Chapter Forty One

A week later…

Eunhyuk nipped some wine while carefully scanning the room on suspicious movements. But up until that moment the only annoying thing in the room  was the classical music on which the people danced. Honestly the ballroom was entirely in the setting of a fairy-tale ballroom, the women were dressed in big gowns and the men in tight suits and the decorations were in crème colours making everything fit together.

“He’s still not here yet…” Sungmin stuffed some kind of sweet thing in his mouth. Eunhyuk just nodded. Quickly he made some eye-contact with Hangeng and Heechul, who were in the left corner of the room and after that with Yunho and Daniel who were in the right corner.

They had actually been debating very long about who could come along to the ball. Kyuhyun absolutely wanted to come to the ball because he wanted to help to save both Anne and Donghae but also because Sungmin was going and he wanted to be with him all the time. As if Kyuhyun and Sungmin hadn’t been together for a whole week already! It didn’t matter when Eunhyuk was looking for Sungmin, Kyuhyun was always on his side. They were even worse than Siwon and Kibum and that said something.

Either way, Eunhyuk had won the argument that Kyuhyun couldn’t come along because he was still injured and because he didn’t have any fighting experience. It was settled relatively quickly but then Yunho wanted to come along and he did have good arguments but his most important argument was, if they had been hurt so bad that nobody could recognise them anymore, then he could recognise his family by listening to their voice.

The orchestra stopped playing and everyone looked at the stage where a presenter appeared. Everyone moved a bit closer so they could see everything better and Eunhyuk and Sungmin pushed themselves through the crowd towards Hangeng, Heechul, Daniel and Yunho. Daniel and Eunhyuk exchanged some dark looks before focusing on stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for coming here tonight,” the presenter said in a light accent because he was talking English, they obviously had chosen that language because there were so many foreigners in the room. Eunhyuk recognised mostly branch families but they were very eminent branch families from important mafia families. Eunhyuk did not only recognise Japanese clan families but also Russian, Eastern-Europe, Australian families. There were even some African rebels and Arabian Sheiks but the thing that worried him the most was a very eminent branch family from Italy. It wasn’t that Italy never sent representatives but they were mostly from low branch families because Italy wanted to show the rest of the world that they were below their standards and that a low branch family was enough to represent them.

If Eunhyuk had been invited for real, he would’ve sent a branch family too but now they had sneaked in and kept a low profile. Luckily for them, branch families didn’t really know who the leaders were from other families so it wasn’t that hard to keep low profile.

“We’re here together today because of a joyful event,” Eunhyuk heard Daniel snort when the presenter said ‘joyful’ but he chose to ignore it and kept listening, “It makes me happy to present to you: our leader Kato Kazuma and his soon-to-be bride Anne Eriksson!”  Daniel hissed very low.

Eunhyuk watched as Kato and Anne walked on stage. Kato was dressed in a black suit but it was Anne who made the stunning entrance. Her short hair from when he last saw her was gone and replaced by long, blonde frizzes that were put up in a beautiful styled knot but some of the frizzes escaped and were put down along her face, adorning her prominent cheekbones. Her dress was long and coloured in light pink with a split that went so far that it showed off her long legs.

Eunhyuk looked at his right where he saw that Daniel had a dark look on his face. Eunhyuk knew why, Anne her face seemed blemish free but when you looked better you saw a cut on her front head that had been hidden by some bangs. And you could notice that the right side of her face was darker than the left side due a blue bruise and not only her cheekbones were bruised but also her neck and collarbones. It was obvious that she hadn’t been treated well.

Eunhyuk heard Yunho gasp too. Thinking that he had been shocked, Eunhyuk turned around but then he noticed that Yunho wasn’t staring at Anne but at the man next to her.

“Yunho, is something wrong?” He heard Sungmin say, the older one had probably noticed Yunho’s stare a few seconds before him.

“I know that man…” Yunho softly whispered back and everyone, except Daniel, lifted their eyebrows in confusion.

“From what?” Heechul whispered, he couldn’t stand the tension that was around them.

“F-From pictures… that man… is my dad!”

***

Anne leaned on Kato as she walked up the stage. Her body couldn’t really make all those movements and her belly hurt as if it stood on fire but she managed to do it without showing any weakness. It was very important that she didn’t show any weakness because if she did, Donghae would suffer for it.

She hadn’t seen Donghae anymore that past week. She didn’t know his condition at the moment. Sure, she tried to ask but no one would answer her. Still Kato threatened her, if she didn’t agree to marry him, then he would hurt Donghae more. He had shown her pictures, pictures that would stay in her mind forever, pictures that made her regret everything that she’d done.

She had cried, she had begged Kato to let her poor boy go but he wouldn’t hear of it and told her that he wouldn’t hurt her son like that anymore if she agreed to marry him. And she did, what other choice did she have? Sure, she told them that she was still married but he said that that wasn’t a real problem. The only thing she could do now was to marry him… but her heart ached so much when the presenter announced her as Anne Eriksson instead of Anne Lee.

Even if they separated long ago, even if it was her choice to break all bonds with him, she still loved Daniel with all her heart.

Kato and Anne both stood still on the stage and let the black crowd stare(the lights had been focused on them so they couldn’t really see who was looking at them). She heard whispers and hoped that nothing would seems strange to the crowd, that no one would see her bruises… because she knew that one wrong move could, it didn’t matter from whom, could sentence her youngest son to death.

Gosh, I'm so sorry for not updating or answering any comments these past few days but I was a very busy and just fell on sleep on the couch every time... sorry. Anyways who saw that coming? I did... yep there were some hints about that too, not too many but still there were but I ain't gonna tell you which ones until I've told you the entire history of Kato and Anne... which can take some updates ;)

Next up: Continuation of this chapter... (does anyone else think that they need to hurry? It feels like Hae's time is ticking away...)

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