Framed at My Wedding, He Chose My Sister

On the night of my wedding, the big screen suddenly played a video of me wrapped around a strange man, kissing him.

There was nothing I could say to defend myself, and my mother-in-law dragged me out to demand an explanation.

By the time I'd proven the video had been fabricated with AI, my new husband had already carried out his revenge, consummating his marriage with the adopted daughter.

My father sighed, his face perfectly composed.

"What's done is done. What happened has happened. You'll just have to accept it, and I won't hear another word about this."

After that night, something in me recoiled from Bartholomew Gilbert. Every time he tried to touch me, I found a reason to push him away.

He grieved over it for a long stretch, and I couldn't stand watching him tear up, so I steeled myself and got ready to accept him again.

Then, outside the private room, through the crack in the door, I heard the conversation between him and his friends with my own ears.

"Anita Harding, you could give a relationship expert a run for his money."

"You saw Julie Finch come back home wanting to make up for the regret from all those years ago, so you had them use AI to make a video of Sonia Henson cheating and frame her, so your mother could drag her out, and the two of you would have your chance to reconnect!"

"Impressive!"

"Your whole family was in on it, including her father. Only that fool Sonia had no idea about any of it."

Bartholomew looked at the screen of his phone and sighed. "Now Julie's carrying my kid, too. I don't even know how to tell Sonia."

——

Maybe he hadn't been sleeping well. There were dark shadows under his eyes.

Julie's sudden pregnancy was something even he hadn't seen coming.

His good buddy Greg Delgado came over and threw an arm around his shoulder. "Bartholomew, you've only got two options right now."

"One, you split from Sonia. Two, you make Julie get rid of the kid and keep your distance from her for good."

Somehow those two choices stumped Bartholomew, a man who'd always been quick and clean about everything, who'd never wavered like this.

He hesitated a long while. Then his phone lit up with a coy photo Julie had sent showing off the pregnancy, and he couldn't bring himself to let her go.

"No. I don't want her to get rid of the baby."

"That baby is the last thing Julie and I have left of what we couldn't have. I can't be her husband, so I'll at least give her a child, something to hold on to."

Outside the door, every drop of blood in me seemed to freeze solid.

So the cheating video that framed me was Bartholomew's doing all along, made just to give him an excuse to get me out of the way, so he and Julie could patch over their old regret.

Was their regret about the two of them ending up together? A bleak little smile crossed my lips. What I never expected was that my in-laws, and my own father, all knew. They'd banded together to deceive me.

I thought back to when the video of me "cheating" played on the screen. My father-in-law slapped me across the face, and my mother-in-law grabbed a fistful of my hair and hauled me out.

My father apologized to everyone, choking on his shame, and called me a shameless slut.

Bartholomew cried and said I'd wronged him, said he was going to make me pay.

My nails dug into my flesh. Something clogged my chest, aching and airless.

My back slammed hard against the wall, and I slumped there sideways, hollowed out.

Bartholomew had already made his choice. "I'm not splitting from Sonia, because I know love and marriage are two separate accounts."

"She loves me, she goes along with everything I want, and she never drags things out. She's the most suitable one to be my wife."

"Tch, and Julie isn't?"

Bartholomew picked up his juice and took a sip.

"She's a little overbearing, arrogant and full of herself. She'll do as a mistress, but not as a wife."

The private room burst into laughter.

"So you're basically saying Sonia's an easy pushover!"

"Who bullies someone like that?"

"Haha! !"

Greg abruptly dropped the joking, his tone dead serious.

"Then let me ask you something I've started to wonder about."

Greg's sudden gravity caught everyone's interest.