Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 1858

Silence befell Geralt. Was this how it needed to be? Had all that had happened to Arianne not been sadistic enough already?

His lack of words, to Mateo, spoke volumes about his conviction—or rather, its faltering.

“Ralt, there is no turning back for me,” Mateo said. “This is the only time I stopped being a nice guy; you understand why, don’t you? I just want it to be her and me. Us, together. But I can’t make that happen any other way. It’s she who didn’t want to leave Mark! After all that I’ve done for her, she just keeps clinging to this… faith in him! I have no other way! There’s only one way to resolve this, Ralt, and it’s to rescue her from here!”

Geralt drew a sharp inhale of breath. “The fact that she never thought of leaving Mark Tremont despite everything is a solid, irrevocable testimonial of her love for him, don’t you see? What good do you think dragging her away from him is going to do? You will never possess her heart, Teo. The two of you will be doomed to grind out the rest of your days in a hell of your own making, and where’s the sense in that? Honestly, I’ve been meaning to tell you to lay this obsession to rest for a long time now—”

“No! Never! I will make sure she finds love in me! I will!” he shouted, already near madness.

By the end of the call, Geralt found himself once again agreeing to his best friend’s unhinged proposal. This was where he was now—not even at the fork of a road to choose his action. Arianne was pitiful... But so was Mateo.

The next day, Mark received an anonymous package while he was in his office.

The memory of Mateo’s severed thumb being received in a parcel was still so fresh in his mind that it stifled Mark from opening it. He was petrified at the thought that it could contain Arianne’s finger… or even other parts of her body.

It was such a small, uimposing parcel. It hardly covered the full width of his trembling palm. It was also near weightless, yet when Mark held it, he felt like only sinking gravity was pulling him down.

He trained his eyes on the parcel for minutes until, finally, he decided to have Davy open it.

The problem was that Davy himself knew of the infamous severed-thumb-in-a-box delivery that had plunged the Rodriguez family into horror. Now that Arianne was also missing, his fear became debilitating. “M-M-Mr. Tremont? I… I… I d-don’t want to open it! —I mean, s-s-sir?”

His cowardice irked his boss, who responded by snippily jabbing his foot flat on the poor man’s butt. “When I say you open it, I goddamned mean you open it without question or useless trifles! What use are you if you can’t even open up a parcel, huh? Get to it already, you bozo!”

It was worse. He recognized her in the handwriting. ‘By the time you receive this, I’ll already be gone. There’s no need to look for me; you’ll do better pretending that I never existed. From now on, focus on raising Smore into a fine, young man.’

His eyes could not be torn from the paper even as his vision began to blur. What the hell was going on?! Who was taking her away? How could there be zero clue to her whereabouts after days of search?

Why was it that when he finally received any lead after days of drawing a blank, all it pointed to was death?!

He rejected the notion of her being dead. It could not be! He would double down on looking for her—be it a warm body, or a cold, lifeless corpse!

Mark tried to calm himself down but his body betrayed his deepest sentiment—he was shaking like a leaf.