Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 1831

Mark yanked his tie loose as a fit of anxious frenzy seized him, and he strode to the couch for a seat.

“So? You think I’m the one behind it too, don’t you?! A stupid requital against that Mateo Rodriguez? —You really believe that I would be behind any of this?!”

Arianne said nothing. She suspected him, but she doubted that suspicion just as much as she doubted him. When pressed, she had no idea what to say.

All her deafening silence succeeded in doing was to pour fuel into Mark’s fire. In the blink of an eye, he rose to his feet and grabbed Arianne by the chin, hard. “What are you implying? Melanie suspects me, and now, in her footsteps, so do you? If this were my doing, mark my words, I would not keep my lips shut on the matter nor bend over backward trying to hide it from you; rather, I would confess—plainly—to you that I want Rodriguez dead! So why am I being accused of a crime that I have not a single connection to, let alone pulled strings behind?!”

Pain flared in response to his tightening clench, and Arianne furrowed her eyebrows. “C-Calm down…! I… admit I did suspect you, but… but—”

She had not finished her sentence before Mark released his grip just as a flitting but tangible undercurrent—acute desolation, and many other complicated emotions that Arianne could not pinpoint— swept across his eyes. He let go of her sullenly before a slight, mirthless smirk crept into his face. “So, you did. Good, good. Suspecting malevolence in me all for this… other man; how magnanimous of you. Tell me, Arianne. Who am I in your eyes?” he sneered. “Who—the—f**k am I?!”

Smore sensed the direction the conversation was going and grabbed his mother’s hand fearfully. “M-Mom, can you not fight with Dad, p-please?”

“It will be all right, sweetie,” Arianne replied in an undertone. “We’re not fighting. Not really. But you should probably go out and play, okay? Don’t be scared…”

Arianne let out a sigh of relief; her cursory search revealed no wound. “Daddy didn’t do it intentionally, okay? And he didn’t know this would happen, too, so don’t cry, sweetie. Go, play. Mommy needs to talk to Daddy for a bit. In the meantime, you stay put at home these days and don’t go to school for the time being, okay? That way, Mommy wouldn’t have to worry about you.”

Smore’s fingers closed around the corner of her shirt, showing no sign of letting go. “But what if…? What if Dad hits you? He’s so… scary when he’s angry, Mom. Can you please, please, please not talk to him?”

Arianne could not understand what it was about Mark that terrified Smore. Was it because she was so accustomed to seeing the man’s tempestuous tantrums growing up that she could even characterize her impassivity as being numbed? Did she start out similarly to the way Smore reacted right now? In the past, whenever Mark’s belligerent temper reared its head, little Arianne would start to shiver in the clutches of abject terror—

Arianne instinctively wanted to remedy Smore’s souring impression of his own father. “Hey now, you can’t just… remember your father’s angry look all the time, you know? Isn’t he a good dad to you, hmm? He almost never hit you before, hasn’t he? And he dotes on you. Why are you scared? Besides, he doesn’t even get mad that frequently, either—so you shouldn’t think of him as a monster like that, understand? He won’t hit Mommy. Relax. See, you’ve only been with him for three years; you don’t know him enough. But me? I’ve been with him… for more than a decade…”