The Supreme Heir

Chapter 7

The grand hall of Sky Garden went silent the moment Dante Hale stepped through the doors.

Three hundred guests stood frozen in place with champagne glasses halfway to their lips and phones hanging in mid-air as they tried to process what they were seeing. 

The officiant clutched his leather-bound book against his chest while Damien Blackwood stood at the altar with his face drained of every trace of color.

 Jasmine Hartwell stood beside him in a white gown that cost more than most people earned in a year, and her eyes were locked on the man who was supposed to be dead.

Dante stood ten feet from the altar with his hands loose at his sides and his expression calm and unreadable.

Jasmine's lips parted but no sound came out, and her bouquet of white roses trembled in her hands.

Dorothy Hartwell sat in the front row with her mouth open in a perfect circle of shock while Nadia beside her had gone pale with her smug smile wiped clean. 

The silence stretched across the hall like a held breath.

Then Dorothy Hartwell laughed.

It was a sharp and brittle sound that cut through the hall like broken glass, and she rose to her feet with one hand pressed dramatically to her chest as she turned to face the crowd.

"Why won't the dead rat just remain dead?"

Nervous laughter rippled through the guests as a few people exchanged glances, unsure whether to join in or stay silent. 

Dorothy turned back to Dante with her voice dripping with disdain as she gestured at him like he was something she had scraped off her shoe.

"Look at you, a ghost crawling out of the gutter with the audacity to walk in here dressed like a beggar and interrupt a real and proper wedding," she said, her voice rising with every word. 

"This is Sky Garden, not the roadside ditch where you belong. A place you are not even suppose to dare breathe in for a sec."

Nadia stood and moved beside her mother, emboldened by the laughter that was starting to spread through the crowd. 

"He has no entourage, no security, no nothing," she said loudly enough for everyone to hear. "Just a cheap suit and delusions."

The Hartwell relatives seated nearby began to murmur their agreement, and one uncle leaned over to his wife and said in a voice that carried, "Like a stray dog that wandered in off the street."

Another voice from the back called out, "A cockroach that survived the poison."

The crowd's laughter grew louder and phones lifted again, this time recording as social media captions were already being typed in real time

 Dorothy's voice rose above the noise as she turned to address the entire hall with her arms spread wide.

"You were supposed to be dead, Dante, dead and buried where you belong," she said with venom in every syllable. 

"But here you are, embarrassing yourself one last time. You should have stayed gone."

Dante did not move and his eyes remained fixed on Jasmine, ignoring every word that came out of Dorothy's mouth. 

The laughter spread through the hall like wildfire as guests who had been shocked moments ago now felt safe to join the mockery. One woman whispered to her friend loud enough to be overheard, "I heard he was broke and couldn't even afford a funeral."

"Probably faked his own death to escape debts," someone else added.

"Absolutely pathetic," another voice chimed in.

Damien Blackwood, who had been frozen in disbelief since Dante appeared, finally stepped forward with his initial rage cooled into something sharper and more calculated. 

He adjusted his cufflinks and let his expression shift into one of controlled superiority as he stopped a few feet from Dante and met his gaze.

"What if you're alive?" Damien said with his voice calm and cutting through the noise. "This marriage will continue anyways."

The crowd quieted slightly as everyone leaned in to hear what he would say next.

Damien continued with his tone measured and deliberate, each word chosen to wound.

 "You abandoned her, Dante, you disappeared without a trace and left her to suffer alone," he said as he gestured back toward Jasmine. "You were declared dead and Jasmine moved on because she had no choice. The contracts are signed and the Hartwell family supports this union. You have no claim here anymore."

Dorothy stepped beside Damien with her smile returning in full force. "Jasmine doesn't belong to you anymore," she said as she looked at Dante with triumph in her eyes. "She belongs to the Blackwoods now."

The crowd murmured approval and a few guests nodded while cameras flashed and someone in the back row started live-streaming the entire scene. Damien turned toward Jasmine with his voice softening just enough to sound sincere as he reached out a hand toward her.

"Tell him, Jasmine, tell him you've moved on," he said with confidence radiating from every word.

Jasmine's hands tightened around the bouquet until her knuckles turned white, and her eyes were locked on Dante with a look that was wide and glassy with unshed tears.

Dante ignored Damien completely as if the man had not spoken at all. 

He ignored Dorothy and the cameras and the crowd and the officiant still clutching his book like a life raft. 

He looked only at Jasmine with an expression that held no anger or accusation, just a quiet intensity that made the rest of the room fade into the background.

Her breath hitched and tears spilled over, streaking down her carefully made-up face as her voice came out in a broken whisper.

"I thought you died," she said as her words cracked in the middle. "The people said they couldn't find you."

Her words hung in the air, raw and broken and full of a pain that no one in the hall could ignore.

Dante's expression softened just a fraction, barely noticeable to anyone who was not looking closely. He did not speak and he did not move but the temperature in the room seemed to rise a degree.

He remembered the way that his cousin acted ealier that morning, the smirk on her face when he work up and told him not to go to the Blackwood anymore. 

Like she had done something to make sure that they had stayed at their own lane of the world.

Could she be the one that had spread the rumor? What could be her intend doing so.

Dante clenched his hands tightly until they turned bloody red.

Jasmine's breathing was shaky and her mascara had begun to smudge as the wedding dress that had seemed so perfect moments ago now felt like a costume she had been forced to wear.

 Damien shifted his weight beside her with his jaw tightening as he sensed the shift in the room, the way the crowd's attention had moved away from him and locked onto the space between Dante and Jasmine.

He stepped forward again with his voice harder now and edged with desperation. "Jasmine, this is absurd and he has no right to be here," he said as he reached for her arm. "Tell him to leave."

But Jasmine did not look at Damien because she could not tear her eyes away from Dante, and the hall held its breath.

Dante's voice, when he finally spoke, was low and steady and it carried through the hall without effort as every word landed with deliberate weight.

"There's only one person that can decide whether this wedding holds or not."

He turned fully to face Jasmine, and all eyes in the room locked on her.