Sentenced to Marriage

Chapter 12

Putting on a show Aren Lan looked absolutely striking in a navy blue suit and a black shirt and tie. I wouldn’t miss the way his perfectly tailored jacket emphasized his broad shoulders, nor how the well defined curves of his biceps pressured the fabric with each slight bend of his arm. Why did this arrogant douche have to look so mouth-watering? He made my mind go blank again! I should ignore him, walk past him, say that he confused me with someone else… anything aside from greeting him! Instead, I was now standing before him like a schoolgirl in front of a teacher while trying to find a logical way to explain my sudden brain malfunction. “I didn’t know you were working in my hotel,” he said, his eyes carefully scanning my tight uniform.

A wave of heat rushed through me. Of course, he owned the hotel! He owned nearly half of Manhattan, and with my luck, I should have assumed from the beginning that the Blue Crystal Hotel was his. Nonetheless, I proved to be stupid enough to never consider checking who owns that hotel before planning to do something illegal there. I should have been more careful. Now I needed to find a way out of this situation, and the best solution was to tell the truth… partially… kind of.

“I’m just here as a replacement to help my sick friend. I came here to complete one simple task for her, and now I’m leaving,” I explained, struggling to keep my voice calm. “Oh.” He raised his brows and narrowed his eyes a second later. “What’s your friend’s name?” Was he checking to see if I was telling the truth? Seriously?! Why did he instantly find my presence in his hotel suspicious?! Well, fortunately, memorizing the name of the bribed employee was the first thing I did preparing for “operation revenge.” I replied confidently, “Her name is Holly Griffin.” “I see,” he smirked, lowering his gaze to my chest. “If it were to happen one more time, tell her to get you a bigger size of the uniform. This one draws attention a little too much…” My mouth opened, but my mind was unable to produce any intelligent reply to his words. My embarrassment mixed with rising anger. I wanted to slap him, but at the same time, I wanted to become invisible. Yes, I was aware that I was slightly too curvy for that uniform, but it wasn’t like I could choose the damn size! It took me a few seconds to reboot my system before I could produce a

comprehensible sentence instead of a cavewoman’s roar. “I guess you’ve got your time enjoying the view, then I’ll be on my way,” I hissed, walking past him.

He grabbed my hand, stopping me before I stepped into the revolving door. His grip was gentle, his thumb stroking the skin on my wrist. Shivers rushed through me, making me throb. I exhaled, forcing myself to pretend I was composed. I turned my eyes on him, putting all the nonchalance I could into my gaze. He chuckled. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Ms. Bell,” he said as his fingertips slid from my wrists through the length of my palm until he released me from touch.

I gasped and squeezed my thighs, more than aware of my increased humidity. This time my

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brain demanded a serious recovery, leaving me with no other choice but to act like an idioti stretched my lips into a thin smile, preventing myself from making any sound that would compromise me more than I already was, and dashed through the door

As I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel, I realized I was trembling. The mix of extreme emotions I felt made me stop and try to remember which way I should go I began to wonder if my common sense was allergic to anything Lan related because I found my intelligence degraded below 00 IQ each time this man came around. To make it worse, everything about him screamed sex, turning me into a freaking cat in heat! God, I hated having so little control over my body!

I kept standing still with my mind blank for a minute or two. If Liam hadn’t shown up and led me to the car, I would probably have stood there looking like a lunatic for much longer than that

“What happened?” he asked, as we drove off from the hotel. “What took you so long? I thought that you were on your way to the exit when I texted you.” “I.. met the hotel’s owner,” I answered, nervously smiling. “Oh my God!” he exclaimed, grabbing my hands. “Were you accused of anything?! Are you all right?! Did he threaten you?!”

“No…” I muttered, replaying the whole situation in my mind, “I’ve met this person before, so he was just curious. I told him that I was a temporary replacement.”

Liam placed his hand on his chest and leaned against the car’s seat. “Thank God… You scared me, you know?”

“I scared you?!” I snapped, “You think that I wasn’t terrified myself?! I was the one actually committing a crime!”

“Fine, fine.” He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just glad that you’re OK and that it will work on Friday… because it will work, right?”

“Yes, it will,” I assured him with a wicked smirk.

My heart kept pounding and my emotions swirled within me. I was hot-tempered, and I often let my feelings get the best of me, but I knew I could rely on my abilities. If Liam wanted to expose his ex in front of the world, then I was going to send his message in a way that everyone would hear it loud and clear.

