Chapter 480
Chapter 480
Barry suddenly remembered that Jareth had been managing the security forces of the Fairhaven Group for many years. When he had entrusted the security department to Jareth, it was merely because he thought it wasn’t a core power sector of the He wanted to give Jareth something to do, but now, his delegation of authority had become a tool to restrain him! ““I’ve already coordinated with President Ashbourne, and we have this place locked down tight.”
group.
Jareth’s eyes narrowed, a cold glint within them, “Grandpa Barry, I mean you no harm. As long as Edith pays the price for her actions, confesses and repents for her misdeeds, you’re free to walk out of here with your head held high.”
“Jareth! How dare you!” Barry’s neck veins bulged with anger.
“Who is the one really daring here?!”
Thaddeus’s eyes, bloodshot from fury, glared at Barry with the ferocity of a lion awakened from slumber, his gaze filled with murderous intent, a chilling and bloodthirsty aura erupting from him!
“Who confuses right with wrong, aiding and abetting evil? Who is it that, feeling untouchable, has repeatedly harmed my woman?! It was you, and your granddaughter, who’s worse than any beast!”
Everyone was so intimidated by the man’s overwhelming presence that they scarcely dared to breathe.
Evadne, with tears in her eyes, gazed at him with intense affection. She still loved him deeply, and still enjoyed hearing him say, “Evadne is my woman.”
Thaddeus’s throat was filled with a taste of blood, rising from his chest consumed with rage. His face was grim as frost, his muscles outlined beneath his suit as if carved from iron, extending to his clenched fists.
Anger and pain filled him with the power to destroy worlds. Before him, everything seemed fragile, ready to shatter with a single blow! “Anyone who shields Edith becomes my enemy. And I will spend my life torturing them, ensuring they live every day in agony. Don’t believe me? Try me!”
Barry had been a streetwise kid since he was a teenager, brawling for turf with rival gangs, no stranger to intimidating showdowris. Yet now, in front of this younger man, he felt his courage falter, his bluster hollow.
“Grandpa Barry, take me with you, please, Grandpa!” Edith shook Barry, who was rigid with shock, her voice choked with fear.
Could the old man really be scared of Thaddeus? It was just a few threats, and he was caving? Pathetic!
“Edith.”
Evadne, pushing through her pain, steadied herself and stepped away from her brother, moving closer to Edith.
Now surrounded, Edith, despite her hatred for Evadne and her desire to see her dead, could no longer muster her defiance, resembling nothing so much as a turtle retracting into its shell.
“I only have one question for you.”
Evadne closed her eyes, then reopened them to reveal a chilling, dark aura, “This medical report claiming I’m infertile where did you get it?”
All eyes were sharply focused on Edith’s swollen, reddened face. The young lady’s casual inquiry struck at the heart of the matter.
“Yeah, I’m quite curious about the question Ms. Ashbourne just asked.” Chasel strode to Cassius’s side, his gaze icy as he looked at Edith, “As a doctor myself, I know these medical reports are highly confidential. Any doctor with a shred of professional integrity wouldn’t disclose such sensitive information to anyone outside of the patient. So, I figure, Ms. Fairhaven, you must have bribed Ms. Ashbourne’s attending physician, right? If that’s the case, let’s bring that corrupt doctor in as well. We’ll have both the evidence and the
witness.”
Cassius nodded in agreement, his handsome face serious. Chasel’s clever eyes darted a glance at him, and upon receiving his silent approval, felt a surge of triumph.
“Oh my, who is this dashing gentleman?”
“Must be another gallant knight from the Ashbourne family, ready to defend the lady’s honor, right?”
Chasel rolled his eyes internally. He wasn’t any knight; this was more like offering one favors at the expense of another, presenting Evadne to win favor with the man beside him.
“It wasn’t a doctor! It had nothing to do with any doctor!”
Hearing the words “evidence” and “witness“, Edith lost all composure, blurting out in panic.
“What do you mean? The report you have didn’t come from a doctor? Then where did you get it?” Jareth demanded coldly.
Edith clenched her fists, her eyes darting around in frightened confusion, struggling to form a response.
