Chapter 3 - THE IDENTITY OF THE GROOM EXPOSEDThe room spun around Sofia. The man she loved, the man she had stood beside for two years, was a monster who had meticulously planned her execution in a house of God.
"No, no, no..." she sobbed, collapsing against the desk.
Rich trotted over, placing his heavy head on her lap, nudging her cold hands with his warm snout. He had known. When the dog had dragged her away from the altar, he wasn't just reacting to a sound—he had seen Julian interacting with the weakened structural chain earlier that morning, or he had smelled the metal filings on his hands. Rich was trying to protect her from a trap set by the very man she was about to call her husband.
Sofia wiped her tears, her panic slowly hardening into a cold, fierce fury. She needed to know who "Julian" really was.
She dragged the file folder onto her desktop and opened another video file from the collar, timestamped three days prior.
In this clip, Rich was lying under the dining room table while Julian was talking on the phone. Julian was speaking in a language Sofia had never heard him use—fluent, rapid Russian.
She used an online AI audio tool on her laptop to translate the clip in real time. The translation appeared line by line on her screen:
[TRANSLATION]
Julian: "The mark is completely oblivious. She thinks I'm a self-made investment banker from Boston."
Voice on Phone: "Has the syndicate verified the inheritance details?"
Julian: "Yes. Her late father’s trust releases $12 million to her on her wedding day. If she dies before signing the marital asset clause, the entire sum defaults to her legal spouse under the draft will we forged last month. Viktor, get the forged papers ready. 'Julian Vance' disappears the moment the payout hits the offshore account."
Sofia's jaw dropped. Julian Vance didn't exist.
She quickly opened a search engine and uploaded a screenshot of Julian's face from the high-res collar footage into an international criminal database reverse-image search.
The screen loaded for three agonizing seconds before a red banner flashed across the top of the monitor:
INTERPOL RED NOTICE MATCH FOUND
Name: Dmitry "The Architect" Volkov
Status: Wanted for multi-national fraud, insurance homicide, and identity theft across Eastern Europe.
Warning: Extremely dangerous. Operates under multiple aliases to target high-net-worth heiresses.
Sofia sat frozen in her chair. The man she was living with was an international assassin and con artist who had murdered women across Europe for their fortunes.
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Suddenly, her phone buzzed on the desk. It was a text message from an unknown number:
UNKNOWN: If you want to live past tonight, look outside your window right now. Do NOT scream.
