The Bride Everyone Blamed
Chapter 03 - The Bride Everyone Blamed
When Maya returned to the sitting room, the scene had become chaos. Prescription bottles covered the coffee table. Charles sat hunched in an armchair, clutching the digital recorder he used for business notes. Two security officers restrained Ethan after Grant accused him of tampering with Charles’s medication.
Vivian stood before the guests, crying with perfect control. She claimed Maya and Ethan had pressured Charles to transfer Southside House, then drugged him when he hesitated. Grant produced a draft trust bearing Ethan’s fingerprints and called Maya’s disappearance proof of guilt.
For one terrible moment, even Ethan looked at Maya with uncertainty.
Maya held up the white pill bottle she had taken from the bathroom. “This is Charles’s real prescription,” she said. “The bottle downstairs is a replacement.”
Vivian called it a desperate lie. Grant demanded that security search Maya. Inside a hidden pocket beneath her skirt, they found loose tablets. Gasps swept through the room. Grant smiled.
Maya realized the pills had been planted when Vivian grabbed her in the hallway. Ethan’s face hardened—not against Maya, but with shame that he had doubted her. He stepped between her and Grant.
“My grandfather trusted her,” Ethan said. “So do I.”
Grant ordered the guards to remove them both. That was when Charles forced himself upright. His voice was weak, but clear enough to stop the room.
“Play… camera twelve.”
Vivian went pale.
Maya used the television remote to access Charles’s cloud account. The hallway footage showed Vivian switching the medication, Grant discussing the order, and Vivian saying Charles could not fight the documents. The guests watched in horrified silence.
But Grant recovered quickly. He argued that the footage had been edited. Then he revealed one final weapon: a physician’s statement declaring Charles mentally incapacitated, signed that afternoon. Grant claimed emergency authority over Charles’s property and medical care. He ordered the television disconnected and announced that Charles would be moved to a private facility before sunset.
Two men in dark suits approached the chair.
Maya looked at the physician’s signature and recognized the name. Dr. Samuel Reed had died six months earlier. Grant had forged the order.
May you like
She said it aloud, but Grant only laughed. “Prove it before the transport arrives.”
Charles tightened his grip on the recorder. A tiny red light was still glowing. He had recorded everything—and Grant had just admitted before witnesses that the false order was his path to the estate.
