Biting Back

“Yay! The annex is fun! I want to go there again! I want to visit again!” Valerie shrieked, shattering the tense silence of Declan's deep interrogative thoughts. She leaped off the hardwood floor, closing the distance between them in a flash.

Grabbing his hand, she shook it with terrifying, manic enthusiasm. “Come on, Hubby! Follow me back to the dusty building to play hide and seek!”

A sickening sensation of thick grime and dust transferred onto Declan’s skin. For a man crippled by severe germaphobia, it was pure torture. He yanked his hand out of her grip, losing his meticulously maintained composure. “I have had enough of your nonsense!”

Overplaying her hand to perfection, Valerie's face crumpled. Heavy tears cascaded down her dirt-streaked cheeks like a broken faucet. Pointing an accusing finger at him, she wailed at an ear-splitting decibel. “You are a mean, terrifying bully! I am scared!”

Trapped in the nightmarish crossfire between an unhinged bride and a volatile CEO, Arthur stood rigidly in the corner and massaged his throbbing temples.

Declan’s face flushed deep crimson. He hated this ridiculous spectacle but felt suffocated by the unbreakable decree of his powerful grandfather. Forcing his sharp, analytical brain to process the geometry of the situation, he observed Valerie’s petite frame. She stood well under a hundred and sixty-five centimeters. She possessed slender shoulders and small, seemingly delicate hands. The sheer physics contradicted his paranoia. Without specialized climbing tools, it was literally impossible for a woman of her diminutive stature to scale a sheer, two-meter-tall concrete wall.

This logical deduction forced an unsettling conclusion upon him. He was losing his temper at a woman who truly was out of her mind and had never left the estate. Meeting her large, watery eyes, an unwanted wave of guilt painfully washed over him for escalating his fury.

He suppressed his wrath behind an icy mask. “Drag her upstairs and sanitize her immediately,” he barked at Arthur.

“Understood. Let's go up, Mrs. Thorne.” Arthur breathed a sigh of relief.

Sobbing with practiced, forlorn devastation, Valerie slowly dragged her feet to follow the butler. However, just as the suffocating tension began to dissipate, the scene erupted into unadulterated chaos. Valerie pivoted wildly on her heel. Charging at Declan with the velocity of a feral animal, she launched herself forward.

Before he could react, she clamped her jaws directly onto his exposed forearm. She drove her teeth inward with sheer force. Declan’s stoic face twisted into a mask of pure, unexpected agony. It required the frantic strength of three full-grown servants to finally rip her locked jaw off his bleeding arm.

Backing away, Valerie bared her teeth like a rabid dog. “How dare you bully me? I will bite you to death!” she screamed her feral threat.

With Declan teetering on the edge of a lethal eruption, Arthur practically threw the screaming woman upstairs into her room and frantically dialed Dr. Simon Croft.

When Simon finally arrived at the Thorne study, he marched straight to his best friend. He bent down to examine the deep, bloody, crescent-shaped indentations covering Declan's muscular arm. His jaw dropped in disbelief. “Did you secretly purchase a wild dog?”

Declan offered no response, his expression resting in a mask of pure midnight.

Sweating profusely, Arthur hovered near the door. “It was Mrs. Thorne who bit him.”

A roaring laugh escaped Simon. He bent over, practically weeping at the absurdity of the situation. “Did you install a set of steel teeth in that woman?”

Arthur maintained his silence, tactfully stepping out of the line of fire.

Simon opened his medical kit, methodically cleaning and suturing the deep human bite. As he worked, he could not help but marvel at the extreme irony of the situation. “That ridiculous wife of yours is quite capable. A syndicate once dispatched ten top-tier assassins to kill you. None of those professionals managed to inflict a single scratch, yet a mentally deficient wife drew first blood.”

Despite his jokes, Simon felt conflicted internally. He vividly remembered her flawless, world-class piano concert during the banquet. He remained deeply suspicious that a genuine idiot could manifest such sudden genius.

Lounging back against the plush leather couch, his arm now fully bandaged, Declan adjusted his posture. His eyes were barren of warmth. Staring right into Simon's soul, he dropped a heavy question. “Don't you think there's something suspicious about her?”