly large man. He wore an expensive suit that made Jess’s look off-the-rack, black on black, tailored to emphasize shoulders that seemed wide enough to carry the building. His unbuttoned shirt, traveling snake tattoo on his chest.
But it was his face that stopped my heart. It was hard, angular, and devastatingly handsome, with a jawline that could cut glass and eyes the color of a stormy sea at midnight.
They were cold, calculating eyes that held immense, terrifying power.
I knew that face. Everyone knew that face. It was on business magazines, financial news networks, whispered about in reverent tones in every boardroom in the country.
Grayson Hart. The Alpha of the Hart empire. Delilah’s older brother. Jess's new brother-in-law.
The billionaire wolf at the top of the food chain.
I was frozen, a rabbit caught in the headlights of a semi-truck. The sheer scale of my disaster was unimaginable. I had just assaulted the groom and now I had literally crashed into the patriarch of the family he was marrying into, half-exposing myself in the process.
He didn't move. He didn't blink. He just looked down at me, his gaze traveling from my tear-stained face to my torn shirt, then back up to my eyes.
He didn't look disgusted, like the security guard. He didn't look mocking, like Jess. He looked… intense. Like a predator assessing something new in its territory.
My breath hitched in my throat. I tried to pull the edges of my torn shirt together with shaking hands, my face burning with a humiliation so deep it felt like sunburn.
"I… I’m so sorry," I whimpered, backing away, terrified he might snap his fingers and have me vaporized. "I didn't… I was just leaving."
Grayson Hart didn't step back. He took a slow, deliberate step toward me. His presence was suffocating, a gravitational pull that I couldn't resist.
The scent of him, something dark, woody, and purely masculine-overwhelmed me, chasing away the cloying sweetness of Jess’s cologne.
He stopped inches from me. He was so tall I had to crane my neck to look him in the eye.
He didn't shout. He didn't call for security.
He just looked down at me with those intense, storm-colored eyes, his voice a low, seductive rumble that seemed to vibrate straight through my chest, making my knees weak for entirely different reasons than fear.
"Aria Jones?”
My name hanging in the air between us felt less like an introduction and more like an accusation.
My heart, already battering my ribs, kicked into a frantic rhythm that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man towering over me.
Up close, Grayson Hart was devastating. The sheer magnitude of his presence was a physical weight, pressing the air from the room.
He smelled like a thunderstorm about to break ozone, expensive leather, and an underlying, terrifying scent of raw, apex predator power that made the fine hairs on my arms stand straight up.
But my brain, apparently having a death wish, decided this was the moment to locate my missing spine.
"How do you know who I am?" I demanded. My voice was shaking, ruining the effect, and I was still clutching the shredded remains of my t-shirt over my chest like a pathetic shield, but I didn't back down.
I glared up into those stormy eyes, refusing to be just another piece of debris in the Hart family’s path.
Grayson didn't answer immediately. He studied me, his gaze feeling like a physical touch that traced the line of my jaw, my throat, and down to where my knuckles were white against the torn fabric.
There was no lust in that look, just a chilling, calculating assessment. It was worse than Jess’s mockery. Jess had looked at me like trash; Grayson looked at me like a spreadsheet equation that didn't balance.
"You are causing a disturbance, Ms. Jones," he said finally. His voice was a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through the marble floor and straight up my legs.
It wasn't a question; it was a verdict.
"A disturbance? I'm the disturbance?"
I laughed, a brittle, hysterical sound. "Your future brother-in-law just tried to buy me off like a cheap hooker five minutes before saying 'I do,' and I'm the problem?"
His expression didn't shift by a millimeter. "Jess Andrews' lack of character is hardly news. Your decision to create a spectacle at my sister's wedding, however, is."
He raised a hand. I flinched, expecting a blow, hating myself for the instinct. But he just snapped his fingers.
Instantly, two security guards materialized from the shadows of the mezzanine, flanking me like silent statues.
"Escort Ms. Jones off the premises," Grayson commanded, his tone bored now, dismissive. He reached into the inner pocket of his suit a gesture that sickeningly mirrored Jess’s earlier one and pulled out a checkbook and a Montblanc pen.
He scribbled something rapidly, tore the check free, and held it out to me between two long, elegant fingers.
I stared at it. "What is that?"
"Compensation," he said quietly.
"For the shirt. And for your trouble. Take it and vanish, Aria."
My pride screamed at me to slap his hand away, to spit on the check, to storm out with my dignity intact. But the image of the eviction notice flashed in my mind.
The empty pill bottles on Nana’s nightstand. Dignity didn't pay for beta-blockers.
With a hand that trembled violently, I snatched the check. I didn't look at the amount. I shoved it into my jeans pocket, burning with shame so intense it felt like acid in my veins.
"Go to hell," I whispered, the fight draining out of me, replaced by crushing weariness.
"I own the place," he murmured, already turning his back on me as if I had ceased to exist. "See her out."
The guards didn't grab me, but their proximity was a herd maneuver. I grabbed my wonky suitcase and let them march me toward the grand staircase, my head ducked low, wishing the marble floor would open up and swallow me whole.
We had to pass the entrance to the ballroom to get to the main exit. The doors were open, spilling golden light and the sound of a string quartet into the hallway.
Guests were milling about, champagne flutes in hand, waiting for the ceremony to begin.
A ripple of silence followed me. Heads turned. Whispers hissed behind hands like snakes in dry grass.
I heard a snicker, loud and cruel, and looked up involuntarily.
Standing near a towering ice sculpture were Chloe, Sarah, and Bec, three of Jess's junior account executives.
The "Mean Girls" of the office, who had spent four years sneering at my packed lunches and my Target wardrobe while trying to flirt their way into Jess's good graces.
They were impeccably dressed in designer gowns, looking like vultures in silk. When they saw me disheveled, tear-stained, clutching a torn t-shirt, being escorted by security, their faces lit up with malicious glee.
"Oh my god," Chloe gasped, loud enough for half the lobby to hear.
"Is that Aria? Did she actually try to crash the wedding?"
Sarah swirled her champagne, her eyes raking over my ruined shirt. "Look at her. She looks like she just crawled out of a dumpsterfight. Did you think Jess would take one look at that and leave Delilah Hart?"
Bec laughed, a sharp, tinkling sound that grated on my nerves. "Honey, he fired you. Get the hint. You were a placeholder until he found someone with actual class.
You really thought you belonged here?"
The security guards kept walking, urging me forward, but I dug my heels in.
The shame that had been drowning me evaporated, replaced by a searing, white-hot rage. I was done. Done being walked over, done being mocked by people with souls the size of thimbles.
I shook off the guard's hand and spun to face them.
"You know what, Chloe?" I said, my voice startlingly loud in the sudden quiet of the lobby.
The string quartet seemed to falter. "At least I don't have to pad my bra to get attention. And Sarah, maybe if you spent half as much time working as you do trying to sleep with upper management, you wouldn't be a junior exec at thirty."
Their jaws dropped. Sarah sputtered, her face turning blotchy red.
I shifted my gaze to Bec, who looked suddenly uncertain. "And you," I sneered, channeling every ounce of venom I had left.
"You think you belong here because you bought a dress you can't afford on credit? You're just sheep in bor
rowed wool. Jess deserves every miserable second he’s about to have in this viper pit.
Enjoy the open bar, ladies. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to the good life."
A few nearby guests gasped. Chloe looked like she was going to faint.