Engagement Party Nightmare

Engagement Party Nightmare

Lan Diao

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My engagement party at the Plaza Hotel was supposed to be my fairy tale. I was Emily White, soon to be Mrs. Jack Anderson, Wall Street's golden boy, feeling like a princess in my dream gown. Then, the giant screen, meant for our loving slideshow, flickered. A grainy video played: me, years ago, utterly wasted at a frat party, completely out of control. A collective gasp ripped through the ballroom. Jack's face turned from white to furious red. He snatched the mic, bellowing, "This engagement is OFF!" He ripped the diamond ring from my finger, brutally shoving it onto my maid of honor, Sophia's, hand. "Sophia, at least you have some class." Laughter rippled through the guests as my parents sobbed. My world shattered along with the champagne flute in my numb fingers. Just as I stood frozen in humiliation, the main doors burst open. Marcus "King" Corleone, the city's whispered-about power, Sophia's "guardian," emerged from the shadows. Silence fell. He stopped the video, took a mic, and his voice, soft yet chilling, commanded everyone to leave. Only my parents, Jack, Sophia, and I remained. Then, he approached me. "I'll offer you a contract, Emily. A marriage. To me." Marry a rumored monster? He gestured to Sophia, who was preening with my ring. My career, my future, my reputation-all gone. Despair washed over me. What choice did I have? I whispered, "Yes."

Introduction

My engagement party at the Plaza Hotel was supposed to be my fairy tale. I was Emily White, soon to be Mrs. Jack Anderson, Wall Street's golden boy, feeling like a princess in my dream gown.

Then, the giant screen, meant for our loving slideshow, flickered. A grainy video played: me, years ago, utterly wasted at a frat party, completely out of control. A collective gasp ripped through the ballroom.

Jack's face turned from white to furious red. He snatched the mic, bellowing, "This engagement is OFF!" He ripped the diamond ring from my finger, brutally shoving it onto my maid of honor, Sophia's, hand. "Sophia, at least you have some class." Laughter rippled through the guests as my parents sobbed. My world shattered along with the champagne flute in my numb fingers.

Just as I stood frozen in humiliation, the main doors burst open. Marcus "King" Corleone, the city's whispered-about power, Sophia's "guardian," emerged from the shadows. Silence fell. He stopped the video, took a mic, and his voice, soft yet chilling, commanded everyone to leave.

Only my parents, Jack, Sophia, and I remained. Then, he approached me. "I'll offer you a contract, Emily. A marriage. To me." Marry a rumored monster? He gestured to Sophia, who was preening with my ring. My career, my future, my reputation-all gone. Despair washed over me. What choice did I have? I whispered, "Yes."

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The phone rang, a sharp, unwelcome sound cutting through the quiet of my office. It was Olivia, my wife. A smile touched my lips. Six months pregnant, a miracle after years of heartbreak. "Hey, honey. Everything okay? Did you pick out a color for the nursery yet? I' m still team blue." Then, silence. A heavy, dead-air kind of quiet. Her voice, when it came, was a ghost: "Ethan… can you come to the hospital?" My heart stopped. My mind raced through a thousand terrible possibilities, but none prepared me for the sight of her in the surgical waiting room, her face pale, her belly-our baby-gone. "I had an abortion, Ethan." Her words shattered my world. "He was bad luck," she said simply, as if explaining the weather. Then she pointed towards the ICU. "Liam is in here. He was in a car accident." Liam. Her college sweetheart. The ghost in our marriage. "The baby… he was too perfect. All our good luck went to him. I had to get rid of the bad luck. I had to save him." Her twisted logic was terrifying. I stumbled home to find my mother humming happily in the nursery, folding a tiny blue onesie. The room was a testament to a dream now destroyed. "She lost him," I managed to tell her, a desperate lie to shield her from the grotesque truth. But she sensed it. The pain of our son' s death, coupled with Olivia's betrayal, hit my mother hard. Her doctor called it "broken heart syndrome." Then came the call from Olivia's doctor. "It's highly unlikely Olivia will be able to conceive again. The damage is permanent." That night, I discovered our joint savings account, tens of thousands of dollars, completely drained. Funneled to Liam's experimental medical clinic. I found Olivia at his bedside, peeling an apple for him. "It wasn't a problem," she said, "It was a sacrifice. For you. For us." "Good girl," he replied. "Once I'm out of here… Miller will be out of the picture." My son's death wasn't a tragic act of madness. It was a transaction. And I had been played for a fool from the very beginning. Liam called me, arrogant and triumphant. "You were just a placeholder." "You're too selfish!" Olivia shrieked, when I confronted her. Her words, so twisted and absurd, snapped the last thread of any feeling I had for her. "I want a divorce, Olivia." I hung up, then blocked both their numbers. The decision was made. The war had just begun.

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