At the Wedding, My Husband Refused to Kiss Me, but His Grandmother’s Diary Silenced His Mother in a Strange Way

At the moment when the priest asked Taras to kiss me, my new husband stepped back and, in front of nearly two hundred guests, twisted his face as if touching me were the ultimate humiliation for him.

“You may kiss the bride,” the priest repeated.

The flames of the candles swayed in the chapel. I squeezed the white gardenias in my hands so tightly that the stems scratched my fingers.

Taras clenched his jaw.

“I think that says everything,” he said.

In the front row stood his deceased grandmother’s empty wheelchair. White roses were tied to its handle. The family members sat behind it and looked at me as if I had not come beside Taras, but had slipped into their home.

Three days earlier, Elena Yavorskaya had died. Before her death, she had told everyone that she absolutely had to attend this wedding, even if only with her empty chair.

Now I could hear the guests’ whispers.

“The café girl.”

“A fortune hunter.”

“Poor Taras.”

I did not cry. Those who cried that day hid their own eyes.

In the evening, on the hotel terrace, Taras followed me with a glass of whiskey. Raindrops glittered on the stone railing, although the sky was still bright.

“Congratulations,” he told me.

“Congratulations on what?”

“On the victory.”

“Does victory look like this?”

He smiled bitterly.

“You got exactly what you came for. Money, a surname, and access to a life you did not deserve.”

Those words should have broken something inside me. But I felt only one thing: cold.

“You have no idea what I had to deserve, Taras.”

“Grandmother protected you because she was old and you deceived her easily.”

His mother, Marina, stood at the terrace door. She held a silver lighter in her hand and nervously turned it with her fingers.

I knew why Elena had chosen me.

I knew that I had refused her five times.

I knew how she cried when I told her that I would accept nothing from her family.

But I could not tell Taras. Not yet.

That night we entered the newlyweds’ room. The rose petals scattered on the bed looked like a cruel joke. On the table stood two crystal glasses, and between them was a card: “The Yavorskaya Family.”

Taras took off his tie.

“You stay in the bedroom. I will sleep in the study.”

“Excellent,” I replied. “At least this way you will no longer have to pretend to be close to me.”

He looked at me, slightly confused for the first time.

I took a worn, dark-blue leather diary from my canvas bag. A small silver boat was engraved on its corner. It was the thing Elena always kept against her chest.

Taras stopped.

“This belonged to Grandmother.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“She placed it in my hands one day before her death. She told me to give it to you only after the wedding.”

He held out his hand.

“Give it to me now.”

“First you need to know why.”

I opened the diary. Between the pages was a small paper boat on which Elena had written my name. In the very first entry, Taras recognized his grandmother’s handwriting.

“Today Kira refused me for the fifth time,” he read quietly.

His voice changed.

“She says she will leave forever before my family considers her a thief.”

I turned the next page myself.

“Read to the end.”

Taras moved his eyes over the lines. The color slowly drained from his face.

“Kira did not ask for money, a share, or my surname. She agreed to the marriage only when I canceled every benefit for her.”

He raised his head.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you would believe me only when you saw for yourself who was deceiving you.”

At that moment the door opened as if someone had broken it in from outside.

Marina stood on the threshold. Her lighter was no longer visible in her hand. She looked only at the diary.

“Taras, give it to me immediately.”

He did not move.

Marina took one step forward.

“And do not dare read page one hundred seventeen…”

Taras slowly turned toward her, and I realized that the hardest part of this night had not yet begun…

Taras placed his hand on the diary.

“How do you know what is written on page one hundred seventeen?”

Marina fell silent. The first drops of rain fell on the window glass.

“Grandmother often became confused in her final months,” she said.

Taras turned the pages. The entry had been written two weeks before her death.

“Marina prepared a sales contract for tomorrow. After the wedding, my temporary authority will end. That is why she is trying to make Taras hate Kira and annul the marriage immediately.”

Taras raised his head.

“Is this true?”

“A sick woman was imagining everything.”

“Then why were you afraid of this page?”

Marina moved toward the table, but Taras stepped in front of her.

“All my life you told me that Kira deceived Grandmother,” he said. “But in reality, you deceived me.”

“You were protecting your property!”

“No. I was protecting your plan.”

He took out his phone and canceled the morning meeting.

Then he extended the diary toward me.

“Don’t leave, Kira. I still need to find out what else she was hiding from me.”

Marina tried to call security, but Taras caught her hand.

At that moment a message arrived on my phone from an unknown number: “If you have read page one hundred seventeen, leave the hotel immediately. Marina is not acting alone…”

The message was still flashing on the screen when every sound in the room disappeared. Outside, the rain intensified, and the silver lighter lying on the windowsill jumped slightly with every thunderclap.

“Who sent it?” Taras asked me.

“I don’t know.”

Marina stood pale.

“Give me the phone.”

“No,” I said.

For the first time she looked directly at me.

“You do not understand at all what you have gotten yourself into.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Taras placed the diary on the table and opened it to page one hundred seventeen. The paper boat lay right there, as if this little object had to hold the fate of the entire family.

Elena’s entry was short, but every word was like a knife.

“Marina forged my signature. She prepared a contract for the sale of the Yavorskaya enterprise and told the buyer that Taras would be psychologically unstable after the wedding. She wants to leave her son not as a husband, but as a signatory. If you are reading this, know: I chose Kira because she is the only person who refused money and demanded answers to my questions.”

Taras read the entry aloud. At the end his voice broke.

“You forged the signature?”

Marina shook her head.

“Grandmother could not think clearly.”

“That is not an answer.”

“I was protecting the family! You were spending money that needed to be managed. And Kira was against you.”

“Kira did not know me at all then,” Taras said. “But you had known me all my life.”

I looked at the final line of the entry.

“A copy of the documents is in the underground archive at the old vineyard house. The code is not Taras’s date of birth. It is the day he first said that he should choose his own life.”

Marina grabbed the chair.

“The archive no longer exists.”

“Why do you know that?” Taras asked.

This time she did not answer.

Three knocks sounded at the door. Elena’s lawyer, Nikolai, entered in a wet coat and with a leather folder.

“Mrs. Marina, the police already know about the forgery,” he said. “But that is not all.”

Taras turned toward him.

“What else did my mother hide from me?”

Nikolai opened the folder, but first looked at me.

“Two days before her death, Elena left me a second entry. It says that the sale of the enterprise was not being planned only for money.”

Marina lowered her eyes.

“Do not open it,” she whispered.

Nikolai took out the first sheet.

“Because the buyer knew Taras’s real father…”

Taras looked at me in fear, and I realized that Grandmother’s diary had brought to the surface not only a theft, but also a much older secret buried in the family…