CHAPTER 6 — The Bride Who Stopped Her Own Wedding
Wedding day.
London.
St. Bartholomew Cathedral.
Nearly six hundred guests.
Diplomats.
Business leaders.
Royal advisers.
Medical colleagues from Chloe's hospital.
Children she had once treated...
Now healthy enough to carry flowers down the aisle.
There wasn't a dry eye in the church.
Chloe walked slowly toward Christian.
Everything felt perfect.
Almost...
Too perfect.
Halfway down the aisle...
She noticed Jessica.
Standing near the back.
Wearing black.
Watching.
Not crying.
Smiling.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Then Chloe remembered something.
Years earlier...
Jessica smiled exactly the same way...
Before betraying her at the bridal salon.
Her heart stopped.
She didn't continue walking.
Instead...
She suddenly turned toward Christian and shouted—
"EVERYONE GET DOWN!"
The explosion shattered every stained-glass window.
The blast threw guests across wooden pews.
Smoke filled the cathedral.
Screams echoed everywhere.
But because Chloe had reacted one second earlier...
Hundreds of lives were spared.
Christian fought through the smoke searching for her.
"CHLOE!"
"I'm here!"
She emerged covered in dust.
Alive.
Then security officers dragged Jessica from beneath a broken pew.
She was laughing.
Hysterically.
"I wasn't supposed to survive either!"
Christian grabbed her shoulders.
"Who sent you?"
Jessica cried uncontrollably.
"I never wanted this!"
"I only wanted to ruin Chloe's life!"
"I didn't know they were terrorists!"
The cathedral fell silent.
Christian's expression hardened.
"Who?"
Jessica whispered one name.
A name that made every intelligence officer in the room turn pale.
"The Ashford Patriarch..."
"No..."
"The real one."
Christian slowly stepped backward.
His face lost all color.
"Impossible."
"My grandfather..."
"Died eleven years ago."
Jessica shook her head.
"No."
"He built his own funeral."
"And he's been controlling everything..."
"From the shadows."
Far away...
Inside a hidden underground control room...
An elderly man watched the failed assassination through dozens of security monitors.
He smiled as Christian's shocked face appeared on the screen.
"My grandson..."
"You finally know I'm alive."
He gently placed a black-and-white family photograph on the desk.
Then whispered to himself—
May you like
"Now it's time..."
"...to finish what our family started."
