Chapter 480
But eventually, that wasn’t enough. She set her sights on destroying Lance.
What if Tessa only had one daughter?
What if Tessa hated him, exactly like Sarah’s parents had hated her?
She was an expert at playing pitiful.
She had mastered it since birth.
She knew her mother only paid attention to her when she was sick, so she learned how to fake illnesses perfectly.
She weaponized all those tactics against Tessa.
And it worked far better than she could have ever dreamed.
Recalling her ultimate triumph, her sneer widened into a deranged grin. “Tessa, I played you for so long, and you loved me so much. Why couldn’t you just give him to me? You knew I was in love with him. If you had just engaged us back then, none of this would have ever happened. He’s still in the hospital, right? You heard what I told Camilla. He literally cannot live without me. Even if you despise me, you have no choice but to let us be together p>
Her absolute, unapologetic arrogance finally snapped the last thread of Tessa’s sanity.
Staring at the face in front of her, she couldn’t find a single trace of the sweet, innocent girl she had raised.
Unable to hold back another second, she raised her hand and delivered a vicious slap across Sarah’s face. “I was completely blind! I never should have brought you into this house p>
Sarah’s head snapped to the side, but the crazed smile never left her lips. “It’s too late for that. You have to take me to him p>
“In your dreams! I will never let you near him again. He is perfectly fine. Your pathetic drugs didn’t do a damn thing to him!” Tessa screamed.
This woman was a venomous snake baring its fangs. Just making eye contact with her made Tessa’s blood run cold.
At the same time, an ocean of crushing guilt regarding Lance threatened to drown her.
She had truly ruined him, completely underestimating the boundless depths of human malice.
Refusing to look at the monster for a second longer, she leaned heavily against the wall and stumbled out of the room.
Camilla turned to follow her, but Sarah called out, “Do you honestly think you won? You two aren’t going to last. They’ve already targeted you. You can’t beat them p>
“Who is ‘they p>
“I’ll never tell you. Just drop dead p>
Knowing there was no escape, she sat back down on the bed and turned her head to the wall, refusing to speak another word.
Camilla knew she wasn’t going to get anything else out of her and walked out, her mind racing.
The people Sarah mentioned had to be the exact same people Pamela was involved with.
And the only person she had severely crossed recently was Clement.
Tessa collapsed onto the living room sofa, completely shattered. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her shoulders trembled violently.
Seeing the absolute state she was in, their grandfather simply let out a heavy sigh and retreated to his room.
Oscar stood quietly beside her, offering a helpless pat on her shoulder.
He had realized they had failed their son much earlier than she had.
It didn’t matter now.
Decades of false accusations and emotional neglect couldn’t be erased with a quick apology.
He had every right to hate them.
“How could this happen? She was a baby. How could a five-year-old be that evil?” Tessa sobbed into her hands, still violently fighting the reality of it.
She just couldn’t comprehend a child orchestrating something so vile.
And she couldn’t process the fact that, as his mother, she had listened to the lies of a toddler and condemned her own flesh and blood for twenty years.
She was the one who had spread his terrible reputation to the world. Whenever anyone brought him up, she was the first to sigh and call him a useless, irredeemable delinquent.
It was all a lie.
Unable to stomach the pity party, Jeniffer fired off a brutal shot. “She literally confessed to your face. What is there left to doubt? If you had any sense at all, you’d be on your knees begging his forgiveness right now.
“And you need to apologize to Camilla. If you hadn’t been so blinded by your hatred for him that you shipped him off to the military to ‘tame’ him, they never would have been separated for all those years. Camilla wouldn’t have gone through hell. You better thank God he found her, or he would have cursed your name until the day he died p>
Jeniffer was never one to sugarcoat anything.
Fueled by years of disgust toward her aunt, she showed absolutely zero mercy.
The brutal truth acted like a bucket of ice water. Tessa shot up from the sofa. “You’re right. I need to apologize to him. This is all my fault. I have to apologize p>
She stood up so fast the blood rushed from her head, nearly causing her to collapse. Oscar caught her by the waist, keeping her upright.
Her face was completely devoid of color.
His delinquency was a lie, but her hatred and neglect had been very, very real. She didn’t even dare to hope he would ever forgive her now.