Chapter 6 - The Bride Who Stood Before the City
The press conference took place at noon.
Hundreds of reporters gathered.
Rumors had already spread.
Some claimed I had forced Sophia.
Others claimed the marriage had been violent.
Victor believed he had cornered me.
He was wrong.
Sophia walked onto the stage beside me.
No gown.
No diamonds.
No family representative.
Just a simple black suit.
The room became silent.
A reporter asked the first question.
“Did you harm your wife on your wedding night?”
I looked at Sophia.
She answered.
“No.”
The reporter asked, “Then explain the blood.”
Sophia took the microphone.
“It was mine.”
The room erupted.
She waited until the noise settled.
“It was my husband's.”
Silence.
She explained what happened.
She described the fear she had been taught.
She described the pressure.
Then she showed the bracelet.
Then Elena's recording.
Then the documents.
Piece by piece, the conspiracy collapsed.
My uncle was arrested.
Victor vanished.
Daniel Bellucci surrendered.
My father was forced to cooperate.
Within forty-eight hours, investigators seized accounts across multiple states.
The war that had killed thirty-two people six years earlier was finally understood for what it had been.
A manufactured bloodbath.
Victor was captured three days later in Boston.
The trial lasted eleven months.
Sophia testified.
So did I.
She never looked away.
When the verdict was read, Victor was convicted on multiple counts.
The judge described the conspiracy as a deliberate attempt to turn families against one another for profit and power.
Outside the courthouse, reporters asked Sophia whether she regretted marrying me.
She looked at me.
Then smiled.
“No.”
One reporter asked why.
She answered,
“Because I married a stranger who gave me a choice. Somewhere along the way, he became the first person I ever trusted with one.”
I didn't say anything.
I didn't need to.
The war was over.
May you like
But our marriage was still complicated.
Because now we had to learn how to be married without someone holding a gun over our heads.
