Golden Cage Mommy Mutiny (Elyse) novel Chapter 46

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A few days earlier, someone in our old classmates‘ group chat shared Ethan’s wedding photos.

The bride, unsurprisingly, was Kira Sanders—my former college roommate and once the closest

friend I had.

Kira came from a struggling mountain town, wore thick glasses, and carried herself with a quiet

but unbreakable pride.

Even when a professor mocked her for her “rural accent,” she flushed red but never lowered her

head.

I had been the one who approached her back then, inviting her to join Ethan and me in our conversational study group.

Maybe it was their similar backgrounds, or maybe they just clicked in ways I never noticed.

They liked the cheap cafeteria food I could never stomach, and while I gravitated toward bright colors, they preferred sturdy, dark shirts that hid everything.

When given two project choices, the two of them always picked the same one–instinctively, effortlessly, and never in a way that crossed a line.

Because of that invisible distance, I never suspected anything.

After graduate school, Kira struggled at work and asked me for help, and I tried to pull her up by arranging a position at Wynn Corporation and asking Ethan to look after her.

Unlike our old trio, I wasn’t standing between them this time–and that was when they grew close.

Why her?

Maybe because Ethan, who had hidden himself for so many years, could finally be his real self with

her.

I remained in the dark until my wedding day, when Kira threw herself into Ethan’s arms with tears in her eyes. “You did it,” she choked out. “Ten years of swallowing humiliation, and you finally get to live as yourself again.”

Ten years later, I was seeing the real Ethan for the first time.

He looked at me from afar–silent, steady, and clinical, like a detective assessing a suspect.

I had so many questions: What would happen to my father? When had they started? When had he begun lying to me?

But he never gave me the chance to ask.

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He walked up with Kira on his arm and said coldly, “They won’t take him in yet. Pack him a few changes of clothes and send them to the county jail.

He glanced at my ruined makeup, and something flickered across his expression before vanishing. I threw my bouquet at his face, grabbed the nearest glass of wine, and splashed it over him.

The wine stained Kira’s pale pink bridesmaid dress and she whimpered, “Ethan, don’t soften. Loving her was just part of the role–you didn’t actually fall for your own act… right?”

Her words snapped him back.

He picked up another glass and poured it over my head with a steady hand.

“Fair is fair,” he said. “This one’s Kira’s. When you’re thinking straight, then we’ll talk.”

Then he walked out with her, leaving me standing in the wreckage of my own wedding.

I barely slept for days afterward as Wynn Corporation was seized and our assets were frozen. I dodged reporters while trying to hire lawyers for my father, only to be told there was no way out.

That was when I finally learned the truth: my father was, by every legal measure, a criminal. My entire worldview cracked as I realized no one is purely evil or purely good.

He had done terrible things, but he had also loved me fiercely and donated to charity like it was oxygen. And just like no one is purely evil, no one is purely good–least of all Ethan.

The media crowned him with titles like “Shadow of Justice” and “Dawnbreaker of the Darkness,” yet in the bridal suite still covered in soft whites and scattered rose petals, I walked in on him kissing Kira. I didn’t even have the strength to yell before everything went black.

“And what happened after that?” Dylan asked, horrified.

“I don’t really remember,” I said quietly. “I almost died, I think.”