Chapter 363: Chapter 363
Penelope’s clapped hands had come to rest against her chest now, pressed there by the sheer thrill of the revelation, and her face was glowing with the kind of radiant excitement that only the prospect of something truly spectacular could produce in her.
"Oh my goodness," she breathed, her mind already clearly racing ahead to the possibilities. "Me too, Richard. I want to know exactly who this person is more than anything right now - the suspense alone is going to drive me absolutely mad until we find out."
But then, as quickly as the excitement had swept over her, Penelope’s expression shifted with the practiced focus of a woman who never allowed herself to get so carried away with one thing that she lost sight of another. She tilted her head again and fixed Richard with a more grounded, searching look.
"But as thrilling as all of that is," she said, her voice finding its more composed and businesslike register, "Cora is still the agenda that we need to properly deal with and sort out before we celebrate anything else." She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Because I was sitting here listening to you, and near the end of your conversation I could have sworn I heard you mention something about a picture." She looked at him directly. "Does that also have something to do with her as well?"
Immediately, Richard shook his head with quiet but firm confirmation and turned briefly to meet Penelope’s eyes before returning his gaze to the road ahead.
"Yes," he said, "it has everything to do with her. My father is absolutely furious about the whole situation - genuinely, deeply furious in a way that I could hear clearly in every word he said." Richard’s voice carried a mixture of satisfaction and solemnity as he laid it all out.
"The very idea that someone would have the audacity and the arrogance to deliberately plan to infiltrate and potentially ruin an occasion of this importance has made him incredibly angry. He takes it as a personal insult to this family, and you know how my father feels about anything that threatens to bring dishonor or embarrassment to our name."
He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel slightly as he continued.
"And because of that, he didn’t just want to hear about it and offer words of reassurance. He went straight into action mode, the way he always does. He specifically requested a picture of her - a clear photograph that he can put in the hands of his people immediately."
Richard’s expression was measured but carried an unmistakable edge of resolve. "Because his plan is not to simply wait for her to show up at the venue on the wedding day and deal with it then. His intention is to move well before that. He wants to locate her, he wants to have her picked up quietly and discreetly, and he wants her detained and completely out of circulation from before the wedding day even arrives."
He glanced at Penelope meaningfully.
"That way, she doesn’t have the energy, she doesn’t have the freedom, and she certainly doesn’t have the opportunity to come anywhere near that venue and look for trouble on the day that matters most. She will simply be unavailable to cause any chaos whatsoever."
Richard nodded slowly to himself as he said it, as though hearing his own words out loud confirmed what a cleanly effective solution it truly was.
"And that is exactly why I promised him I would send that picture the moment our call ended. I think it is genuinely the right move - you break them down, you crumble their confidence and their plans completely before they even find the energy or the footing to come back and attempt to battle us. You remove the weapon before the fight even begins."
At that moment, Penelope simply could not hold back any longer. The smile that had been threatening to take over her face for the past several seconds broke through completely, wide and deeply satisfied, like a woman who had just been handed exactly the kind of news she had been quietly hoping for.
"Now that," she said with unmistakable delight, "is a very, very good plan indeed." She laughed softly, shaking her head with the air of someone who found the whole poetic justice of the situation enormously entertaining.
"Though I have to say - a picture? Of that person?" She raised an eyebrow with theatrical amusement. "Richard, who on earth is going to have a picture of a nobody like her readily available? Who keeps pictures of irrelevant people? I certainly don’t have one just sitting in my phone, because why would I? That woman does not occupy enough space in my life for me to have been taking photographs of her."
She waved a hand dismissively but her smile didn’t fade for even a second.
"But I absolutely love the idea. I love everything about it. Arresting her, detaining her, keeping her completely locked away and out of commission while our wedding proceeds in absolute perfection without a single shadow of her presence anywhere near it?"
Penelope’s eyes sparkled with a particular kind of vindictive joy. "I would genuinely love to see how she plans to carry out all of her big, grand, dramatic plans from inside a detention cell. I would truly love to see that."
She turned to look at Richard fully, and for a moment the two of them shared the kind of look that only two people completely united in a common purpose can share - a look of absolute alignment.
"What was she even thinking?" Penelope said, her voice dropping into genuine bewilderment mixed with contempt. "Honestly, Richard, what goes through a person’s mind that makes them believe they can just walk into a situation like this and get away with it completely? That they can be this bold, this brazen, this embarrassingly transparent about their intentions and still somehow come out on top?"
She shook her head slowly. "I feel absolutely no sympathy for what is coming her way. Not even the smallest amount. Because this is entirely of her own making."
Her voice took on a sharper edge.
"And that cocky, insufferable excuse of a man standing beside her - her fiancé, her boyfriend, her husband, whatever title he’s given himself - he is just as guilty in all of this with his chest puffed out and his big mouth making promises neither of them have the ability to keep."
Penelope’s lip curled slightly. "They deserve everything that is coming to them, both of them."