“Heh, Edith, if our dad could see from heaven how you’ve used his legacy for wrongdoing and denial, he’d probably wish a lightning bolt would strike you dead.” Jareth said, tearing his tie from his neck in a fit of fury and throwing it to the ground, his patience at its end, “Won’t talk, huh? Guards! Take her away and hand her over to the police! If we can’t get it out of her, they will!”
At his command, the bodyguards moved to grab her. Edith, trembling with fear, threw herself into her grandfather’s arms, weeping and wailing, “Grandpa Barry! How can Jareth treat me this way?! He’s trying to kill his own sister!”
.“Jareth! Enough! She’s your sister! Do you really want to shame her in front of all these people, make her unable to face the world ever again?!” Barry, seeing that a tough approach was futile, pleaded softly, “Even if Edith has done wrong, she’s young, perhaps misled by someone with ulterior motives! In any case, I don’t believe my dear granddaughter could do such a thing! How would she even think to ask a doctor for a medical report? Surely, someone planned this, using Edith! That person is likely someone close to Ms. Ashbourne. Without some inside knowledge, how else could they obtain such information?”
The old man, having raged all night, now spoke with a touch of clarity. Evadne and Thaddeus’s expressions darkened simultaneously.
Indeed, Edith was a bad seed, but she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Even if she had been smarter, how could she possibly have thought to investigate Evadne’s medical history, let alone unearth such intimate details?
The only people privy to this secret, aside from the attending physician and Mr. Murray, were Emeric’s three wives.
Mr. Murray and the ladies would never spill the beans, and the doctor was a close confidant of Hamilton for decades, watched closely by Mr. Murray. Furthermore, the original medical report had
been deleted from the system long ago, leaving no trace behind.
Who could have the means to restore such a file, to know so intimately about her miscarriage from years past?
In that moment, a shiver of cold dread coursed through Evadne’s core. It was as though an unseen pair of eyes had been spying on her from the shadows for a long, long time.
“Grandpa Barry, you shouldn’t tax yourself with too much talking at your age. You need to take care of yourself.”
Jareth let out a chilling laugh, “Even if she’s not the mastermind, she’s an accomplice. And whether there’s a mastermind or not is still up for debate. We’ve caught her red–handed, and now she has to face the consequences. Take her away!”
“It wasn’t me! I didn’t plan any of this! I was used by someone else!”
As Edith found herself the target of everyone’s ire, not only was her scheme against Evadne crumbling, she herself was on the verge of being branded a criminal.
Unable to keep up the facade any longer, she ran to Jareth in a panic, “Jareth, I’m sorry. I won’t dare to do it again! But I’m a victim too; someone used me as a pawn! He wants to ruin me. Perhaps he wants to bring down the Fairhaven Group as well!”
Edith’s tearful, swollen face was streaked with black lines, the remnants of her mascara running down her cheeks, a sight so pathetic it was almost comical.
She reached out with trembling hands to grasp his. The man’s brow twitched in repulsion, abruptly stepping back as if dodging a bucket of filthy water being hurled at him.
Edith stumbled, falling to her knees with a thud, inadvertently giving everyone quite the show. The marble floor felt like it was shattering her kneecaps, and the pain only made her tears flow more bitterly.
“What the hell is going on? Spit it out!” Jareth roared, eyes bloodshot with fury.
“A few days ago, I received an anonymous call from a stranger.”
Thaddeus’s eyebrows furrowed deeply, “A stranger? You didn’t recognize his voice?”
“He probably didn’t want me to recognize him so he used a voice changer.”
Edith, fearing she would take the fall alone, decided to come clean, “I know nothing about him, but he seems to know everything about me, about you all! He knew how much I wanted to marry Thad, so he exploited my weakness, handing me Evadne’s secret files. He told me to find the right moment to leak it.”
“Well, the right moment, you sure have a knack for timing,” Cassius and the others were seething with rage, itching to give this treacherous woman a piece of their mind.
“Damn it! He tells you to leak it and you just do it? If he told you to eat crap, would you?!” Jareth clenched his fist in ire.
Evadne’s brow furrowed in thought, her eyes a deep, contemplative pool.
