Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 599

Arianne nodded curtly before springing toward the escalator to the floor below.

Firm confirmations from hotel security that no elderly man had ever left the building was relieving news. After giving the security some instructions, she took the stairs and scoured floor by floor.

A few floors later, she was panting hard.

Mark had ordered his guards to look as well, but they were hamstrung by the need to remain discreet to avoid disrupting the ceremony.

The clock was going to strike twelve soon. A few more minutes, and Tiffany, the star of the day, would have to go through the rites with Jackson, yet Old Anderson was still nowhere to be found. At this critical moment, Arianne received a call from Eric, who promptly asked, “Didn’t Tanya follow you to the Capital today? And didn’t she bring her grandfather with her?”

“How did you know?” Arianne questioned. “Are you booking tables for the wedding or what? Hold on, where are you, exactly?”

Eric sounded a little upset. “Does she have any idea that her grandfather has left her? I’ve been under the weather these days, and the meds I took this morning left me even less ready for the event. So, I was resting in the guest room on the eighth floor and her grandfather somehow made his way here! Apparently, someone hit him, too,” he recounted. “God, if I weren’t around, this thing could have escalated, big time. Fortunately, he remembered his granddaughter’s name… Anyway, it’d be best if you people come to him right now.”

Arianne felt a pang in her head. Someone hit a harmless old man — how on earth could anyone look at such an aging man and not think twice about hitting him?

She immediately dashed to the eighth floor with Tanya and Naya. Just as Eric told her, Old Anderson was with him, his state evident of physical abuse. His cheeks and arms bore palpable cuts. Luckily, they proved to be relatively innocuous scratches.

“Who — who could have done this?!” Tanya sobbed breathlessly. “He’s just an old man! Even at his worst, he wouldn’t — no, he couldn’t have hurt anyone! What kind of person would have the heart to injure a harmless old man?”

A very bleary Eric did his best to explain between coughs and occasional blank stares, “Uh, ‘was a woman. I don’t know her — probably here for Jackson’s engagement thingy. By the time I found them, your grandpa was already, uh, beaten. I asked her why she’d hit an old man, and she said it’s because he was reaching for her purse? I dunno the details. But figured you guys could log into the CCTV and see what happened. Anyway, I gotta’ go. The ceremony’s about to start.”

Before he left, he added, “Er, please keep this incident on a low profile or something? Don’t make it too big of a deal, I mean.”

Arianne took some time to calm poor Tanya down before they implored the security to show them CCTV footages.

Old Anderson had run up the stairs to the eighth floor, where he came face-to-face with a young lady in a bright red dress. The aisle was too narrow, and Old Anderson was too befuddled to let her pass, so the woman — likely encouraged by the old man’s quotidian appearance and docile nature — pushed the old man aside with a stomp in disgust.

Old Anderson lost his balance and fell back onto his bottom. Panicked, he tugged on a corner of the woman’s skirt, which infuriated her enough that she began kicking him multiple times. Eric appeared a few seconds later, and the same woman slickly assumed her most demure lady act as she explained herself.

Arianne gave an absent-minded hum without heeding to a word he said. Right now, she was a woman with a mission — to look for a certain red dress.

About ten minutes later, Arianne found the same woman in the footage — the one who dared hurt an old man. She appeared to be a woman of the elite upper-class; a few signs in her face suggested going through some adjustments through plastic surgeries, but she was, nevertheless, quite appealing to the eyes.

If only she had a modicum of that beauty on the inside.

Arianne stepped forward, her voice hard and stoic, “Hello, Ma’am. I would like to have a word with you, so please, come with me.”

The woman glanced at the handsome young men eyeing her. Disgusted by Arianne’s casual — or more accurately, peasant-like — appearance, she was quick to put a wide berth between them both. “Who’s this, guys? Pssh, I don’t know her.”

In that instance, Arianne understood who she was dealing with: a gold-digger who cared only for materials and money, who gave verdicts on others’ character based purely on what they wore. Smirking, Arianne grabbed the woman by the wrist into a tight clutch. “That’s right. We don’t know each other yet, but that would be rectified soon enough,” she bristled. “I’ll say this only one more time: come with me, or we’ll have to solve it right here, right now.”

The woman swung her grip off as contempt poured into her eyes. “Okay, who the f**k are you? Why should I come with you just because you said so? For f**k’s sake, someone clearly doesn’t belong to this esteemed event, don’t you think? Like, the price of the rags slinging around your body combined is probably worth less than $1,000 — sorry, that’s too high a standard — I meant, less than $500. Must suck to be so cheap, huh? So get the hell out of my face and don’t dirty me with your welfare queen’s stench.”