Liam’s voice grew louder as I stalked toward the crowd. Even if I couldn’t make out his words, I could already tell how upset he was by just the tone of his voice.
“How dare you hurt Ms. Jane?!”
The crowd immediately parted for me as I strode passed them with two guards trailing behind me.
My mood was already bad after dealing that unconscious idiot upstairs and only dropped several degrees lower with this new fiasco. As such, most of the guests diverted their eyes, instinctively knowing not to test my temper in my current state.
Some random woman’s voice rang out from the center of the crowd.
“Who do you think you are accusing? You’re clearly mistaken, young man. I am an elite woman who would never do such a lowly thing, so please take your tantrum elsewhere.”
“I’m not mistaken. I saw you do it!”
“Look here now, kid. There’s no need to try to blame your embarrassment on me. Your mother is just not fit for upper society and tripped over her own two feet.”
Once I broke into the circle’s center, Liam’s voice suddenly rang out, “You’re lying! I saw you stick your foot out and kick Ms. Jane!”
He stood protectively in front of his mother with his arms stretched out to either side as if his little five-year-old body could somehow hide her from the world. Jane had a soft hand on his shoulder, trying to stop him from shouting, but he had a fiery glare in his eyes as he defiantly stared up at the woman standing across from them.
The woman was dressed in a skin-tight evening gown that did little to cover up her assets. She was littered with comically large jewels, and her face was caked with makeup. There were even a couple of other similarly dressed women standing behind her.
Weren’t they the ones who I saw talking to Jane earlier? I guess the conversation wasn’t as friendly as I thought…
The moment that I stepped out, she immediately snapped her mouth shut. She plastered a smile on her face to cover up her previously disgusting snarl and greeted, “Ah, Rafael. There you are.” She hurriedly ran up to me and wrapped herself around my arms, pressing her breasts up against me as she pleadingly looked up at me. “Can you tell him that I didn’t hurt his mother? You know that I would never hurt others.”
I couldn’t quite remember who she was, but I knew that I definitely didn’t like her touching me. I had almost never allowed for physical affection by anyone before I met Jane, and this woman’s touch only reminded me of why.
It just felt too icky.
I swiftly pulled myself away from her and walked over to Liam.
Jane was hunched over as she begged Liam in a whisper to stop. She was leaning obviously to one side, so there must’ve been at least some truth to Liam’s words about her getting hurt.
She looked up at me worriedly when she noticed me coming closer and immediately pulled Liam closer to her. She pleaded shakily, “D-Achilles, I-I’m sorry about Liam, b-but it’s really nothing. S-she’s right. I j-just a-accidentally-”
I reached up to cup her cheek with my hand and leaned down to press our lips together, effectively cutting off her words. She tried to resist at first, tensing up under my touch, but she quickly melted into me and relaxed into my body.
When I pulled away, I whispered softly, “You’re a terrible liar, darling.”
She flushed under my gaze and diverted her eyes without another word.
Releasing my hold on Jane, I kneeled down to Liam’s height and called out to him, “Liam.”
His little fists were clenched at his side as he ignored my call and continued to glare ferociously at the woman from before. It was the first time I had seen him so mad before.
When Jane got hurt in the past, he had always held it together for his mother’s sake despite all the hatred and disgust trapped inside his little body, but this time, he looked as if he could burst at any moment.
I gently turned him toward me and commanded a bit more firmly than before, “Liam, look at me and tell me what happened.”
His jaw clenched as he reluctantly tore his gaze away from that woman, but he remained silent.
Lowering my voice, I softly reminded him, “I told you before that I would always stand by your side if anything happens, including right now. Just explain to me what happened.”
He mumbled, “That woman came up to Ms. Jane with the other girls saying that she wanted to say hello to her. She seemed nice at first when she complimented Ms. Jane, but then she started commenting about Ms. Jane’s height and make-up, snidely saying that she shouldn’t have expected much from her. She called Ms. Jane a common woman with no background and told her that she shouldn’t try to sleep her way into the upper class.”
The woman tried to refute his words and interrupted, “Don’t listen to that brat! He’s just-”
I waved my hand up for my guard to grab the woman and silence her. The crowd around us took another step back in apprehension when they saw my men roughly handling the said woman.
I really had no patience left for today.
I looked back to Liam, waiting for him to continue.
He pursed his lips and continued, “I really did try to hold it in, and we even tried to excuse ourselves politely, but she purposely stepped on Ms. Jane’s ankle with her heel, so… so I got mad… I’m really not lying. If you check Ms. Jane’s ankle, I’m sure you’ll find a mark.”
I ruffled his head lightly and assured him, “I believe you, Liam.”
As I stood back up, Jane pleaded, “It’s really nothing, Achilles. I barely even felt-”
“Darling, if it’s truly nothing, then you wouldn’t mind if I double-check, right?” I pulled out a chair from the table next to us. “After all, there’s nothing wrong with me being worried about my fiancee.”
“N-no…” stuttered Jane as she hesitantly glanced behind me, probably at that woman who was most likely glaring daggers at my queen right now.
When she made no moves to sit down, I sighed and unpromptedly swept her feet before carefully setting her down on the chair. Despite her pleas, I lowered myself down onto one knee in front of her and gently lifted her feet onto my thigh. I lifted the hem of her dress, and surely enough, her right ankle was already showing signs of a bruise with a distinct round indent resting right at the center.
I pursued my lips at the sight. Holding her feet in my hands, I delicately slipped her heels off one at a time, making her cheeks turn a deeper red with each brush of my fingers along her skin. Once I lowered her bare feet back down, I hooked her heels on two of my fingers and stood back up. I gracefully lifted Jane off the chair in a princess carry, eliciting a surprised gasp from my darling and several of the on-lookers.
