Chapter 38
“This wedding dress is your lesson,” Gerry said coldly. “Once you calm down and truly accept Niana, then we can talk about holding the ceremony.”
I ended the video and collapsed onto the sofa, staring blankly at the ceiling.”
The cold wind brushed past, drying the tears that clung stubbornly to the corners of my eyes.
For a moment, it felt like I was back in that freezing tunnel beneath the bridge–alone, abandoned, numb.
Gerry was right.”
I was just an orphan picked up by Madam Stall.
To be more precise… she pulled me from a river.
I was ten. After enduring unspeakable abuse at the hands of the orphanage director, I’d run away, only to wander the streets–hungry, lost, shivering. People shoved me aside, hurled insults, looked at me like I was nothing. One night, desperate and hollow, I nearly ended it all. But then… Madam Stall appeared. She brought me home, fed me, gave me a bed. She made sure I’d never have to beg for food again. From then on, I lived like a ghost in the Stall household. I was tolerated, never embraced. Anyone could walk all over me–but not Gerry. He was the only one who ever smiled at me.
When I was punished and denied dinner, he’d sneak out and buy me spicy crayfish. When I couldn’t afford school supplies, he’d split his allowance and hand me a full set of beautiful stationery–one he had chosen himself.
For my fifteenth birthday, he skipped his tutoring session and took me to a handmade clay studio. He used his entire year’s allowance to mold a figurine just for me.”
Something that would never fade. Never crack. Never break.
“Our Luna,” he said that day, smiling at me with those eyes I could never forget, “when you grow up, if you could wear a wedding dress as beautiful as this one and marry me… that would be wonderful.“}
Even now, I still remember the wild rhythm of my heart.
“I… I want that too,” I whispered.
My voice was soft–too soft. I don’t think he ever heard it.
A few months later, Madam Stall flew into an unexpected rage. Gerry was abruptly pulled from school and confined to the Stall Family’s ancestral hall for a month of reflection.
Worried, I went to visit him–only to learn he had brought Niana home behind everyone’s back.
“She’s the only bright spot in my boring life,” he told me, almost dreamily. “I miss her so much. It’s my fault. I was too impatient. Has Mother said when I’ll be let out?“}
The pang in my chest was sharp–blinding. My mind reeled. The joy I’d once felt was gone in an instant.
I knelt beside him on the prayer mat, head bowed, suddenly too afraid to tell him the truth–that Madam Stall and the elders had already decided to groom me to be his future wife.
“He’s only seventeen, yet he was willing to risk breaking ties with his family for a girl his age,” Madam Stall had said. “He needs to learn a lesson.”
In Gerry’s eyes, Madam Stall was tyrannical and the elders were outdated and controlling. He resented their grip on his life, longed for independence.
And I? I was the tool they’d chosen. They didn’t need both of us under control–just one.
If they could secure me as the future Mrs. Stall, they believed Gerry wouldn’t dare cut ties completely once he inherited the family business.
Soon after, Niana was quietly sent away to study in another city. As expected, Gerry was released from the ancestral hall not long after. But half a year later, he found out about the family’s plans–about me.
That day, he came to me in a fury.
And he slapped me.
Hard
From that moment on, he hated me.”
I couldn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned, heart hollow, ears ringing from the sting of that slap.#
The next moming, a call woke me.
Just one sentence.
“Come to the old mansion.”
I knew then–Madam Stall must have discovered Niana’s pregnancy.
I didn’t hesitate. I packed my things and took a taxi straight to the Stall Family’s ancestral home.”
When I arrived, Madam Stall had already vented her fury.”
The moment she saw me, her teacup came flying across the room.
K shattered at my feet.
You’re useless girl!” she shouted. “After all these veere
