Chapter 438 Bride Price!
Just as they were taking in the scene, a commotion erupted nearby.
Seven or eight young men emerged from one of the mud houses, all dressed in suits and appearing to be in their early twenties. The one leading the pack wore a red flower on his chest—clearly the groom—and bore a slight resemblance to North.
"The groom's coming out!"
"Usually the groom goes to fetch the bride from her family, but look at this—the bride came directly to him!"
"Hugo Graves is already twenty-one. For this wedding, he spent all his savings from the past few years. Even sold the family's two cows for the bride price! Sixteen thousand eight hundred dollars total!"
"Sixteen thousand? That's chump change for a bride price!"
"When the Winchester girl got married next door, her price tag was over sixty grand!"
The villagers surrounded the young man, their gossip growing louder by the second.
This was Hugo, North's younger brother. Today was supposed to be the happiest day of his life. Yet despite the occasion, he looked utterly miserable, his face clouded with anxiety.
Just moments ago, he'd received a message from his girlfriend Lila Donovan that changed everything: the bride price wasn't enough. She wanted more.
Sixteen thousand eight hundred dollars? Not enough! She demanded eighty thousand!
Without it, she wouldn't step out of the car. No money, no marriage.
In this part of Dawnshire, substantial bride prices were the norm, typically starting at over a hundred thousand dollars. Hugo's sixteen thousand was already everything his family had managed to scrape together. He never expected that after they'd already agreed on the amount, she would demand more at the last minute.
"Lila!" Hugo approached the first Passat, his face twisted with desperation.
In the back seat sat a woman in a wedding dress—early twenties, slightly overweight, with unremarkable features. She stared at Hugo with ice-cold eyes.
"Hugo, do you have the eighty thousand dollars ready?" she demanded.
Beside her sat two bridesmaids, regarding Hugo with equally frosty expressions.
"Eighty thousand?" Hugo's face crumpled. "Lila, the sixteen thousand we agreed on is already my parents' entire life savings! Where am I supposed to get eighty thousand dollars?"
"No money? Then I'm staying right in this car," she sniffed. "Your family will be the laughingstock of this village. You'll never be able to show your faces again!"
"Lila, please," Hugo begged, his face draining of color. With the entire village watching, if the bride refused to exit the car, his family would be humiliated beyond recovery.
"We've been together for three years and finally made it to our wedding day. Are you really throwing away our relationship over money?"
"Relationship?" Lila scoffed. "The only reason I ever gave you the time of day was because you said your brother North struck it rich in Oceanbridge and would set you up for life."
"But I've realized you're nothing but a liar. All these years, and North hasn't even bothered to visit once! You're still the same pathetic nobody you've always been!"
"Let me be crystal clear: eighty thousand dollars, not a penny less. Otherwise, I'm not budging from this seat."
The villagers' whispers grew louder, each comment like a knife in Hugo's back.
"This kid Hugo is dreaming. Thinking he could get a wife with just sixteen thousand!"
"Now she wants eighty grand! Good luck with that!"
"The Graves family is getting humiliated today!"
"That North who went to Oceanbridge years ago probably didn't amount to much either. If he had, he'd have come back by now!"
"When my daughter got married, I demanded fifty thousand—minimum!"
Crushed by his neighbors' mockery, Hugo began sweating profusely, tears welling in his eyes.
"Lila! Please, just get out of the car! Everyone's watching!" His voice cracked. "If you have to, come inside first, and I'll... I'll owe you the money. I'll pay it back somehow!"
"Pay it back? As if." Lila rolled her eyes. "Fine, I'll get out—if you kneel down in front of everyone right now."
"Kneel?" Hugo's face went white. Then he tried to rationalize it—kneeling to his wife at their wedding to get her out of the car wasn't so terrible. She would be his wife, after all. No shame in that.
With that thought, Hugo dropped to his knees beside the car and forced a smile. "Lila, look, I'm kneeling. Please get out now."
"Lila, your husband is truly pathetic," one of the bridesmaids sneered. "You tell him to kneel, and he just does it like a trained dog!"
"Well, he's poor—no money, no status," Lila sighed theatrically. "Can't even scrape together eighty thousand for a bride price. No backbone, no prospects—how could he have any dignity?"
"Hugo, I was just messing with you about the kneeling! Bottom line: eighty thousand dollars. Once the money's there, I'll get out immediately."
"Messing with me?" Hugo was dumbfounded. He had humiliated himself in front of the entire village, only for her to say she was joking.
His face turned ashen as the surrounding villagers continued their brutal commentary.
"This Hugo is an absolute idiot!"
"A grown man begging on his knees—hilarious!"
"Something wrong with his brain! No money to marry a wife!"
These remarks made Hugo want to disappear into the ground from shame.
"Hugo, are you really telling me you can't come up with eighty thousand?" Lila pressed. "Don't think I don't know about that million dollars that magically appeared in your account a few days ago!"
"I'm only asking for eighty thousand—I'm being generous. Any other woman would demand the whole million!"
"How do you know about that money?" Hugo was stunned. That million had been transferred from North through someone else's account, meant to help him take care of their family.
"Saw the bank alert on your phone while you were sleeping," Lila smirked.
"I can't touch that money!" Hugo shook his head frantically. "That's for buying my parents a house for their retirement. With today's prices, a million barely covers it. How could I use it for anything else?"
"A house for your parents? Are they more important than me?" Lila's voice turned to ice.
"How can you be so unreasonable?" Hugo finally snapped. Even with his easygoing nature, this was too much.
"Fine! You won't give me the money? Hugo, you're garbage! I see right through you now. Let's go!" Lila shouted.
With that, the Passat turned around and drove away from Graves Village, the other cars following in a procession. The once-bustling village suddenly fell quiet.
The silence lasted only moments before the villagers erupted in fresh gossip.
"That Hugo kid actually has a million dollars?"
"That's a fortune!"
"I should drop by his house tonight and borrow some for my son's wedding!"
"The Graves have always been dirt poor. I even helped them out years ago! Now that they've got a million, it's time they repaid those debts!"
"Noah," Ethan said quietly, having witnessed the entire humiliating scene, "that's North's brother Hugo, and it looks like he's in some serious trouble."
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