Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 1832

It had been more than a decade since she was bound to him.

Whether Mark would ever begin the spiral into domestic abuse—Arianne knew from the bottom of her heart.

Comforting Smore later, she started toward the stairs to where Mark was.

The shut door had become less of an entrance to the study, and more an impenetrable stone wall forced between the two of them, separating them—plunging them into oppressive gloom.

Downtrodden, she pushed it open. Her arrival was greeted by a pungent stench of cigarettes. It choked her so hard a fit of coughs began to seize her.

Hearing her sputters, Mark furtively crushed the ember on his cigarette to snuff it out. “Why are you here?” he bristled. “Leave me alone.”

Arianne willed herself to acclimate to the mire without letting out another sputter. “I’m… sorry… I admit… I suspected you… B-But I just want to be… honest with you! I’ve hoped against hope that it isn’t you, and c-compared to my suspicion… the amount of my faith in you is more!” she proclaimed. “So please… Don’t act like this! Y-You’re scaring Smore…!”

Frustration, strewn with guilt, quickly crossed his eyes. “Damn it, you think I’ve wanted that to happen?! If those Rodriguez bastards continue to incessantly vex us, I won’t hold back anymore!” he fumed. “If Mateo Rodriguez turns out too dead to come home, then maybe I should help his idiotic parents reunite with him in the afterlife, then! They’ve clearly branded me as the culprit no matter what, anyway!”

Arianne was just about to counter him when her phone rang again.

She looked up at Mark. Then, instead of walking away, she answered the call right in front of him.

Mark suddenly snatched her phone from her hand. “Have an expert determine if that thumb was lopped off before or after he’s dead; the most important thing is to ascertain if Mateo Rodriguez is alive or gone. The Rodriguezes have powerful connections, don’t they? Mobilize those alliances and launch a full search for the kidnappers’ possible whereabouts. It’s highly likely that the abductor isn’t alone; even so, even the most manned cabal will quickly find a frequent transfer of an adult man like Mateo very inconveniencing, especially since a large part of the city has already been subjected under strict surveillance for his sake. If anything, you people should expect the abductors to have killed him already,” he told Melanie. “And if that’s the case, then maybe everyone should stop getting hung up over this for nothing!”

Just like that, he hung up.

He did not sound at all amiable; in fact, he even sounded a little too blunt and merciless. Tonal acridity aside, his observations were trenchant—at this point, the most important thing was to determine if Mateo was dead or alive.

Mateo Rodriguez’s case had become a heated topic by now. Naturally, when the gravity of an incident involving Mark reached Jackson, the man could not sit out of his best friend’s quandary. With Tiffany, he quickly visited the Tremont Estate.

Tiffany’s latest spleen was directed at keyboard warriors shamelessly fabricating conspiracies and rumors on the internet. As soon as she plopped down on her seat, her indignant outburst followed. “God, Ari! You have no idea what those douchebags say about you on the internet! They are yammering about you being all knotted up with Mateo despite being a married woman, and that your ‘slutty’ behavior caused this entire tragedy! These stupid internet judges have already made up their mind that you’re the biggest bad guy in this whole thing—they say it’s you who murdered Mateo!”