The moment the words left her mouth, everyone who'd been seated shot to their feet.
Every eye on me held nothing but contempt and righteous fury.
My mother came off the couch and rushed at me.
"Did you really pay someone to kill Neal?"
The stepfather charged over too, jabbing a finger at me. "Fine, forget how you treated me and my son all these years, but now you go and try to kill him this way? Thank God he's all right."
I hadn't even opened my mouth to answer when a slap landed across my face.
It was hard enough that I lost my footing.
My face throbbed, and blood ran from the corner of my mouth.
"You animal, say something!"
"Exactly like your father. Back then he sent people to break my legs, and now it's your turn to want his child dead. Every bit as vicious as your father."
The Harding family stayed silent, but they'd loathed me long before this.
"Didn't I tell you not to speak? Why wouldn't you listen?"
"My brother already lost his mother, isn't that pitiful enough? Even if he did something worse to me, I still wouldn't be angry."
"People always say stepfathers and stepsons are cruel, but not every stepfather and stepson is cruel!"
I got to my feet and wiped the blood from my lip. Bit by bit, my heart went cold.
"You only listened to what you wanted to hear. Not one of you asked whether I actually did it."
"My answer is one word. No."
"Your father hired people to break his own legs back then and pinned it on my father. Now you've learned his trick and you're pinning this on me."
"We did no such thing. If you insist on saying so, then I'll prove myself with my own death."
With that, Neal picked up a fruit knife, ready to end it.
Phyllis rushed after him and grabbed hold of him.
With Phyllis there, how could he possibly succeed in dying?
But not a single person in that room could see through it.
"Let me die, let go of me!"
"No, you're not the one who deserves to die. He is!"
Phyllis had someone keep watch on Neal, then stormed over to stand in front of me.
"There's nothing left to say between us."
"Hand over the jade ring."
I smiled, and it was a bleak thing.
I held out my hand and tried to work the ring off.
But the band was small. Easy to slide on, hard to pull off.
Phyllis lost her patience, thinking I was stalling on purpose.
She grabbed my arm outright and, with no care for whether it hurt, forced the ring off.
The pain scraped down to the bone and cut through my nerves, and I couldn't hold back a cry.
She didn't soften. It was as if she wouldn't stop until the ring was off.
Only when I heard the jade grind through the bone of my finger, my tears dropping onto her wrist, did the ring finally come free.
Everyone around me watched with disdain, and my mother, to protect Neal, ordered me thrown out.
"Don't think being my son gives you license to do whatever you please to Neal and his father."
"Someone, throw him out of the Delgado house so he can work that rotten nature out of him."
"Once you've suffered enough and let go of your malice, I'll bring you back."
But the stepfather stepped out and stopped my mother.
"My love, if you throw him out like this, how will it look to outsiders, for me and Neal? They'll assume the two of us bullied her."
"For your sake, I won't hold against him everything he's done to us."
"He only has to kneel right now and apologize to us in his own words, and we'll treat it as though nothing happened."
My mother nodded, visibly moved, then coldly gave me her order.
"You animal, did you hear that!"
"Get over here and kneel and apologize to your father and your brother, now!"
I stood facing them, one man against the whole room.
"I never did those things, and I will never apologize!"
"And here's a reminder for you. My father is already dead, so where did this bargain-bin father come from?"
Seeing that I not only refused to apologize but had defied those two,
my mother was so furious she gave the order on the spot. "You've turned on me, daring to cross me."
"Someone break his legs. Let's see if he's still got the nerve to talk back!"
Several bodyguards rushed over and pinned me down, and just as everyone was fixed on the show, the front doors were kicked open from outside.
A crew of well-trained, stone-faced bodyguards poured in.
"You think the Delgado family has no one left?"
"A tea girl who pours drinks and a spineless nobody, and you dare bully my nephew..."
