---- Chapter 10 Carter Wolfe POV: | stayed in that hotel for a week. | didn't go to the office. | didn't answer my parents' frantic calls. | just sat there, staring at my phone, waiting for it to ring. Willing it to ring. Every knock on the door sent a jolt of adrenaline through my system. | would leap up, my heart pounding with a desperate hope, and fling the door open. It was always just room service. Or the maid. Never her. Each time, the hope would curdle into a bitter disappointment that was starting to feel like a permanent part of me. One afternoon, the knock was more insistent. It was Francine. | tried to slam the door in her face, but she wedged her designer shoe in the opening. "Don't you want to know where your little runaway bride is?" she asked, a malicious glint in her eye. My heart stopped. The world narrowed to her perfectly painted lips. "Where is she?" | asked, my voice a low growl. "Is she okay?" Francine smirked. "Oh, she's more than okay. She's having the time of her life." She held up her phone, showing me a picture. ---- "| have a friend who saw her at a bar last night. Said she was all over some guy. Looks like she moves on fast." | saw the picture. It was Amira, smiling, with her arm slung around some handsome stranger's shoulder. A white-hot rage, so intense it made me dizzy, surged through me. Before | knew what | was doing, my hands were around Francine's throat, squeezing. "Don't you ever," | snarled, my face inches from hers, "talk about her like that. She's not like you. She would never do that. She loves me." But the image was burned into my brain. Amira, smiling for someone else. Francine clawed at my hands, her eyes wide with fear. | loosened my grip, and she gasped for air. She held up the phone again. "See for yourself." | snatched the phone from her hand. It was undeniably Amira. The same smile that used to be reserved for me, now directed at a man I'd never seen before. The pain was a physical thing, a shard of glass twisting in my gut. | stumbled back into the room, my rage deflating into a hollow despair. She really was gone. She wasn't coming back. With numb fingers, | opened my social media, my mind working on a new, desperate plan. | created a wedding invitation. A new one. ---- And this time, the bride's name on the invitation was Francine Powers.