The Atlantic Ocean breeze blows against the steep cliffs of The Cliff House in Newport, Rhode Island. This is the most lavish wedding venue on the East Coast of the United States, where Richard Sterling – the sole heir to the Sterling shipping empire – is preparing to exchange vows with Vanessa Hart, a famous model and philanthropist with a beauty like no other.

More than 300 guests, all politicians, billionaires and Hollywood stars, are seated on the green lawn. The air is filled with the smell of expensive perfume, the clink of crystal glasses and the excitement of the moment of exchanging rings.

The ring. It is no ordinary jewelry. It is the real “Heart of the Ocean” – a 15-carat blue diamond worth $8 million, a treasure that has been in the Sterling family for three generations.

Vanessa stands before the altar, resplendent in a custom-made Vera Wang wedding dress. She was beautiful, but her blue eyes darted around, scanning the crowd with the alertness of a predator rather than the shyness of a bride.

“Richard, do you have the ring?” Vanessa whispered, her voice trembling slightly.

“You gave it to the groomsman,” Richard smiled reassuringly, pointing to Tom, his best friend.

Tom stepped forward and opened the velvet box.

It was empty.

A deadly silence fell. The roar of the waves below the cliffs was deafening.

“What? Where’s the ring?” Richard asked, his smile fading.

“I… I just left it here!” Tom panicked, rummaging through his pockets.

Vanessa screamed. A scream ripped through the solemn atmosphere. She clutched her chest, her face turning from white to red with anger.

“It’s gone! Oh my God! Our treasure!” Vanessa screamed, then her eyes suddenly stopped at a hidden corner near the wedding cake table.

There stood Leo, the Mexican butler’s nine-year-old son. Leo was mildly autistic, avoided crowds, and loved to play with shiny things.

Vanessa rushed down from the altar, pointing her perfectly painted finger at Leo.

“It’s him! It’s that brat!”

All eyes turned to Leo. He was so frightened that he dropped the toy car in his hand.

“I saw him hanging around the groomsmen’s lounge! He was staring at the box!” Vanessa screamed, tears streaming down her face – a perfect performance. “Where are the security guards? Search it! It’s an $8 million ring! You thief!”

“Vanessa, calm down,” Richard ran after him. “Leo is a good boy, his mother has worked for your family for 20 years…”

“Are you defending him?” Vanessa turned around and slapped Richard so hard that the whole audience was stunned. “It’s our future! It’s my honor! Strip him! Now!”

Under the pressure of the bride and the confusion of the crowd, two large security guards stepped forward and roughly grabbed Leo. His mother, Maria, rushed in crying and begging but was pushed away. Leo screamed in panic as they searched his pockets, his shirt pockets, even forced him to take off his shoes.

Nothing. The ring was not on Leo.

“He swallowed it! Or he threw it to his friends!” Vanessa screamed, gasping for breath as if about to faint. “I can’t take it anymore! I’m having a heart attack! Call an ambulance! Get me out of this place full of thieves!”

She collapsed, clutching her left chest, her face contorted in pain. “The medicine… my heart medicine… is in my bag…”

A private ambulance, with a strange logo that no one recognized, suddenly blared its siren and rushed straight through the security gate, into the lawn. Two medical staff wearing tight masks jumped out, carrying a stretcher and ran towards Vanessa.

“Hurry! She has a history of heart disease!” A medical staff shouted, pushing Richard away. “Family members get out of the way! We need to take her away immediately!”

Everything happened too fast, too chaotic. Vanessa was placed on a stretcher, covered tightly with a blanket. The ambulance started, ready to go.

It was a perfect plan. A perfect act.

But Vanessa made a mistake. She underestimated Leo.

As soon as the stretcher was lifted, Leo – the autistic boy who was still sitting on the ground, tears in his eyes – suddenly stood up. He didn’t look at Vanessa. He looked at a tiny, black object lying in the grass where Vanessa had just fallen.

