The Cursed Bride: Secrets of My Sister's Widower

Veronica's POV

I've been to four weddings. I never made it through a single one.

Not because I didn't love enough. Not because they weren't good enough. It was because every time — right at the moment I was supposed to say I do — my parents would appear on cue, fall apart on cue, and burn everything to the ground on cue.

For years I thought they hated me. Thought they'd given all their love to my dead sister, Claudia, and had nothing left. Then my brother-in-law said something that cracked me open: Any one of those three men — if you'd married him, you wouldn't be alive today.

So which is it? Were they protecting me, or destroying me?

This was my fourth wedding.

And the people I least wanted to see today were my parents, Graham and Rosalie Hayes.

The dressing room door was kicked open violently. The loud crash rattled the half-pinned earring in my hand and drained the color from my face in the mirror.

I turned around. My father and mother stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway. My mother’s eyes were entirely red. My father’s face was made of stone. Combined, it was a look I knew too well—the exact look designed to ruin a wedding.

"If the house staff hadn't tipped us off this morning," my mother stepped forward, her voice trembling with restrained fury, "your father and I would still be in the dark. Why didn't you tell us you were getting married?"

I didn't answer. Because to explain, I'd have to bring up the first three times. The three nightmares where I thought I could start a new life, only to watch it be burned to the ground at the altar.

The first time, I was twenty-six. His name was Julian — a college sweetheart, decent and handsome. My mother had approved of him. Then on the wedding day she took one look at my dress and her smile froze. She said the cut was cursed, that any woman who wore it to the altar would come to a tragic end. My father called the officiant and cancelled the ceremony on the spot. Julian never reached out again.

I assumed they thought Julian wasn't serious enough. So the second time I chose Nathaniel — a lawyer, steady and respectable, a man my parents couldn't fault.

My mother even picked the dress herself, running her hand over the fabric and calling it elegant. But on the wedding day, she watched me walk out in that very dress and her face changed in three seconds. Different excuse, same verdict: The dress is wrong. The marriage is doomed. My father had me dragged out and put in a car. The last thing I saw was Nathaniel standing on the church steps.

After that, I nearly gave up. Then my parents came to me in tears, saying all they wanted was to see me happy. My father brought up Claudia — my sister, who died suddenly on her own wedding night at twenty-six. "That dress killed her," my mother sobbed. "I can't lose you too." I cried. I thought I finally understood.

So the third time, I handed her everything — the man, the dress, the guest list, every detail. On the wedding day she walked in, stared at me for five full seconds, and said the dress was wrong. I screamed at her: You picked it. You ordered it. What is wrong with it? She just frowned and said she couldn't explain, but the wedding couldn't happen. My father barged in and had the dress stripped off me. Declan slipped away in the chaos without a word.

Then I met Rhys. He spent two years pursuing me — rejected again and again, but always there. The day we signed the marriage license, I told him I didn't want a ceremony. He was quiet for a moment, then said he wanted to give me a real wedding.

I put on this dress, thinking that as long as my parents didn't know, I would be safe.

"Veronica, look at me." My mother stepped closer, reaching for my arm.

I flinched back so fast I surprised myself. "I don't know you," I heard my own voice say. It sounded eerily calm, like it was coming from a mile away. "Please leave."

My father's face darkened as security approached. My mother stared at me in disbelief, her lips parting soundlessly.

Just then, a voice cut through the crowd.

"Don't be rash, Veronica."

The crowd parted. It was my brother-in-law—Claudia's widower, Silas Winters. His face was entirely composed, like he was playing peacekeeper in a trivial family squabble. He walked slowly to my parents' side, looking at me with a perfectly measured smile.

"They really are doing this for your own good."

He paused. His voice was soft, but it hit my eardrums like a bomb.

"You couldn't have married those first three men."

He stared dead into my eyes, enunciating every syllable.

"Veronica, if you had married any of those three men... you'd be dead by now."