Chapter 275
Lacey couldn’t hold back anymore, her voice trembling with unshed tears.
Her eldest son, the one she had always leaned on, was openly defying her?
“If you want to coddle and spoil her, we won’t stop you,” Damon said, his sculpted face hardening with displeasure. “But don’t try to force everyone else to play along with your delusions p>
With that, the two towering brothers left the dining table. They went to their
respective rooms, changed their clothes, and walked out the front door, one after the other.
Lacey stared blankly at the space where her two proudest achievements had just been standing. They had left without even saying goodbye. A sudden, sharp ache pierced her chest.
Was she really in the wrong?
“If you walk out that door, don’t bother coming back!” Adrian bellowed.
Damon paused with one foot out the door and looked back. “You kicked Mira out, and she’s doing better than ever.
“Do you honestly think we can’t survive without this family?
“But if the Mercer family loses us, you’ll become an absolute joke p>
He had been a child star. He had been earning his own money since before he was a teenager.
Hearing his younger brother speak, Ethan realized Damon saw things even more clearly than he did.
But why had he stayed quiet for so long? Was it because his own interests hadn’t been threatened, or was there another reason?
Ethan couldn’t figure it out and decided to let it go. Maybe his brother was like him— just brushing the family drama off as petty squabbles in the past.
“Am I just a burden? I knew I shouldn’t have come back,” Mara whimpered, slipping right back into her victim act the moment her brothers were gone.
“Who said you’re a burden? Eat your food. I’ll have someone handle the Melvion Midwinter Jubilee for you,” Adrian said, softening instantly.
“Thank you, Dad,” Mara beamed, her tears vanishing like magic.
“Tessa, heat up the food,” Lacey called out to the kitchen.
Adrian frowned thoughtfully. “Don’t get your hopes up too high. The standards for the Jubilee are strict. Sometimes, money isn’t enough to buy a spot.
“Plus, given how late it is in the year, they’ve probably already finalized the lineup.” “Okay, whatever you say, Dad,” Mara agreed sweetly, nodding.
After finishing their meal, the three of them sat in the living room, eating fruit and watching the evening news.
To their shock, the screen lit up with EcoRide’s newly announced solution to the parking crisis.
“That fast? Adrian blurted out, stunned. They had only just heard the news and were waiting to see if they could exploit the situation yet EcoRide already had a
countermeasure in place.
The commercial featured a tutorial on the new parking guidelines and a clever system for users to earn money by fixing other people’s bad parking jobs.
If a user spotted an improperly parked bike, they simply scanned the QR code with the app unlocked the bike, moved it to a designated zone, and took another photo.
By uploading the before and after photos, the user would earn a ten-dollar bounty.
The person who had parked the bike incorrectly would automatically be fined fifteen dollars.
With a system like that, who would dare park illegally?
And inevitably, people would actively hunt for badly parked bikes just to make some quick cash.
The photo requirement ensured that scammers couldn’t just move perfectly parked bikes out of bounds and back again to farm the rewards.
To close the loop, users returning a bike now had an extra step: taking a photo of the properly parked bike to keep as proof.
If they skipped the photo and someone reported their bike as improperly parked, they would have no evidence to fight the fine.
Ten dollars was a solid chunk of change. A housekeeper working for an hour barely made that much. If someone was frugal, it was enough to cover food for the day.
“That’s actually a brilliant strategy,” Lacey murmured, genuinely impressed.
But her husband beside her didn’t look pleased, and Mara was practically grinding her teeth in silent fury.
Finally, someone was going after EcoRide. She had been eagerly waiting for Mira’s operation to crash and burn. Which absolute bastard had come up with this genius idea?