Ava unexpectedly falls for the man her parents arranged for her to marry. But when unsettling rumors about him surface days before their wedding, she devises a test to uncover his true intentions.
Ava caught her breath as she gazed at Walter, the man her parents had arranged for her to meet. He rose from his seat, impeccably dressed in a sleek suit that showcased his athletic build, his blue eyes sparkling under the elegant lighting.
Ava’s heart fluttered as he smiled and helped her to her seat.
“Ava, meet Walter, my son,” his mother said.
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“What do you think?” whispered Ava’s mother, Hilda, noticing her daughter’s reddened cheeks.
The families sat at a grand dining table in a restaurant, the air filled with apprehension and anticipation. Ava, initially resistant to this arranged meeting, found herself unexpectedly drawn to Walter. His gentlemanly demeanor throughout the dinner and subsequent meetings only deepened her admiration for him.
So a few weeks later, when he went down on one knee and proposed, she didn’t think twice before saying yes.
“I’ll marry you!” she exclaimed as Walter slid a diamond ring onto her finger.
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The wedding was set, and with only a few weeks to go, Ava and her friend Hillary went to a boutique to pick a wedding dress for Ava’s special day.
They had just gotten there and were waiting to be attended to when they heard two women whispering in the background.
At first, Ava tried not to pay attention, but with how loud they were, it was impossible not to hear a few words, especially when she heard Walter’s name.
“You mean Walter, the blue-eyed playboy, is getting married?” one woman whispered incredulously.
“Apparently, his parents found him a millionaire’s daughter,” another woman added.
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Ava desperately wanted to continue listening but was interrupted when one of the attendants approached her since it was her turn.
“You heard those people talking in the lobby, didn’t you?” Hillary asked as they followed the attendant.
“Do you know how many Walters there are in this state?” Ava replied, dismissing the rumors. She was convinced her Walter was different.
An hour later, Ava drove to Walter’s mansion. The recent rain had left the roads wet, and as she approached his mansion, she noticed a group of homeless people huddled by the roadside, trying to keep dry.
\Ava slowed her car to avoid splashing water on them and rolled down her window to offer them some money, only to be taken aback after hearing their conversation.
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“That rich guy in the red car splashed water on us! All that money has gone to his head! And that money isn’t his, I bet! It’s his parents’!” grumbled a bearded man.
“With his handsome looks, he thinks he can do anything,” a woman added bitterly.
Shocked and confused, Ava rolled up her window and drove into Walter’s estate, wondering if they were discussing him. She had seen his compassionate side, like his charity work, but she now doubted if it was just for show.
\As she entered his house using the spare key she always had, she was stunned to hear him yelling on the phone.
“Get them out of here! I want all of them gone!” he bellowed, his face contorted with anger.
His tone suddenly softened when he turned around and spotted her.
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“I don’t want to see those beggars suffer in this rain. Find them a place, now!” he commanded, hanging up.
“Ava!” He smiled and approached her. “I saw some homeless people in the rain. It broke my heart, so I was arranging shelter for them,” he explained. Ava didn’t know what to say and nodded. Throughout the evening, she acted like everything was fine, but it wasn’t.
Their wedding was in a week, after which Walter was to be appointed as the director of one of her father’s charity organizations.
As Ava reached home, she discussed everything with Hillary and devised a plan to test Walter’s true character.
“Why not hire a private investigator?” Hillary suggested. “Isn’t that easier than hiring an actor? What if it doesn’t work?”
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“It will. People let down their guard easily around strangers, and this particular actor I hired is pretty good,” Ava explained.
The next day, they met at Walter’s favorite café, concealing their faces under big hats.
“Aren’t you worried Walter might get angry if he finds out?” Hillary asked cautiously.
“He won’t know if all goes well,” Ava reassured her, waiting for Walter’s arrival. She’d already texted him and set her plan in motion. Babe, can you get me a coffee from your favorite place? I’ll be waiting at your office, she’d written.Later, she would text him that she couldn’t make it due to some work.
As Walter entered the café, Ava watched him closely. Dressed in a white sweater and black pants, Walter attracted admiring glances as he ordered. Ava’s heart swelled with pride, but she was anxious about the actor she’d hired to test him.
“I hope everything goes well,” she murmured to Hillary.
As Walter waited, a disheveled man, the actor Ava had hired, approached the counter. Walter was disgusted and stepped aside, allowing the man to order first.
“He’s so nice,” Ava whispered, unaware of Walter’s true intentions.
“Yeah, surprising,” Hillary said despite her doubts about Walter’s character.
Walter paid for the man’s bread and coffee, masking his frustration, all because he wanted the smelly, poor man to leave as soon as possible.
The situation escalated when the man accidentally spilled coffee on Walter’s sweater. Walter’s anger flared, but he caught a glimpse of someone familiar in the space and restrained himself.
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“I’m s-sorry, sir,” the man stammered, tears streaming down his face.
