Ruin The Wedding (The Murphy Brothers #1)

𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲

When Nora had told him to make sure to get home by 5pm, Fabian had almost said no. It wasn't only because he had re-scheduled some of his meetings already too many times to spend time with Charlie but also because Fabian most certainly wouldn't like whatever his fiancé had planned.

But before he could tell her that he couldn't, the guilt of spending so much time with Charlie and thinking about her the way he had done hit him and he deleted the message. Instead, he had written a simple Okay, see you then.

So Fabian told his assistant to re-schedule the rest of the meetings and worked hard until 4.30pm while almost panicking about what was waiting for him at home. He was almost scared to go there because most of Nora's ideas involved fancy dates or photoshoots with magazines or interviews or worst of all, wedding plans.

But as a busy, self-taught businesswoman, Nora also worked hard and expected nothing else from him despite her complaining about his busy hours once in a while. That meant that she must know how he couldn't just abandon work for nothing so this better be important.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the two of them had different opinions of what was important because as soon as he opened the door, a bunch of people screamed happy birthday!

Panicking, he looked around and saw his and Nora's parents with some people he had maybe met once in his life, all in fancy suits and dresses, holding a glass of champagne with a big cake waiting on the table. There were decorations on the wall with big 30 number balloons.

Before he could say something he would regret later, Nora ran to him, and kissed him on the mouth before giving him a wide, proud smile. She was wearing a long, sleeveless golden dress with high heels and her hair was in big curls.

"You look surprised! You sure didn't suspect anything?" Instead of answering, Fabian looked at around twenty people in the room he barely knew, and realized that none of his friends or brothers were there.

What he would give to have Noelle or Diego here to save him. Or Asher and Seth. Charlie sure would make this birthday party a hundred times better with only her presence. Hell, he wouldn't even mind having a screaming Aurora here with him. At least it wouldn't be boring anymore.

"No, I had no idea." He frowned before faking a smile, not wanting to hurt her feelings because she had clearly put a lot of thought and time into this. He didn't know what hurt more, the fact that she still didn't know him at all because this was exactly what he hated the most, or the fact that she hadn't bothered to invite the very few people he cared about.

"Tonight isn't even my birthday." Fabian knew that she would plan something for his birthday which was why he had made sure to book that day full of important meetings that simply couldn't be re-scheduled.

"I know, that's the surprise! I knew that you would suspect something on your birthday and that's why we're doing this tonight. Now I surprised you!" Well shit, she really played him huh? And he had planned everything so well.

"Yeah, I'm... surprised. Who are these people?" Fabian hugged her so he could whisper the last part in her ear.

"What do you mean? They're your friends. They're also very successful businessmen. You've met many times." She looked behind as if to make sure that they were talking about the same people.

For a few seconds, he just stared at her with a numb expression on his face before nodding. "You're right. I'm just tired." He had never seen some of these people.

"I know. You work too much, we should do something about that," Nora said, talking as if he was a ten years old boy and she was his mother. Well, not exactly. His mother hadn't really cared about him working too hard or too much because she had goals for him and goals required a certain amount of work from a young age.