The murmurs in the crowd grew louder. Guests exchanged worried glances, some whispering about a possible cold feet. But the truth was far darker.
Backstage, in a small, dimly lit room, Arlina stared at her phone, hands trembling. The message blinking on the screen was from Adrian, her former lover, who had just returned from Europe after nearly two years away. The words were simple but packed with a thousand emotions:
"I'm back. We need to talk. It's urgent."
Her heart pounded fiercely-an erratic rhythm against the quiet of the room. She had spent months trying to forget him, trying to bury the past that almost destroyed her. But now, with her family's expectations crushing her, and the scandal her sister Celia caused still fresh, she felt suffocated.
She had no choice.
With a shaky breath, Arlina slipped out the back door, ignoring the flood of questions and shocked faces behind her.
Meanwhile, in the main hall, Sean's gaze was sharp and unforgiving as he watched Elora Putri-Arlina's youngest sister-being ushered hurriedly down the aisle. Her face was pale, her steps hesitant, but she wore the wedding gown with a grace that belied her inner turmoil.
Sean's mind raced with the harshest assumptions. A divorced woman... forced into this? What kind of trick was this? His anger wasn't just about the deception-it was a bitter poison fueled by disappointment and suspicion.
Elora felt every icy stare from the guests, every sharp glance from Sean. She had never imagined that one day she'd be standing here, filling in for a sister who vanished like a ghost.
Inside, she battled the storm raging in her chest. The bitterness from years of watching men come and go, leaving only pain behind, hardened her. She had built walls around her heart-walls she wasn't sure she could break down for Sean, or anyone.
Back at home, Mr. Herman and Mrs. Rina were frantic. Their reputations hung by a thread after Celia's reckless scandal, and now Arlina's sudden disappearance threatened to shatter everything. Desperation pushed them into an impossible choice-sending Elora in place of her sister.
"It's the only way," Mrs. Rina said softly, eyes filled with tears. "The family's honor depends on it."
"But Sean..." Mr. Herman muttered. "He'll never accept her."
"I don't care anymore. We have to try."
Sean's cold silence was the hardest to bear for Elora. At the reception later, his words were clipped and distant. Every attempt she made to connect was met with a wall of indifference.
But beneath the surface of Sean's harshness was confusion and pain. He had loved Arlina once, or at least the idea of her. Now he felt betrayed, trapped in a marriage he never wanted, with a woman he barely knew.
Elora's heart ached-not for Sean, not yet-but for the impossible situation they were both thrust into. She wanted to scream, to run, to disappear like her sister.
But she couldn't.
Because this was her family's last chance. And somehow, she had to survive it.
As the night grew darker, Arlina was somewhere far away, preparing to confront the ghosts she had fled from-Adrian, the past, and perhaps, the future she thought she'd lost forever.
Meanwhile, Sean and Elora sat side by side, strangers in a forced union, caught between resentment and something neither dared to name.
The real battle had only just begun.
Would you like me to continue with Chapter 2, or add dialogue scenes between Sean and Elora next?
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