Love Game With The Billionaire

2: Jilted groom

Ethan.

What on earth is taking them this long? I thought angrily as I stood before the altar with so many important men looking back at me expectantly. I can see the Sicily mafia trying their best to hide away their snicker. Of course, the great Ethan Caldwell is getting stood by a nobody billionaire's daughter.

"I don't think the bride is here." My best man, Jake whispered from beside me with his brows furrowed.

I stand straighter in front of thousands of people attending my wedding. I never wanted these many people but for the business sake, we keep them around and especially this particular marriage, it is very crucial for us. It was an abrupt wedding. Desperate time calls for desperate measures.

I tilt my head and shoot my father a questioning look. Mr. Sterling left the chapel to go bring his step daughter down the aisle but he has been away for more than twenty minutes now. Something is wrong and I don't want to think what is.

My father is also getting agitated so he stood up and followed the same way Mr. Sterling followed. What the hell is going on?

We struck the deal with the Sterling two weeks ago that we are going to merge together the two families to become invincible in the business world but that isn't really our main goal. Our main goal is to use the girl to our advantage after finding out who her father is.

The shadowman. Or the phantom as some division of the mafia like to name him. The man nobody knows but he create havoc in his wake, silently and alone. He has taken what is ours and now we are doing the same. An eye for an eye, that's my motto.

"Why would there be no bride? I'm sure she knew about this. We are helping her family stay on their f*****g feet." I say to Jake though I'm starting to believe him.

I saw him shrug. "I don't know. Ever heard of a bride running away on her wedding day? This might be it."

If Jake wasn't my younger brother, I would have punched him in the face right now. What the hell is he talking about? Why does he look nonchalant when our family are about to be humiliated? When this is our first time showing our faces in the public? Just for this?

"Shut the f**k up." I snap then turn my attention to my red faced father walking back to the altar. Alone, well with guards by both his side.

He came to stand beside me, his expression grim and anything that could make Dimitri Caldwell this mad is not small. I'm sure Jake is right now. "She ran away." Were the only three words he whispered that made me see red.

"You can't be serious." I say through gritted teeth after I calm down my boiling rage.

"Come with me." We made our way down the altar towards the aisle and take a corner to where the rooms are located in the chapel.

One of the guards pushed open the door without asking for consent from within. If my bride –I don't even know her name– really did run away, there is going to be hell. I have failed at one thing that will get me my father's approval after trying for years.

William Sterling stood in the middle of the room glaring down at his wife and another younger girl. His attention snapped to mine and I can see the fear in his eyes when he saw the murder written all over my face. I won't mind sending a bullet through his skull.

I have crafted my reputation with sweat and blood, he cannot ruin it with his step daughter's stunts. Why didn't he tell me he doesn't have a f*****g leash on the b***h? Because now they are all going to f*****g pay for what she has done. The revenge that I have been crafting for years.

No one knew anything about the shadowman but William Sterling and his wife. When I was torturing him for information few weeks before the deal, he let that slip when I offered to help his dying company. I won't put it pass him that he is betraying us again.

"Where is she?" I ask, my tone calm but the storm beneath made him shake in fear.

William's face became pale, I didn't bother checking on the two women crying hysterically on the room. But I won't mind asking the guard to put bullet into their mouths to keep them f*****g s**t.

He licked his lips, hands shaking beside him. "We left her for a few minutes and came back but she was gone. I didn't know. I swear."

I turn around and hit the wall behind me, anger simmering in my veins that popped through my forehead. This cannot be happening! Not after spending endless sleepless nights trying to locate this man and just when I have it between my grasps, she took it away. Gone.

Now my father will think I am as incapable as he thought even though I have been proving myself for years. I was raised to take over the Bratva since younger age and I was doing great until the shadowman threatened our cartel and took our ships alongside some of our men. We only got to his daughter but she f*****g escaped!

And the humiliation outside with the other mafia bosses? f**k, f**k f**k! I can't breathe, I'm seeing red. I need to kill someone. I need to f*****g torture someone.

I force myself to take a deep breath, lower my bloody hand hand away from the slightly cracked wall. I stare down at the open wound in my hand then realize the whole room is now pin drop silent. The crying women are now quiet, only sobbing behind their palms, terrified.

The youngest flinched when my eyes caught hers, she looked away in fright. I know I look like a predator right now with red rimmed eyes. Anger does that to me, makes me see everything as blood.

All those mobsters out there for nothing? For them to see me getting jilted by my wife to be? For them to think I am weak if a woman could do this to me? And my father? I didn't dare look at him right now. I don't want to see the disappointment in his eyes.

Going to the young girl, I squat down in front of her and roughly grab her jaw in a tight grip. " You are going to help me find your sister."

She stared at me with wide green eyes making me wonder if my runaway fiancée has the same eyes. She won't look like this though. The woman beside me doesn't have green eyes and I don't know what the f**k the shadowman looks like. All in good time. I will find out and both father and daughter duo won't want to live when I'm done with them.

"I d– don't know wh–where she is." She sputtered, her eyes wide open.

I squeeze her jaw tighter. "I know. I said you will help me find her. Understand?"

She nodded her head hysterically and I stood back up to face William who is trying his best to not let his apprehension show but I'm a predator, I sense the fear in my preys. He will have to answer few more questions and if I don't like them, he will be dead before the sun sets.

"I'm disappointed you couldn't handle a simple task, William but worse of all, I'm embarrassed my son couldn't go through with it too." My father's red face shook with anger and I clench my hands in fists.

I am the boss of the Russian mob but my father still pokes his nose in my business. My grandfather wouldn't let things go as they should because he also thinks I am incapable after one mistake of not killing a man when he betrayed us. I was only twelve years old. I couldn't shoot a man pleading me but that mistake keeps biting me till today.

Instead of answering my father, I turn to one of the guards. "Get William to the underground. I'll be there soon."

"Yes, boss."

"No, no, no please. I have nothing to do with her disappearance, I swear it..." I left William pleading in the room.

I immediately called Jake as I step out of the chapel through the back door to avoid the media. They are not important anymore.

But I am also glad the world won't see the face behind the Russian mafia. I would like to keep it like that. I wanted them to post on every social platform so the shadowman could see that his daughter is now in my mercy! Until she wasn't.

"Now what?" Jake stuck his hands into his pants pocket looking bored. He never cared about the family business from the beginning and he isn't poking his nose in there right now.

"You are going to find her by all means today! Get down to the dress she is currently wearing wherever the f**k she is." I order because if there is anyone that could find her in minutes, it is Jake.

"Done."