The silence in the hall stretched unbearably long until that very biker took a step forward and shifted his gaze from Daniel to Emilia. In his eyes, despite the hardness, there was something painfully familiar.

Emilia froze, staring at his face, and suddenly her breath caught.

— Mark?.. — her voice trembled.

A faint shadow of a smile touched his lips.

Yes, it was Mark — her older brother, who many years ago had left home after a quarrel, disappearing from her life so suddenly that only emptiness remained. Since then, people hardly talked about him. They only said that he had joined the bikers, that he had chosen another life, far from the family.

“I agree,” — it was heard at the altar, but the groom answered not with a vow, but with a public humiliation

But now he was standing here.

— I couldn’t stay away, — Mark said calmly, without taking his eyes off her. — When I found out what was happening to you.

Emilia felt something break inside her and at the same time come together again. All those years of resentment and misunderstanding disappeared before one simple realization — he had not been indifferent all this time.

— You are not alone, — Mark added more quietly.

And at that moment everything fell into place for Emilia. Not the wedding, not the promises, not other people’s expectations mattered.

Only the choice — to stay where she was being humiliated, or to leave for the place where she would be protected.

And she already knew which one she would make.