Brandon dropped to his knees.
Right there in the coffee shop.
He spread his arms to block my path and started sobbing so hard people turned to stare.
“Emma, I was wrong. I was wrong, okay? I shouldn’t have lied to you. I shouldn’t have left. Please, just give me one more chance.” He grabbed at my coat. “My parents don’t want me. My daughter doesn’t know me. You’re all I have left.”
The way he kept calling me baby made my stomach churn.
I gagged on the spot.
The second I did, his whole expression changed.
His eyes narrowed and went vicious.
He stood up so fast his chair scraped hard against the floor.
“What does that mean?” he demanded, gripping my shoulders. “Emma… are you pregnant? You’re carrying that bastard’s child?”
Pain shot through me where his fingers dug in.
I kicked him hard in the shin.
“Let go of me.”
His face twisted into something ugly and feral. In one swift motion, he reached behind his back and pulled out a fruit knife.
“You ruined my life,” he screamed. “And now you’re pregnant with another man’s baby? A woman like you doesn’t deserve to live!”
Everything happened at once.
I grabbed the cup on the table and smashed it straight into his head.
He staggered.
Before he could recover, the coffee shop owner came from behind the counter and drove a brutal kick into his side that sent him crashing to the floor.
Within seconds, he was pinned and dragged across the street to the police station.
I had chosen that location for a reason.
By the time my in-laws arrived, Brandon and I had both finished giving statements. The security footage from the café clearly showed he had tried to attack me with a weapon and that I had hit him in self-defense.
Because his registration status was a mess and his identity situation was unresolved, he was handed fifteen days of detention.
When he came out of the interview room, my mother-in-law rushed him like a storm.
She slapped him again and again until the officers nearly had to step in.
My father-in-law used his cane like a whip, striking Brandon so fast he spun in circles trying to protect his head.
“Mom! Dad!” Brandon shouted desperately. “Look at me! I’m your son!”
My father-in-law, a man who had spent his whole life dignified and measured, spat on the ground at Brandon’s feet.
“I have no son like you.”
Then my mother-in-law pulled out the official proof of his canceled registration and shoved it in front of his face.
“Read it,” she snapped. “My son died years ago.”
Brandon sank to the floor.
He covered his face and cried like a broken man.
How did it become this?
I watched him without feeling a thing.
He had done this to himself.
No one else.
I took my in-laws home that night, but my mother-in-law was still restless. She sat beside me on the couch and said in a worried voice, “I’m thinking about buying insurance and naming you the beneficiary. If that bastard does something and sends me to an early grave, at least you and Lily would have something.”
Then she sighed and glanced toward my father-in-law.
“Your dad had surgery before, so insurance companies won’t take him. Useless old man.”
I almost laughed.
Then her expression shifted. She lowered her voice dramatically and made a slicing motion across her throat.
“Actually, your father and I have discussed something. He’s been watching too many short dramas lately. Maybe one dark night…”
I stared at her.
I made a mental note to delete a few apps off both their phones.
But I hadn’t said I could solve the problem just to comfort her.
From the day Brandon showed up at the rehearsal, I had already hired someone to investigate what his life had actually looked like overseas.
A few days later, the report came in.
And when I read it, I laughed so hard I nearly choked.
The mistress he had run away with was named Hannah. She had been a new intern at his old company. The two of them had been happy at first. Then the money started running out, and so did the romance. They fought constantly.
In the third year, Hannah emptied him out financially and left him for a local gang-connected man.
That timeline matched exactly with the last update he had posted.
Brandon had gone after her, demanding answers, and ended up beaten so badly he spent nearly a year in a hospital.
So that part, at least, wasn’t entirely a lie.
After he got out, his visa had expired. He had no money, no legal footing, and no way out. To avoid jail and survive, he attached himself to a restaurant owner’s large, rough-tempered sister and married her for residency.
A green card husband.
International edition.
The report got even better.
He later stumbled across an old article about the demolition and compensation back home. That was when he realized the family property had already been redeveloped and he hadn’t gotten a cent. Bitter and desperate, he stole money from his overseas wife and snuck back into the country on a fishing boat.
No wonder he smelled like saltwater and old fish the day he barged into my wedding rehearsal.
I looked through the photos and information the investigator had sent and smiled slowly.
If he already had a wife overseas, then maybe the kindest thing to do was reunite the family.