“Pretend You’re My Husband for Ten Hours!” The Terrified Woman in Seat 31A Whispered as She Slipped a Wedding Ring Onto a Stranger’s Finger—But When Her Powerful Family Revealed Why She Was Running, the Truck Driver Beside Her Said One Sentence That Changed Everything

Elena lifted her head from my shoulder, her eyes burning with a fierce, quiet anger. “There will be no engagement dinner, Julian.”

“There are eighty high-profile investors and family members arriving at the club at eight o’clock,” Julian countered smoothly.

“Then I suggest you tell them to go home,” Elena said. “Because I am not coming.”

“The formal announcements have already been delivered.”

“Then burn them.”

Julian’s pleasant, aristocratic facade completely cracked, revealing the ugly, controlling rage beneath it.

“Your father spent thirty years building Vance Logistics alongside my family!” he hissed, stepping closer to her seat. “Your brother understands what is at stake. Your mother understands the financial reality. You are the only person in the Vance family still behaving like a spoiled, rebellious child!”

“My father has been dead for eleven months, Julian!” Elena fired back, her voice ringing clearly across the quiet economy cabin. “Stop using his memory to terrify me into doing what you want!”

“I am trying to protect the empire he created!”

“No,” Elena said, her voice dropping into a cold, lethal whisper. “You are trying to marry the forty percent of the company he left behind for me.”

The silver-haired woman who had been standing near the first-class curtain had moved down the aisle during the argument.

She stopped three rows away, her hands clutching a designer handbag against her coat, her sharp blue eyes fixed on her daughter.

Elena saw her and froze. “Mom.”

Her mother’s face was a mask of cold, aristocratic disappointment as she stepped up beside Julian.

“Elena,” her mother said, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts to control it. “Tell me this isn’t another childish lie to embarrass this family.”