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Penelope didn’t even spare Eric another glance after that. She just focused on cutting up her wedding dress with all of her might. She tore through the fabric with the scissors, cutting as hard as she could until the dress fell to the ground in chunks.
Eric’s smile froze on his face before disappearing completely.
He had personally designed this wedding dress for her. He had flown all over the world, purchased the best and most expensive material, and even hired a fashion designer from Dior to help him with the stitching. It had taken him six whole months to complete.
And yet, now, Penelope was heartlessly and mercilessly destroying everything.
“Penelope! What are you doing? Why are you cutting up the dress?” Eric tried his best to remain calm, but his voice was still shaky. He had a terrible feeling about this as Penelope
continued with her actions.
Was Penelope going to cancel the wedding? Did she not want to marry him anymore?
However, the truth was a thousandfold more cruel for him.
Just as he was about to rush up and grab the scissors from Penelope, she suddenly threw away everything in her hands–the scissors, her phone, her handheld bouquet…
Then, she kept backing away, toward the cliff. Her eyes were calm as she looked at Eric. The only emotion in them was pure despair. “Eric Fulmer, if there’s one thing I regret the most in my life, it would be getting together with you.”
As soon as she said that, she slowly turned around and jumped off the cliff that was at least ten thousand feet above sea level.
“Penelope! Penelope!”
Eric felt as though all the blood in his body had turned into ice. He flew toward the edge of the cliff like a crazed man, but the only thing he could see was a body in a wedding dress falling
down the steep cliff until it disappeared out of sight.
He kept trying to scramble down as if he had forgotten that he was on the edge of a deadly cliff. The staff and groomsmen behind him immediately grabbed onto Eric with all of their strength and might, deathly afraid that Eric would jump after her,
After dangling precariously for a few seconds, Eric was finally yanked back to the ground by the others. He sat in a huge daze. It wasn’t until a while later when he finally snapped back to his senses that he started screaming, “Go and save her! Save her! Quick, go and save her!”
The staff kept exchanging looks with each other. They knew that this cliff was ten thousand
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feet above sea level, which meant that anyone who jumped down from here would definitely be dead by now.
“Mr. Fulmer, why don’t we call the police and fire brigade instead.
However, Eric couldn’t hear a single word they said. “Why are you still waiting here? Go down there and save her! If Penelope is dead, everyone here is also dead!”
Then, with bloodshot eyes, Eric immediately sprinted down the path, going down the same way he came up.
The people behind him hesitated for a few seconds. They knew that even if they were to find Penelope’s body, it would have been battered to bits. Still, they rushed after Eric nonetheless. The cameraman also threw his equipment to the ground in his haste to descend.
That was how the global live stream of the grand wedding came to an abrupt halt. However, the comments were still coming in, even more rapidly now than before. Everyone was
extremely shocked by the scene that had just unfolded before their eyes.
“The fuck? What just happened? Weren’t they supposed to get married? Why did the bride jump?”
“Oh my god, I nearly had a heart attack! The bride was so pretty too! How could she just jump
like that?”
“No, wait, why did she do that? I thought Eric was deeply in love with Penelope. Why would she commit suicide at her own wedding? Eric is going to be traumatized for life!”
“Didn’t you guys hear what she said before she jumped? She said that she regretted being with Eric! I bet he must have betrayed her or something…”
“OMG! What’s the matter with Eric? He’s so deeply in love with Penelope, though! Was she
out of her mind?”
“Maybe she really was out of her mind. Damn. I thought I’d be witnessing the wedding of the century, not the thriller of the century…”
Even after the live stream was formally shut down, the global audiences and netizens didn’t stop talking or commenting about the incident. They blew up every social media platform and even managed to get it to trend on Twitter and Google.
Everyone was speculating why Penelope would want to kill herself at her wedding. They also wondered if Eric had ever done anything to betray her.
However, Eric no longer had the time or energy to care about the trending news or speculating
gossip.
It had been eight hours since then, and he had already combed the entire river at the bottom
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of the cliff at least seven or eight times. The soles on his shoes were already wearing out, yet. Eric still wouldn’t stop searching.
If the staff hadn’t stopped him, Eric would have even rappled off the ten–thousand–foot cliff with the fire brigaders in search of any trace of Penelope.
There were plenty of stars in the night sky–so bright they were almost blinding. The rough surface of the stones and rocks beneath Eric’s shoes were digging into his soles and hurting him.
He looked around stiffly, moving his head as he stared straight ahead, panning to the left and then to the right.
The cliff was ten thousand feet above sea level. It was impossible for anyone to survive such a fall if they fell from the top. In fact, the body would most probably not even be intact anymore. Still, Eric hoped and prayed hard for a miracle to happen.
However, the last of Eric’s hopes died out very soon.
“Mr. Fulmer, the villagers downstream have found a female body in a wedding dress. Would you like to go there and identify her?”
Eric’s knees buckled when he saw the body in the sack. He couldn’t stop himself from falling onto his knees on the ground.
It wasn’t actually a whole body in the sack. Rather, it was a collection of bloody, ripped–up body parts.
The actual body only had one leg left that was attached to it, and it was all caked with blood and dirt. The rest of the body–the head, the arms, and the other leg–had been stuffed into a
eparate sack by the same villagers.
The scene was so bloody and gory that many of the staff immediately threw up at the sight. The others immediately averted their eyes from the gruesome scene. Only Eric rushed toward the sack in a frenzy, his arms and legs completely out of coordination.
There was a tiny birthmark on the inside of the arm and some scar tissue on the knee that had been from an injury when Penelope was just a kid. Also, the toenails had been painted in Penelope’s favorite color, amethyst purple.
Even though the face was now all bloody and bruised up, Eric could still tell that it used to be very beautiful with delicate features.
Undoubtedly, this was Penelope. His Penelope…
