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Watching the whole family close in around Aaron, I found I didn't mind after all.
Thank God the years of my adoptive father's love had already filled the hollow places in me. Otherwise, today would have cut a little deeper.
With that thought, I lifted my eyes and looked calmly at all of them.
"Mom, I'm really not trying to force anyone. It's just that my adoptive mother truly…"
I couldn't come out and say who I really was, so I'd meant to lean on the fact that she couldn't do without me, and simply leave in the morning with my dignity intact.
I'd barely opened my mouth when Aaron cut in.
"Brother, if you really forgive me, then accept my gift."
He straightened up, eyes rimmed red, and came to stand in front of me.
"Brother, this old jade pendant was left to Mom by her grandmother, and she passed it down to me. Now I'm giving it back to you. Just stop fighting me over Sybilla, all right?"
He yanked the pendant free and, tears streaming, shoved it hard into my hands.
I moved to push it back, and then came a sharp crack. The pendant hit the floor and shattered, the pieces scattering at my feet.
"Brother, I'm handing you back the pendant that marks the legitimate Floyd heir, and you smash it?"
"Do you hate me that much? You have to fight me for Sybilla no matter what?"
Aaron roared it at me, grief and fury in his voice, then dropped to a crouch and closed his fist around the broken shards. Blood dripped onto the floor, one drop after another.
"Mom, I'm sorry. I don't deserve to be your son. I couldn't even protect the pendant Grandmother passed down to you."
Three stunned seconds, then I stepped back and looked coldly at Aaron crouched there, weeping his heart out.
This time Charlene was the first to lunge, her palm cracking across my face.
"Lance Floyd, how can you be so vicious? You won't rest until you've driven Aaron out?"
"Let me tell you something. Aaron is my real brother, and it disgusts me that someone as shallow and ugly as you shares the same blood as us."
As she spoke, she'd already grabbed Aaron's hand, pressing down hard on the wound, shouting for the butler.
Mother was crying too, holding Aaron.
"Foolish child, if it broke, it broke. Why would you pick it up? You've lost so much blood. What if it scars?"
Then she turned back to me, her voice full of sorrow and helplessness.
"Lance, what is it you want? Are you asking me to give up my life to make it right for you?"
"We only just found you, and already you're making a scene about leaving. You have to break my heart like this?"
She wept as though I were a son with no feeling at all for a mother's tender heart.
She'd already promised to make it up to me. She'd promised to find me a good wife.
They hadn't wronged me.
Compared to Dragon Cove, where I dug for herbs every day and lived in a thatched hut, this was a thousand times better, ten thousand times.
So why couldn't I be content?
Every one of them looked at me with disgust, and the last trace of warmth in my father's face was gone.
"Lance, Aaron has been raised at our side for twenty years. No blood between us, maybe, but he's long been the heir we poured our hearts into raising."
"If you keep overstepping and stirring up trouble like this, then don't ever expect to come back to high society and live in comfort again."
I looked at the grave set of his face and knew he meant it.
After all, a son who'd studied abroad for ten years and knew how to please people was worth far more than a coarse country son like me.
In the face of profit, blood didn't always count for much.
Fine. In the end, there'd be no more tangled ties to sort out.
I cleared my throat, straightened, and spoke coldly.
"Dad, I never once thought of taking anything. A life of comfort, I can provide that for myself…"
"Mom, Dad, my head's so dizzy. Am I dying? Mom, Dad, I'm sorry, I haven't repaid you for raising me yet…"
Aaron took the cue and fainted into Charlene's arms. Every face changed, and they scrambled to hold him up and rush him out of the villa.
Supporting Aaron, Charlene paused at the door, and in that instant she turned back, a flash of murder in her eyes.
"Lance Floyd, if anything happens to Aaron, I will not let you off."
