Celine's mind was a mess, so much so she was completely absent-minded as the wedding progressed. She suddenly felt like a robot moving according to a strict programming, numb on the inside from all the emotions she'd been made to feel these past few days.
Undoubtedly, her life had been a dream to the outside world. What everyone saw when they heard the name Celine Roberts was the beautiful actress, privileged to be born in a wealthy family, she had everything. Beauty, wealth and the love of a prince charming who many woman desired.
But what everyone couldn't see was the reality she kept hidden within. Celine Roberts, someone who had worked hard her whole life to get everything she wanted. She wasn't given it all on a silver platter like everyone thought, she had been raised like a slave in her own father's home, afterward she had strived and slowly climbed up in the acting world without a single help from her so called family.
Her life seemed to have started turning up when she fell in love with Ian at a time the latter had worked on the songs in a movie she was playing the lead.
Love, it felt absolutely beautiful until...
"Celine." Ian suddenly called her breaking her out of her thoughts.
She looked up to realize the priest seemed to have said something but she had been too lost to hear.
Ian's attractive face was gazing down at her with a brow raised in warning.
"Let the bride and groom please face one another." The priest repeated his words after clearing his throat.
Celine finally understood what was going on and moved slowly to face Ian. He probably sensed the strange calmness to her actions as his forced smile began to look even more stiff.
Facing the handsome man who had held her heart until a two nights ago, Celine swallowed a bitterness down her throat with so much difficulty. The events of that particular night replaying in her head all over again.
Celine had gone to Ian's villa with a firm resolution that night to surprise him, it had been a few days to their wedding but she had been plagued with guilt for how she reacted to him the last time he tried to touch her, after thinking about it, she had finally been willing to take their relationship a step further, they were getting married anyway, it was time she stopped holding back.
She was aware her vow to remain a virgin till her wedding night wasn't something every man would accept, but Ian had and she'd believed so firmly it was because he loved her deeply.
The deepest level of intimacy they'd shared had never exceeded a light kiss. She knew without a doubt that he desired her, but she'd strictly held on to the vow of keeping her family legacy. Before Celine lost her mother, she'd come to know that every woman in their line always remained clean and chaste till marriage, if she could do something, anything that would make her mother feel closer to her it would be to uphold that legacy.
She held on even when her body desired the man she loved, but that night there was only two days before their wedding, and Ian had waited diligently, she had been willing to break that family legacy for the man she loved.
She felt guilty for making Ian wait, he was a man after all, a man who had his own needs and desires, besides, he was already her fiancee and their wedding was in two days.
The previous day he had deepened their kiss and that had alerted her as to what he planned to do next which had prompted her to push him away, the look in his eyes was the very thing that led her to decide to give herself to him on that particular night.
She was torturing a man who loved her deeply, she felt absolutely horrible about it. Hence she decided to go to his villa and whatever would happen afterwards she would let it happen.
But what she found the moment she silently walked through the doors, climbing the stairs till she reached his bedroom door made her legs stop on their own.
First she heard the sounds and slowly she'd walked forward, refusing to believe that what she heard was really happening, refusing to accept that it would be Ian in the room even if it was his, even if the voice calling the woman's name in a lewd tone was his she had still walked up the door until the scene that fell in her eyes made her whole body freeze and her heart crack open like glass slowly breaking apart.
She had expected to find him composing his new hit song soon to be released which was what he'd told her he'd be doing when she'd texted him without telling him she was coming.
Instead he was here in his bed, tangled with another woman.
The sounds that filled the room was a mixture of slapping flesh and deep feminine moans asking for more. Ian repeatedly slammed into her, chanting her name while spouting dirty words she responded to keenly by rocking her hips to his.
Shock and disgust seared through Celine's skin as this scene fell into her sight.
He was cheating on her!
Celine had staggered unable to stop her knees from shaking as she took in the painful sight.
What hurt more wasn't the fact that he'd cheated, what made this scene far more unbearable to swallow was the fact the person in bed with him was someone she cared for deeply.
Her very own sister.
Lillian, a girl she'd trust with her life!
When her stepmother insulted her, Lillian was always there to defend her. They shared a bond far deeper than what stepsisters would share. The presence of Lillian made it less hurtful that her father had remarried his mistress he'd been seeing only a week after her own mother's death.
Lydia would always claim that she loved the man first and it was Celine's mother who took him from her just to justify how she married a man whose wife just died barely a week ago.
Lydia hated Elizabeth, Celine's mother deeply even after her death, hence all the hatred Lydia felt towards Elizabeth was poured onto Celine. The presence of Lillian always motivated her, made her see light whenever her life was burning. With Lilian being her comfort, Celine would quietly accept all of her step mother's anger and abuse.
Natalia was Celine's best friend since middle school, but the truth was Lillian was much more closer to Celine than Natalia could ever be.
All the happy scenes of her life with Lillian flashed into Celine's mind in that instant.
All their laughter, moments they cried together, moments they laughed together and shared almost everything.
Yet here she was witnessing a heart shattering betrayal from the two people she cared about the most in the world.
Celine's tears didn't feel like tears in this moment, they felt like lava pouring down her face.
"Fuck! Celine, when did you get here?"
When the couple were done with the deed, only then did they notice her presence, Ian jumped off the bed pulling his pants on shocked at seeing here there.
A frightened look momentarily showed on Lillian's face but only for a moment before her expression changed to indifference.
In a single moment, the beautiful, innocent younger sister Celine has always known transformed into what looked like an evil witch.
A sense of victory was currently shining in her eyes, as if Ian had been a challenge that she won, only then did Celine realize that all along, everything she ever saw in Lillian's eyes was hypocrisy, here she was shedding her skin like a snake.
Yet, it hurt like a million boulders crushing her heart into dust.