Everyone laughed when they sent an eighty-year-old man and his eighteen-year-old wife off to spend their wedding night together. “Let’s see if Grandpa can make it until morning,” one relative joked through a burst of laughter. He didn’t respond. He simply picked up his old briefcase and closed the door. When six relatives opened it the next morning, they stopped laughing when they discovered what he had been protecting all night.
Chloe was fast asleep on the large bed while still wearing her white wedding dress, fully covered up to her neck with a blanket.
Walter was sitting upright in a wooden chair placed directly across the locked entrance, holding a defensive position.
The leather briefcase sat open on the carpeted floor beside him.
Inside were crisp photographs of three unknown men, formal copies of legal complaints, forged property sale contracts, handwritten license plate numbers, and a thick folder marked clearly with a single word: “PROTECTION”.
Brandon looked at his elderly uncle in total confusion, unable to process the scene.