As soon as I got home, I became consumed by restlessness. I knew that I had been seen by people that could recognize me, and if something was to go south on Friday, I had to make sure I’d minimized the damage beforehand. “Fine, Cora… Now you may add hacking into a hotel security system to your list of illegal activities,” I said before getting my hands on the whole security footage of that day. I had to make it look like the cameras were malfunctioning. I had deleted most of the day’s footage from the first floor’s cameras. Then I deleted coincidental footage from cameras on the third and fifth floors. I didn’t want to

erase the proof of my presence entirely, it became useless from the moment Aren Lan saw me. But I had to make sure that no one could ever accuse me of entering that sound engineering room. Once I deleted the last film frame with

Putting on a show

me walking through the first floor’s corridor, I sighed in relief. My anxious mind could finally rest…

Friday came before I knew it. Initially, I planned to turn on the slide show while comfortably sitting on my couch in the living room, but Liam begged me to witness the drama with him at the hotel. I tried to tell him that it was an unnecessary risk, but he ended up dropping to his knees and begging me to come with him. He claimed that his revenge would mean nothing if we both hadn’t witnessed it. Eventually, I agreed to drop the bomb while sitting with my laptop in the hotel’s café, about twenty meters from the ballroom…

From the moment I sat there and ordered coffee expensive enough to be made of gold, I started to feel like a killer returning to the crime scene. As a crime novel lover, I knew that it was one of the dunhbest things to do next to telling your cellmate where you had hidden the body… Yet, I sighed and smiled, watching Liam excitedly shift in his seat. I wanted to support him. I wanted to give him some closure, even if his way of coping was over the top.

Honestly, the preparations for the party looked nothing like I expected. There was no red carpet outside, nor information about who was going to engage. If it weren’t for Liam’s private investigator, who got him the information about where and when this party would occur, we’d probably only realize what had happened after it was over. Even the hotel staff acted as if they were absolutely unbothered by the numerous guests in their highly expensive evening dresses… I wondered, was it because it looked like any other evening event happening in the hotel, or were they asked to keep it highly confidential?

The engagement party was about to start. Liam and I were sitting in the corner of the café, with a good view of the corridor leading from the main entrance to the ballroom. The guests were surrounded and

followed by tight security. At the ballroom’s entrance, they and their invitations were carefully checked, making the whole event look like a glamorous kind of secret organization meeting.

“Oh no…” Liam mumbled and turned his head away from the group of guests on their way to the ballroom.

“What is it?” I asked, lowering my voice.

“Nicole’s parents…” he groaned painfully.

I looked at the all-smiling middle-aged couple and instantly felt sorry for Liam. Nicole’s mother was wearing a long, buttle-green sequin dress, more sparkling than a tree at Christmas, while her father wore a black tuxedo, tightly wrapped around his fat belly. I smiled mischievously, thinking that if I had made those two crime novel characters, they would be this unlikable couple, the first to die at the hands of the murderer… It surely was a good thing that Liam wasn’t going to have in-laws like that.

Finally, with all the guests and the carefully selected press already inside, the ballroom door closed. It was time to get to work. I had two laptops prepared on our table. One was for Liam to observe what was going on at the party, and the other was for me to turn on the slide show at the right moment. I had already hacked the hotel’s surveillance system and was wired into the ballroom’s cameras.

“The show is about to begin,” I said, pointing at the laptop screen in front of Liam and handing him earphones since he was going to be my eyes and ears, letting me know what was

Puiting on a show

happening

We planned to start the slide show the second the engaged appeared on the scene. My eyes now shifted to the other computer on the table. The little worm I planted in the sound engineering room had already

activated, letting me into the system. My fingers were already itching to take control, but I waited for the right moment. “It’s starting. The speaker announces the future bride and groom, asking them to come up onto the stage.” That was all I needed to hear from Liam. I grinned demonically as I worked my magic. A little less than a minute later, I turned on the ballroom’s main screen and nonchalantly hit the key to start the show. From that moment, no one could turn it off until the slide show was over.

“Damn… that fucker looks seriously good,” Liam muttered, looking at the screen. “Let me see.” As I turned the laptop to look at the groom-to-be, I froze. “This… this cannot be happening…” The slide show had already started. Nicole’s pictures with different rich men she dated popped on the cinematic screen one by one, followed by information about how much she cost them. There were over thirty men she dated in the last two years, two or three-timing a few times. The guests appeared to be in deep shock, while the press went wild, taking pictures of everyone and everything. I had already known it was going to be like this, but there was one thing I hadn’t predicted… Somehow it hadn’t thought of the possibility that the host of this engagement party, the groom-to-be, would be none other than Aren freaking Lan! I didn’t know much about that man, but I was certain that it wasn’t someone I wanted to mess with, and I had just destroyed his relationship!

He stood on this stage calmly, as if he was almost enjoying the show. Nicole kept tugging at the rim of his tuxedo jacket while shaking her head, most likely trying to claim innocence despite the devastating evidence of her promiscuous cheater’s life. With my trembling hand, I zoomed in on Aren’s face, and I could see his eyes darkened while his lips formed the most terrifying cold smirk I had ever seen. ‘I gasped abruptly, leaning back away from the screen. My head began to spin. My stomach

twisted, causing a wave of nausea that filled my insides. My hammering heart disturbed all other sounds as the fear overshadowed every other emotion I felt. “He’s going to kill me.” I muttered through the hand I placed on my mouth as the whole life flashed before my eyes. In a sudden revelation, I thought of running away to some other country, taking my Grandma with me, but then I also realized that I had no chance against someone like Aren Lan. I laughed hysterically. “I’m done.”