She believed that even her brother knew about her intentions and was supporting her from the shadows as he created more opportunities for the two of them to be together at countless occasions.
But it turned out that even her big brother had betrayed her and had set the wedding dates for Zach and Clara despite knowing how she felt about him.
She had been foolishly thinking that Zach and Clara's impending news had only been a ruse and the public was giving air to the rumor. She thought that it was the strategy of the Windsor family to protect Zach, therefore she had not paid much attention to the public musings about the relationship between the young lady of the Windsor family and Zach Smith; the supposed son of the dark mage Wood Smith.
Only now did she come to understand that she had been played. The inside story had only been revealed after the arrival of Christina.
"Stop with your delusions Clara; I was nice to you because you seemed like a good girl but you even wanted to take Zach for yourself despite knowing that he is my husband. I should have fed my goodwill to the dogs instead of you."
Diana spat venom the moment she spoke and even Clara didn't have words to retort this time. She truly was the late comer this time. Even the unknown woman named Christina seemed to have known Zach before her. She lost her earlier confidence and lowered her eyes to think of some kind of response to earn back her position as the rightful fiancée of Zach.
"Ohhh~ since when was my husband your husband? Am I mistaken or your relationship with Zach was also a ruse to throw the royal hounds off?" Christina seemed to have put two and two together as she looked at Zach for confirmation.
Zach nodded to indicate that it was the case but the indignation in Christina's eyes didn't vanish. Instead she began to fight the two women even more fiercely. The two of them wanted to snatch her husband from her. They would need to ask her permission.
"Since I don't have the right to call him 'husband' then you can't do it either. Your marriage ceremony didn't reach culmination as far as I remember. I recall rescuing him before he could go ahead with it." Diana retorted before Christina could feel smug about her earlier remarks.
Christina had almost succeeded in establishing her authority when her sand castle was kicked to ruin ruthlessly by Diana who obviously knew the truth of her relationship with Zach.
Clara who didn't know the context of the conversation between the two women was flabbergasted but she didn't take a step back either and hurled all kinds of insults at the two whether they made any sense or not.
Now it was Diana's and Christina's turn to be dumbfounded. Clara's petite figure and the venomous words coming out of her mouth were too different in comparison.
Even Zach's face twitched when he heard her swearing her heart out. He knew that Clara had a boyish streak to her but this was the first time he was seeing her dark side in its ultimate glory.
Now that the actual relationship of the three women with Zach had been laid out in the open for all to see, the women grew even bolder. They now knew that none of them had managed to establish an actual relationship with Zach yet and were almost on equal footing with each other.
So, they could barely stop themselves from entering into a swearing competition, in between question answer sessions, where curses like slut and whore were too inferior and low class to be counted as curses. It seemed as if they were under the wrong impression that Zach would choose the one woman out of them who excelled in cursing amongst the three.
While Zach tried to find words to interrupt the conversation in order to take control of his potential brides, Bruce marveled at the scene with his eyes wide open. He couldn't have imagined that his sister would act in such a manner right in front of him.
While Bruce could have taken his sister away by force, he didn't do so. He felt too ashamed for causing Zach such a huge trouble after all he was the cause behind these misunderstandings.
Only Christina had been chosen by Zach while he didn't even know about his wedding deal with Clara. As for his sister, he had failed to quell the fire of affection in her heart despite having tried. As such the situation was the result of his inadequacy and faulty judgment.
Therefore, in order to not aggravate the situation any further, he decided to leave it all up to Zach to resolve the conflict between the three terrible women. He believed that Zach had the ability and the wit to do it.
The three top families of Byzantium city couldn't have imagined it even in their wildest of fantasies that the Windsor family could have connections with a family like Elizabeth family that was stationed at the other edge of the empire. The distance between the two cities was so great that they didn't even consider such an outcome.
Alas, the alliance was in distress. Their efforts so far had resulted in absolute failure. The transportation blockade that they had created in order to keep the sugar from being supplied to other cities was rendered useless by the huge convoy that had just arrived at the outskirts of the city. The intelligence gathering abilities of the three families were definitely up to the mark as the news reached the leaders within an hour of Christina's arrival.
They couldn't help but grieve over the amount of funds they had invested in this venture which were more than enough to support any small family to transition into a mid grade family. Bribing so many business owners and transport companies needed money after all. They couldn't have just forced those companies to do their bidding without offering them any benefits in return.