Chapter 396
Sarah knew the moment the recording was exposed, there was nowhere left to hide. Her bloodshot eyes locked onto Darwin. “Grandpa, I didn’t want it to come to this. If I had a choice, I would have played the perfect, obedient adopted daughter for the rest of my life. But you need to understand—I never changed. You were the ones who said I would marry Lance when we were little p>
“I took that to heart my entire life. And what did you do? Lance suddenly brings home some woman, and not a single one of you even mentions the past. Grandpa, did you forget? You were the one who pressured me to come back from abroad. I thought you were finally going to announce our engagement. Instead, you gave me absolutely nothing and forced me to watch him play house with Camilla over and over again. Why? I met Lance first! I simply refuse to accept it. If you wouldn’t give me what was rightfully mine, I had no choice but to take it myself. Is that really so wrong p>
She clutched her chest, her voice bordering on hysterical. Screaming tugged at the wound on her head, twisting her features into a grotesque, vicious sneer. The sweet, compliant girl the Charles family had known for years had finally bared her fangs.
Darwin turned his head away, utterly disgusted.
Tessa stared at Sarah, completely shell-shocked. “Sarah, how could you possibly think that? I admit, I spent years hoping you would marry Lance. I never expected him to fall for someone else. If you wanted a designer handbag or a piece of jewelry, I would have given it to you without a second thought. But Lance is a human being. Even if I forced a marriage between you two, how could I guarantee you’d be happy together? You were my favorite child. I couldn’t bear to see you trapped in a miserable marriage. I honestly never imagined you harbored such dark thoughts p>
With all pretenses dropped, Sarah’s gaze turned venomous. She didn’t offer Tessa a shred of her usual warmth. “Liar! You’re all liars! Lance values responsibility above all else. If you had just locked down our engagement when we were young, he never would have looked twice at another woman. You claimed you loved me best, that you treated me the best, but you wouldn’t even give me the one thing I truly wanted! You left me no choice, Tessa. I had to fight for it myself p>
Faced with Sarah’s vicious accusations, Tessa felt a suffocating weight crash into her chest. She clutched her shirt, unable to catch her breath for a long time. For years, she firmly believed she had given Sarah the absolute best of everything. She had even prioritized Sarah over her own son, Lance. She had no idea that beneath it all, Sarah had been nurturing pure, unfiltered resentment.
Darwin had heard enough. He shot Tessa a deeply impatient look. “Have you seen enough? This is your precious adopted daughter. You two sort this mess out yourselves. If there’s nothing else, I’m taking Camilla home p>
Tessa and Oscar were too paralyzed by Sarah’s horrifying transformation to process Darwin’s words.
Darwin scooped Jasper up into his arms, not bothering to hide his absolute doting affection. “See, Jasper? Great-grandpa didn’t lie to you, did I? I promised I’d help your mom take down the bad guys, and I did. Now, are you ready to play with your great-grandpa p>
Darwin didn’t bother lowering his voice, and every word drilled straight into Sarah’s ears, contorting her face even further. “Look at that!” Sarah shrieked. “Your love is completely conditional! I gave years of my life to the Charles family, and the second I make a mistake, Grandpa tosses me aside like garbage. But Camilla? What does she have besides Lance’s affection? Nothing! Yet Grandpa loves her so much he even dotes on the kid she brought along. You claimed I was the favorite, but the truth is, you just hated how rebellious Lance was. You used my obedience to stroke your own egos and validate yourselves as parents. None of you ever genuinely cared about me p>
Tessa clutched her chest, feeling as though Sarah’s words were grinding her heart into dust. Staring at the deranged, vicious woman before her, she couldn’t even remember what the sweet, compliant Sarah used to look like. Or maybe this was the real Sarah all along, and she had just been blindly deceived from the start.
“You’re not in your right mind right now, Sarah,” Tessa choked out. “I’m not going to argue with you. Get some rest and cool off. I’ll check on you in a few days p>
Oscar let out a heavy, exhausted sigh as he looked at Sarah, but offered no further comment.
The couple walked out of the corridor one after the other. Sarah was left lying on the hospital stretcher, her eyes burning with a deep, toxic malice.
Outside the hospital doors, Darwin had already settled Jasper into the car.
Lance didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he tracked down Leonora and pressed a thick envelope of cash into her hands. “Thank you for everything today, Leonora. Take this money and use it for Tam’s medical treatments p>