Two Hours Before My Wedding, My Fiancé Let His Best Friend Butcher My Mother’s Waist-Length Hair—When He Told Me Not to Make a Scene, I Took Off My Ring and Walked Away… / Chapter 66 / 68

Chapter 66 - The Chamber of Arbitrators

Tuesday morning arrived with a thin, freezing drizzle that slicked the ancient flagstones of Lyon's Place de la Bourse.

The Palais du Commerce was a monument to nineteenth-century mercantile wealth—imposing marble columns, gilded ceilings depicting allegories of global trade, and vaulted chambers echoing with the hushed, polite murmur of European corporate litigation.

At 8:45 AM, our delegation entered Hearing Room 4.

Across the long mahogany conference table sat the legal representation of *Vander & Thorne Heritage Holdings*. There were six of them: immaculate men and women in tailored charcoal suits, flanked by stacks of leather-bound legal briefs and high-end tablet computers.

At the head of their table sat a man I recognized immediately from our legal dossiers: Dr. Henrik Vane, a notorious corporate patent litigator known for privatizing indigenous agricultural patents across South America and Africa.

Vane offered us a patronizing, razor-thin smile as we took our seats.

"A charming display of folk culture, Madame Sandoval," Vane remarked in fluent, accented English, his gaze sweeping over Elena's traditional rebozo and Paloma’s embroidered tunic. "However, the International Commercial Tribunal operates on scientific verifiability, not regional sentimentality."

"Then you will find yourself in exceptionally deep water, Dr. Vane," Valeria replied without looking up as she snapped open her legal folder. "Because our science has three hundred years of verifiable continuity. Yours was fabricated three months ago in an offshore shell lab."

Three independent arbitrators—a French jurist, a Swedish commercial magistrate, and a Japanese cultural property specialist—entered and took their seats on the elevated dais.

"The docket is open," the chief magistrate announced in French. "Case 412-B: Collective Cultural Patrimony versus *Vander & Thorne Heritage Holdings*. Claimants allege prior art and fraudulent patent registration regarding highland carminic mordant formulas. Proceed."

Vane stood first, delivering a polished, twenty-minute monologue filled with chemical jargon, mass-spectrometry graphs, and corporate filings asserting that his client had "isolated, stabilized, and standardized" a previously unstable natural pigment for commercial luxury applications.

When he finished, he sat back, folding his hands with the serene confidence of a man who believed the world could be bought with enough paperwork.

The chief magistrate turned toward our side of the table. "Madame Sandoval, the floor belongs to the lineage representatives."

I stood up, holding Elena's hand for a brief second before stepping toward the central presentation podium. Mateo stepped forward with the titanium case, setting it down and clicking the locks open.