Chapter 6 - The Great Exit
On the floor a few feet away, Theodore Ashford groaned, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, blood smearing across his chin. He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing in his ears, before his eyes locked on the scene unfolding before the altar.
His bride — the orphan seamstress his family had tormented for two years — was holding hands with Julian Vance.
"Cora!" Theodore sputtered, wiping the blood from his mouth as he scrambled to his feet, his face twisted in desperate, humiliated rage. "Are you out of your mind? You're leaving me? For him? You're nothing without my family! You'll be back in that rat-infested apartment sewing buttons by midnight!"
Cora turned slowly to look at the man she had planned to marry twenty minutes ago. She looked at his designer suit, his bloodied lip, his pathetic, flailing sense of entitlement.
"Theodore," Cora said, her voice ringing clear and strong through the cathedral. "Your mother was right about one thing."
Theodore blinked, caught off guard. "What?"
"Ashford men don't marry girls like me," Cora said, a brilliant, unfettered smile breaking across her face. "They throw things away. And for two years, I was foolish enough to think I was the lucky one for being picked up."
She slipped her hand out of Theodore's reach and slid it securely into Julian Vance's palm.
"I'm not," she continued. "And I'm definitely not staying."
"Guards," Julian murmured to Dante.
Before Theodore could lunge forward, Dante and the other enforcers stepped into his path, forming an immovable wall of dark wool and muscle. Dante gave Theodore a flat, unimpressed shove that sent the groom stumbling backward into a baptismal font.
"Don't follow her," Dante advised casually, cracking his knuckles. "Unless you want the other side of your jaw to match."
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Julian didn't look back. With his hand firmly holding Cora's, he led her down the center aisle of St. Cecilia's, walking straight past the rows of paralyzed socialites, through the heavy oak doors, and out into the crisp Boston air.
Behind them, the cathedral erupted into absolute pandemonium. Margarite Ashford was fanning herself frantically as she hyperventilated in the front pew, while Theodore screamed curses into the empty air, his wedding day lying in absolute, smoking ruins around him.