Walter, boiling inside, forced a smile. “Ah, no worries! It’s just clothes, nothing more. You can get more food at the counter; I’ll pay,” he offered, leading the man to the counter while vigorously typing on his phone, trying to send a quick message to his friend.
Ava watched from a distance and was proud of Walter’s kindness. “He’s the man I thought he was,” she said to Hillary, who wasn’t entirely convinced.
Soon, Walter stepped outside, walking side by side with the beggar, who walked beside him with a smile. They had just rounded a corner when he grabbed the man’s shirt and whispered harshly in his ears. “Say a word of this to Ava, and you’ll regret it,” he warned, tossing his hot coffee at the man before walking away.
Meanwhile, Ava dropped him the text, thinking she was a fool to doubt him. “See, I told you he’s a nice guy,” she told Hillary.
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Walter scowled as he read her message and drove home. He knew Ava suspected something. In desperation, he called Brandon, his trusted friend, for advice.
Meanwhile, Joe, the actor hired by Ava to test Walter, brushed off his coffee-soaked clothes. Feeling the soreness on his neck from Walter’s grip, he skipped contacting his client and headed home.
At Walter’s house, the atmosphere was tense. “She knows!” Walter yelled.
“Calm down. What does she know exactly?” Brandon inquired, pouring wine for his friend.
Walter explained Ava’s test and his fear of her suspicions.
“Spend more money on those charity galas she likes. There’s barely a week to the wedding, and all you have to do is persevere until then,” Brandon instructed him, and Walter listened with rapt attention.
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That night, after Ava got home, she spent hours talking to Walter on the phone, convinced that he was the only person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
“I love you, too,” she whispered into the phone after saying her goodbyes before hanging up.
Two days before the wedding, Ava went alone to pick up her dress. Unexpectedly, a woman blocked her path. “You’re Ava, right? The one marrying Walter?” the woman asked bluntly.
“Yes, I am. I love him,” Ava replied, assuming the woman was one of Walter’s exes.
“Don’t marry him. He’s not who you think he is,” the woman warned gravely before leaving.
Ava went after her, but the woman got into her car and drove away.
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Puzzled and concerned, Ava could only wonder about the woman’s motives as she picked up her wedding dress. She decided to call Joe, the actor she had hired to test Walter, for any insights.
She had paid him for his work but hadn’t heard from him ever since his act at the cafe. She didn’t think much about it then because she was convinced Walter was really a kind and caring man. Joe didn’t answer her first calls, and when he finally did, he urgently warned her to stay away from Walter before abruptly hanging up.
Confused and alarmed, Ava pondered Joe’s reaction and decided to test Walter herself, this time without any intermediaries. She planned to disguise herself as a homeless person and approach Walter to see his true character.
Dressed in old, smelly clothes and a dirty scarf, Ava waited for Walter at a fancy restaurant where they were supposed to meet. She approached him in the parking lot, asking for help in her beggar disguise.
Remembering Brandon’s advice to maintain a good public image, Walter reluctantly gave her some money and walked away.
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Seeing his ‘kindness,’ Ava couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for not trusting him. Entering the restaurant, she instantly headed straight towards him, trying to grab his arm as she called his name.
“Wal—” she began, but the words had barely left her mouth when she felt a brutal, stinging force against her face.
Walter slapped her.
“I-I’m a woman,” Ava stuttered in shock, not knowing what else to say as she watched Walter glare at her with hostile and unfamiliar eyes.
“You stinking witch! The only reason I didn’t slap you before was that we were in public. How dare you follow me!” Walter yelled. “You poverty-stricken set of beggars, I hate your kind the most!”
Walter had been holding in his emotions for a while, and seeing the utterly empty restaurant felt like a grand opportunity to take out his emotions on the beggar who DARED to almost touch him.
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“I’ve been going around with a kind look just because I’m trying to get a woman to marry me, and you think you can take advantage of that? Get out, or I’ll slap you again!” Walter continued yelling, and Ava could tell that he meant every word.
Touching her face, she felt it burn as her eyes stung from both the pain and the realization that Walter was nothing like the man she fell in love with.
As he demanded security to remove her, Ava removed her disguise, revealing her true identity.
“It’s me, Ava,” she finally said, her heart breaking.
His face turned pale. “A-Ava? How could you deceive me like this? Was this all a trap, a test? I thought you loved me. I thought you trusted me,” he stammered, trying to turn things around.
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But Ava just shook her head and smirked.
“The wedding is off, loser!” she declared before leaving.
Months later, Ava’s parents arranged another match for her. She met Brandon, a seemingly calm and gentlemanly figure.
“My name is Brandon. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about me!” He greeted her with a charming smile.
I guess looks can be highly deceiving, Ava thought. Through the private investigator Ava had hired, she knew this man was more deadly than Walter. She smiled at him, deciding to teach him a lesson he’d never forget.
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Dad was left unrecognizable after losing his lips and four limbs to flesh-eating bacteria – This is what he looks like today
The life story of Alex Lewis is like no other. This man refused to give up on his life no matter what it took, and today, he’s thriving with the help of his loving wife Lucy Townsend, and their son.