This time, Edith had used her trauma as a weapon to fracture their relationship, and the effect was undeniably profound. Previously, her relationship with Thaddeus had hit a snag because of that hotel incident.
Now, connecting the dots between the two events, she realized the tactics were the same: sinister, cunning, vile, and aimed straight for the jugular. Edith, with her pea–sized brain, could never have concocted such a devious scheme without this man pulling the strings.
Evadne asked coldly, “This man who’s been advising you, isn’t he the same one who used you to set up that hotel rendezvous, creating the illusion of an affair with Thaddeus?”
Everyone gasped in astonishment. So, the supposed abandonment by Thaddeus was also a trap she had set?! Barry looked utterly stunned, his lips quivering.
Could Edith really be the mastermind? Was she so desperate to snag Thaddeus that she’d throw away her own reputation? His precious granddaughter, whom he had cherished and nurtured, had become so manipulative and terrifying?
Thaddeus’s Adam’s apple bobbed painfully, his eyes misty as he gazed at the delicate face of the woman he cared for.
She had been the most aggrieved, the most deeply wounded, yet even now, she was striving to clear his name.
Thaddeus attempted a pained smile, shaking his head in bitter reflection. He had saved her life, time and again, but to what avail? Compared to the hurt he had caused her, his grand sacrifices were nothing but dust in the wind,
“No, it’s not true!”
Edith stubbornly denied it, her forehead beading with cold sweat, “That hotel incident had nothing to do with that man!”
Evadne’s lips curled into a cold, mocking smile, no longer pressing the issue. The guilty expression plastered across Edith’s face had already given her the answer she needed.
“Evadne, is there anything else you want to ask her?” Jareth’s gaze softened as he turned to Evadne.
She shook her head gently.
“Alright then, take her away,” Jareth commanded with a wave of his hand. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!
Edith’s eyes widened, “Go where?”
“To the police station.”
Edith seemed struck by lightning, retreating in anger, her voice shrill with fury, “Jareth, you’re playing me! Didn’t you say you’d let me go if I confessed?!”
“Let you go? Did I say that? You must have imagined it.”
Jareth turned his back, no longer acknowledging her, as if enacting a ritual of severance, “Edith, I told you, I would be the hand of divine justice to punish you. No one can stop me, not even Grandpa.”
Two bodyguards stepped forward, each grabbing one of Edith’s arms and dragging her out. Her legs weht limp, her hair disheveled, one high heel lost in the scuffle – she was the picture of a criminal being led to a public execution.
“Grandpa Barry! Save me! Grandpa!”
However, even as Edith was dragged out of the banquet hall, Barry remained motionless. What else could he do?
His granddaughter had nearly destroyed his decades of respect and prestige. To intervene on her behalf now, in front of all these witnesses, would mean losing the Fairhaven family’s face as well.
After this earth–shattering scandal, the guests from the four major families couldn’t bear to stay, and the soiree hosted by William and his son had to end abruptly and prematurely.
Emeric didn’t give Thaddeus a chance to explain himself. With the decisiveness of a summer storm, he bundled Evadne into the car, locked the doors with a click, and took the wheel, driving straight for Skyrim.
Cassius handed his keys over to Jason and Nydia, the young couple also heading for Skyrim. On the road, they could at least enjoy the comfort of soothing presence.
Besides, Nydia was going through a rough patch, and only Jason could ease the shadows and scars haunting her heart.
Cassius stood alone in the parking lot, watching the Ashbourne family’s car grow smaller in the distance until it vanished altogether. Only then did his trembling hand reach inside his suit jacket and pull out the crumpled medical report.
Cassius read it again, meticulously, and with each word his heart seemed to cramp, as though it were being pierced by cold, sharp knives.
In the end, he couldn’t hold back the tears that blurred the cruel words on the paper. It was then that the heavy silence of the parking lot was broken by the sound of approaching footsteps.
Taking a deep breath, Cassius quickly wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes and turned around slowly.‘
Just a few paces away stood Thaddeus, his eyes brimming with a sad, pink flush like a tide rising silently, spilling over and extinguishing the once bright sparkle in his gaze.