Chapter 397
Leonora thanked Lance profusely before taking the cash and walking away. Camilla glanced at him. “You set that up with Leonora p>
“Sarah is stubborn. I needed someone to nail down undeniable proof,” Lance explained. “I faked the international call from the start just to give Leonora a solid excuse to hit record p>
He always had to stay one step ahead of Sarah. If he had just told Leonora to record her randomly, Sarah would have found a way to spin it and play the victim. His parents had always blindly believed her. Only a piece of ‘accidental’ evidence like this would finally shatter Tessa and Oscar’s delusions.
As he spoke, Lance looked down at Camilla, his dark gaze softening with deep affection. “Camilla, from now on, stop carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. I can solve any problem that comes your way. As for my parents, if they try to bother you again, completely ignore them p>
His eyes were filled with nothing but tender devotion. Camilla was far too selfless. She truly didn’t need to put herself in the line of fire for him. He had long since grown numb to his family’s toxic dynamics anyway.
“Lance, they’re your parents. Why do they treat you like that?” Camilla finally asked on the drive home, unable to hold the question back any longer.
What kind of parents despised their own child? Even when Barnard had resented Jasper, it made sense—he always knew the boy wasn’t his flesh and blood. But Lance was different. He was Oscar and Tessa’s biological son, yet every time they looked at him, it was as if they were staring at a burden.
Lance’s footsteps faltered for a fraction of a second before he shrugged casually. “Who knows what goes through their heads? But it doesn’t matter. It didn’t stop me from finding you. As long as you treat me right, I’m good p>
He leaned into her space with a playful, teasing smirk. Camilla could tell he didn’t want to dig into the painful subject, so she let it go.
Meanwhile, Lance’s parents were currently spiraling over the exact same question.
Tessa’s eyes were swollen and red from crying. She pressed a hand to her aching chest, her voice thick with sobs. “She was always such a sweet girl. How did she turn into this monster? Was it me? Did I fail her as a mother and ignore her feelings until she completely snapped p>
“Tessa, don’t overthink it. You’ve been exhausted since Sarah went into the hospital. You need to rest,” Oscar sighed. “Maybe we just never truly knew her. You raised her like she was your own flesh and blood for years, which more than repays whatever debt we owed her parents. She’s an adult now. She has to carve her own path and own her choices p>
Thinking of Sarah made Oscar feel a profound sense of helplessness, which quickly bled into a darker, more unsettling realization. He looked at Tessa’s devastated expression and murmured, “Maybe everything we thought we saw over the years was a lie. And maybe… Lance isn’t as unreasonable as we’ve always believed p>
“Are you saying… Sarah was behind what happened back then?” Tessa hesitated, then violently shook her head. “That’s impossible. Sarah was just a little girl! How could she have engineered such a malicious plot to frame Lance? Even if she’s acting unhinged now, it doesn’t mean she had anything to do with the past. You know how difficult Lance was. He probably provoked her p>
Hearing Tessa’s stubborn denial, Oscar fell silent. But the seed of doubt had already taken root deep in his mind. If all those incidents—every single time they had punished Lance—had actually been orchestrated by Sarah, then they had completely wrongfully condemned their son. It was no wonder Lance treated them with such icy indifference now.
The mere thought made Oscar’s chest tighten with a suffocating guilt. He snatched his coat off the chair and glanced at Tessa, who was still weeping on the sofa. “Stop overthinking. Go to bed. I’m going to see my dad p>
“Are you going to beg for Sarah?” Tessa pleaded. “Honey, please talk to Dad! Sarah just had a lapse in judgment. I know she has a good heart deep down, she p>
Oscar didn’t stay to hear the rest of her delusional defense. He slammed the door behind him, his mind buzzing with absolute absurdity.
Sarah’s malicious true colors had been exposed on tape, yet Tessa’s immediate instinct was still to beg for mercy on her behalf.
But what about Lance?
For decades, they had branded their own son a monster without a single shred of proof from anyone other than Sarah. Now, over twenty years later, they still viewed Lance through a lens of deep-seated prejudice.
Oscar drove to the Charles Estate but couldn’t find Darwin. A maid informed him that the old man was at Laguna Shores, so he immediately sped over.
The moment he stepped into the courtyard, he froze. Darwin was gently pushing Jasper on a swing. The old man’s face was glowing with a warm, doting smile that Oscar hadn’t seen in years.
When Darwin noticed him, his smile vanished into a sharp scowl. “What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be comforting your precious adopted daughter p>
“Dad, I want to talk to you about Lance,” Oscar said.