Paying no mind to others’ reactions, I walked over to my guards, who were still holding onto the woman who dared to harm my queen. She was struggling in futility in their hands with much more vigor than I ever expected for a person of her size.
Her makeup was dripping down the sides of her face as her outfit slowly became more and more undone. To think that she even called herself an elite woman and prided herself in being in the upper society. She obviously thought highly of herself, but I didn’t have the slightest clue of who she might be.
I glanced down at Liam, who was standing next to me, and asked, “You said that she came over to greet the two of you… Do you remember her name?”
The woman almost instantly froze in shock when she realized I had no clue who she was. But before Liam could answer my question, she managed to shake off the hand covering her mouth and shouted, “How can you not remember me, Rafael? I am the oldest daughter of the Walstain family. We grew up together, and my father even sent a proposal to your father about arranging a marriage between us when we were younger!”
I glanced at her, not gaining much of any familiarity with her looks, but the Walstain family was the third strongest family in our group, right behind the family of the son that I had just pummeled a couple of minutes ago.
Noticing the jewel resting on her ring finger, I then realized why I even bothered to remember the names of the second and third families. She recently became engaged with the son of the second family, the one that was still lying in a bloody mess upstairs. When I heard the news, I thought the two families were trying to combine their powers in hopes of overthrowing us, but I didn’t give it much thought after seeing the state of their successors through Joseph’s investigations, along with a bunch of other information about them.
Before she got engaged, she had even once tried to seduce me by breaking into my office and lying across my desk naked, which was why she was now permanently banned from all my buildings. But I never thought she would still be chasing after me, even after she was already engaged to someone else.
I sighed at the bothersome thought and glanced at Jane, hoping that she wasn’t too put off by the woman’s misleading words. Luckily, she didn’t seem to take much mind since her focus was occupied by the anxiety of being stuck at the center of attention.
Wanting to finish this up quickly, I motioned for my guards to bring the woman to me. I couldn’t be too aggressive with so many onlookers, but I could at least make a show out of her.
“I do remember you. In fact, I also remember that you are engaged to the son of the Borham family. To think that the fiancee of such a prestigious household would shamelessly throw herself at an engaged man and attack his wife-to-be. The quality of families must really be going down since my ancestor’s time to produce heirs like yourself. So I hope you won’t find it too surprising when I call the heads in next weekend for some major reorganization of the allied families.”
Her face paled at my words, realizing that I planned to cut her family from the mutual-benefit agreement among our families. “W-wait, l-let’s not rush into a-anything. I w-was trying to help y-your fiancee b-become a-accustomed to upper society, R-Raf-”
“Since when did I ever allow you to call me by my first name? I may not be a stickler for these types of things, but if we are talking about etiquette, then you ought to know that you have no right to refer to me so casually as a daughter of the outer families.”
She shivered under my booming voice. Her hands clenched onto her dress as her eyes lowered to the ground, unable to withstand my piercing gaze.
I scoffed at her cowardly state, a bully of the weak yet never able to stand up to the strong. How dare she have the audacity to nominate herself to “teach” my fiancee in my stead.
But I knew that I couldn’t drag this on for too long.
Jane had a more gentle soul who didn’t like confrontation. She was already shaking in my arms, and I didn’t want to make her feel any more uncomfortable than she already was.
Lifting my gaze up from the worthless woman, I turned to face the onlookers.
Jane’s eyes widened as I hiked her up into an upright position and perched her on my arm, sitting above the eyes of the crowd for all the see. She frantically shook her head and shakily pushed against me to put her down, but I only tightened my hold.
I leaned up to press a kiss on her cheek, helping her relax into my arms ever so slightly, and whispered softly in her ear, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Jane.”
She nodded timidly as I pulled away and leaned closer to me.
Looking back at the crowd, I declared, “Ladies and gentlemen, I thought that I had been gracious enough to invite all of you here tonight and introduce you to my soon-to-be wife, but I seem to have been mistaken by how poorly you have treated my fiancee. So I plan to make this clear right here and right now, but this woman will be the next lady of the Cordova household as my wife. She is the only one who I will accept to be by my side. There are no if’s, and’s, or but’s. Anyone who opposes will be promptly cut off from any further connections with the Cordova name, whether friend or foe.”
I lowered my eyes to the group of girls who were standing behind that woman earlier and continued, “She is to be the queen of my empire, and I will not stand for anyone who dares to disrespect her. I have no care for social etiquette or the background of a person. Even if she wanted to come to a formal event without shoes, I would have no qualms about it, and the rest of you should simply see it as your queen setting a new trend for you to follow in. Even though she may not come from a prestigious family like the rest of you, she is probably smarter and stronger than half of the people standing by her today, so I expect you to give her the respect that she deserves and nothing less.”
I nodded for my guards to take the woman away and turned to take Liam in my free hand. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be taking my family home and I hope that everyone will have improved their attitudes the next time we meet again.”
Several of the onlookers diverted their eyes in shame but there would still a few defiant looks despite my cold expression.
I gently eased Liam forward as I made my way toward the exit, not wanting to stay here a moment longer. He was a bit slow in his steps with his eyes trained on his mother who was in my arms, so I promptly picked him up in my free arm, not caring for the disapproving looks from the old geezers of the upper class who looked down upon such intimate actions in public.
Not noticing their looks, Liam’s shock from being picked up soon melted away into a broad smile as he lurched forward in my arm to engulf himself in his mother’s embrace instead. I quickly readjusted my hold on Jane, making sure not to drop her.
Seeing how happily they smiled with each other despite everything they had just been put through, I knew that I would do anything to protect these two angels in my arms.
After all…
An angel is to be treasured more than anything else in the world for they only come once in a lifetime and sometimes maybe even never…
But when they do come, they become the light of your life.
One that you would trade for anything else in this world.