At Isolde’s wedding, Tucker’s best friend, Sloane, proposed a game she called “Price the Vows.”
She looped a ribbon around Isolde and gave it a hard yank.
The ribbon, marked with five thousand dollars, went taut, and Isolde’s wedding dress nearly slipped.
“I’m offering five grand to buy her out of marrying Tucker.”
Sloane jerked her chin toward the massive screen behind the altar.
“Simple rules. Each ribbon has an amount written on it, plus something Tucker is willing to sacrifice from his vows. If he makes the transfer, he agrees to the terms.”
Tucker just smiled and sent the money.
Sloane flashed the payment screenshot on the big screen.
A public payment from an heir was as good as a binding agreement.
Isolde clenched her fists, ready to refuse the guests now closing in around her.
Tucker lowered his voice. “Sloane’s just trying to liven things up. Don’t make a scene.”
Isolde froze.
Once, Sloane had stuffed balloons under her shirt and faked a pregnancy, tricking Isolde, a surgeon, into pressing a stethoscope to her stomach to listen for a heartbeat.
Then she’d popped them right in her face.
The blast had left Isolde with temporary hearing loss.
Tucker had called it a great joke.
On the night of their engagement party, Sloane had deliberately left a drunk Isolde stranded outside a bar.
That neighborhood wasn’t under Tucker’s protection. A stranger had nearly dragged her into a car.
Tucker had insisted that was just a joke, too.
In his eyes, everything Sloane did was entertaining.
The guests began scrambling to tie ribbons to the hem of her dress.
One man held his up and shouted, “I wrote thirty grand. To buy the audacity she has, marrying a guy like you.”
“If you dare make that transfer, the wedding’s off,” Isolde said, her voice ice.
Tucker frowned. “Everyone’s just having fun. Come on, honey. Don’t be like this.”
Sloane chimed in from the side. “Yeah. Don’t be such a killjoy.”
The next second, a phone notification chimed.
A thirty-thousand-dollar transfer receipt appeared on the big screen.
The room erupted.
Suddenly, Isolde didn’t have the energy to argue anymore.
Sloane was right.
From the start, this whole thing had been a meaningless, humiliating charade.
The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 38 Before leaving, Sierra asked if I planned to return to the United States. “The Moretti Family wants to apologize to you in person.” “No need.” Once, they had opposed me because I had no Family background and was an outsider who knew too much. Later, when
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 37 Sierra came to the hospital to see me once after that. Not as a patient. She wore a sharply tailored suit, and when she walked, her prosthetic was almost impossible to notice. As soon as she came in, she put a copy of the ruling, already
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 36 He asked me whether, for the sake of the past three years, I could forgive him just this once. I thought about it. There really had been good times in those three years. But the good could not erase a single injury. I had no obligation
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 35 She looked at me first, then at Tucker. “Didn’t you say she’d definitely go soft?” Tucker’s face went ugly. “Shut up.” “I won’t.” She smiled, still wearing that old look, as if everything in the world was entertaining. “You broke your hands, stayed with me in
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 34 Later, the hospital asked if I wanted to stay on after my fellowship ended. I didn’t answer right away. Before, every decision I made had included Tucker. What city he was in. What his Family thought. When we would register our marriage. What day the wedding
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 33 My right hand still hurts when the weather turns rainy. After that dislocation at the wedding, I spent a very long time in rehabilitation. At the start, I couldn’t even hold forceps steady. I used to sit alone in the rehab room, watching my fingers tremble
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 32 It wasn’t that he regretted giving them to me. It was that he realized that, besides those assets, he no longer had a single thing left that proved he had once existed in my life. The adviser passed the same question on to me. I only
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 31 Once everything came out, the Ferraro Family quickly cut off all of Sloane’s extra spending. Over the years, they had cleaned up far too many messes for this daughter of theirs. From Sierra losing a leg to the things Sloane had done overseas, every single time,
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 30 Tucker opened his eyes and looked at her coldly. “And sending her family and friends to that island was your game, too?” Sloane shot back immediately, “Wasn’t it you who took her phone and locked her in the dressing room?” “You told me not to send
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The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 29 They looked at each other through two separate screens. One started dredging up old accounts; the other was desperate to prove who was worse. No one asked Sierra how she had lived all these years. And all at once, I understood. Even now, neither of them
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