Alex and Lucy always knew they were meant for each other. When they married and welcomed their son Sam into their life, they felt like the happiest couple on Earth. But then in 2013, around the time Sam turned two, this family’s life took a different turn.
Both Alex and Sam caught the flu, or at least they believed so. However, as the boy got better in a short period of time, Alex wasn’t feeling fine even days after he experienced the flu-like symptoms.
“Because we owned and lived in a pub and came into contact with lots of different people, I assumed it was a seasonal cold and thought it started off as man flu,” Alex told Metro.
Instead of improving, his condition worsened and he became feverish and noticed blood in his urine.
As he could feel something was very wrong, he went to the hospital where doctors told him he contracted a streptococcal infection (type A). Unfortunately, at that point, the infection penetrated deep into the tissue and the organs and caused sepsis. Alex had contracted shock syndrome, septicemia, and necrotizing fascitis – and his body was attacking itself from the inside out.
“I called an ambulance, and within eight minutes, they were there. At the hospital, we went straight into resuscitation, and I was told to say goodbye. His kidneys were shutting down, and they were going to put him on life support,” his wife Lucy told The Guardian.
Doctors’ prognoses were dull. They told the family there was just a three percent chance that Alex would survive as his face and body turned black.
“They were going to turn my life support off, but they wanted to give me one more night to see if I improved, and they wanted to give my family a chance to say goodbye,” Alex told Metro.
“I cannot imagine what Lucy and my mum were going through.
“Having spoken to them since it happened, I think they were more in shock as they couldn’t believe something so incredibly invasive was happening so quickly,” he added.
“I don’t remember being in excruciating pain at this point, but my family remembers seeing me in absolute agony.”
It was determined that a flesh-eating bacteria was poisoning his body so doctors had to amputate his left arm up to the elbow. Sadly, as months passed by, Alex lost all of his limbs, and doctors were also forced to cut parts of his face in order to save his life.
“I can remember seeing my legs in hospital and how they were getting blacker and blacker,” Alex told The Guardian. “The blackness was creeping up towards my waist. I don’t remember seeing my left arm in that condition, but I can remember my legs vividly.”
As Alex lost his lips, plastic surgeon Alexandra Crick took skin from his shoulder in an attempt to fix his mouth.
“It would take me about an hour to eat a sandwich at night, and that was with the help of the nurse,” he told the Daily Mail.
“The last available skin for surgery was on my shoulder,” he explained. “So they replaced the temporary flap with that. All my other skin had to be used for grafts or was scarred.”
“Having my bottom and top lip done at the same time like this was a world first. It’s one piece of skin, and it was like if you imagine placing a bag in your mouth and then sewing around the edges. After the original operation, I had to have them every three or four months.”
Looking at his father, and how different he was, Sam was afraid to approach closer to him, but Lucy found a way to explain to him why his dad looked like that, which wasn’t easy as Sam was just two years old at the time.
After spending months at the hospital Alex could finally go home. The good thing was that doctors managed to save the elbow of his right arm which allowed him to have a prosthetic and be able to use his arm. Eventually, he could speak again as his lip surgery was a huge success.
“That one elbow is his whole independence,” Lucy said.
“I had to relearn everything,” Alex added. “From learning to eat, drink, put my clothes on, to learn to use a prosthesis, and to self propel a manual wheelchair.”
Today, Alex is involved in a number of tech projects which help ease the lives of disabled people. Among the rest, he has tested solar-powered, battery-assisted four-wheeled handles which have been designed by masters students at Southampton University.
Despite his condition, he’s living a quality life and is doing a lot of things, such as kayaking and climbing. In 2019, he climbed one of Africa’s tallest mountains using a specially adapted buggy.
“Since becoming an amputee, I’ve been fortunate enough to try out a number of training methods to keep my fitness up, working with physios and visiting the Help for Heroes training facilities,” he shared with Sports Management.
“I’ve had first-rate guidance, but nothing has been as effective as EMS training, especially in such a short space of time.
“It’s amazing how the machine helps me to engage muscles I haven’t felt since I lost my arms and legs,” he added.
“I feel stronger in training, daily life tasks are easier, and I’ve gained greater confidence that I can take on these challenges.”
His Wild Wheelchairs Project, besides helping improve the lives of disabled people, raises money to finance the construction and operation of a wheelchair manufacturing facility in Ethiopia.
Alex is also a motivational speaker who is happy with his life.
“I’ve lived more of a life in the past four years than I did in the previous 33, and it’s made me realize how much I love Lucy and Sam,” he told Metro.
“There was so much I regretted not doing when I had arms and legs, but I am not letting that happen again. I would not change anything, not in a heartbeat.”
Sam also learned to love his dad for who he is and is proud of him.
We truly admire this brave man’s resilience. His story is proof that no matter the curveballs life throws at us, we should always do our best to end up winners.
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