It wasn’t the ring. It was a spy in-ear monitor that had fallen out of Vanessa’s ear while she was “pretending” to faint and struggling too hard.

Leo picked it up. He had an extremely sensitive hearing to sound frequencies. He heard a buzzing sound coming from it.

He quickly walked to the front of the wedding microphone, stood on his tiptoes, and pressed the tiny earpiece to the microphone.

Squeak…. squeak….

A loud noise rang out, then a rough, masculine voice echoed through the wedding’s powerful speaker system, clear as thunder:

“The falcon is on the stretcher. The $8 million cargo is safe in the left heel. Activate the smokescreen. Prepare to shoot if the husband gets in your way. Let’s go

stop.”

Time seemed to stand still.

Richard was stunned. The guests gasped.

On the stretcher being wheeled away, Vanessa froze. She knew it was over.

“STOP!” Richard roared.

But the ambulance didn’t stop. The driver stepped on the gas. The back door swung open. The “fake” medic pulled out an MP5 submachine gun and aimed it at the crowd of high-class guests.

“Everyone down or I’ll blow your brains out!” he shouted.

“DOWN!”

The scene was unprecedented chaos. Ladies in evening gowns lay screaming on the grass. Wine glasses shattered.

Vanessa threw off the blanket. She no longer looked weak and heartbroken. She jumped up on the stretcher, ripped off the hem of her flowing wedding dress, revealing a tight black combat suit and a pair of high heels with broken heels – where the diamond ring was hidden.

“Run! You idiot!” Vanessa yelled at her companions.

The ambulance roared to life, plowing through the green lawn, rushing toward the main gate. But they couldn’t escape.

From the cliff – where there seemed to be no entrance – three jet-black FBI helicopters suddenly rose, their rotors creating a huge gust of wind that blew away the tablecloth and wedding bouquets.

“FBI! Stop the car immediately!” The helicopter’s loudspeaker blared.

At the same time, Tom, the best man, pulled out not a ring box, but a Sig Sauer pistol from his vest. He fired two accurate shots into the back tire of the ambulance.

Bang! Bang!

The car spun out of control, spun around, and crashed into the marble fountain.

Vanessa was thrown out of the car, rolling on the grass. The diamond ring from her shoe heel broke off, rolling and glittering in the sunlight.

The SWAT team rushed out from the bushes, guns drawn. They pinned Vanessa and her accomplices to the ground.

Richard stood there, looking at the woman he was going to marry, handcuffed, her face covered in mud, her eyes filled with hatred and contempt.

“Why?” Richard asked, his voice broken. “You have everything. You gave me everything.”

Tom, now wearing his federal agent badge on his chest, stepped forward and patted Richard on the shoulder.

“She’s not Vanessa Hart, Richard. She’s ‘The Octopus’, an international con artist with an Interpol red notice. She’s been married five times, and all five of her previous husbands have mysteriously died or gone bankrupt after losing their family fortune.”

Tom picked up the diamond ring, cleaned it, and handed it to Richard. “We’ve been tracking her for two years. Thank you for your cooperation, even though you didn’t know you were bait.”

Vanessa, now being dragged away by two agents, turned around and screamed, “I hate your nouveau riche family! I hate the smell of your rotten money! If it weren’t for that damned autistic brat…”

She glared at Leo.

Leo was still standing there, next to the microphone. The boy was huddled against his trembling mother, Maria. Richard stepped forward and knelt before the boy.

“Leo,” Richard said, his voice choking. “You didn’t steal anything. You just saved us all.”

He took off his Patek Philippe watch – worth hundreds of thousands of dollars – and put it on Leo’s small wrist.

“I’m sorry for making you suffer. From now on, you are the hero of the Sterling family.”

Outside the mansion gate, the FBI van slammed shut, locking the “bride” and her dream of escape into eternal darkness. The wedding of the century had turned into the crime scene of the century, but at least the ring was still there, and more importantly, the true face of the devil had been stripped right at the threshold of heaven.