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er 288 No Way Back
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“You think you’ll have a good life mixing with someone like Scarlett? She wishes you were dead. The only reason she’s willing to talk to you now is because she wants to step on us to rise higher, and you still want to help her? Rebecca, are you out of your mind!”
“Connor is no good either!” Rebecca snapped back, her emotions flaring.
“He used me, he used the Joyner family, and now he wants to use Scarlett. A man like him deserves to lose everything!”
“And what about you?” Martha pressed harder. “You’re using Scarlett too. How are you any different from Connor? Do you think you’re nobler than him?”
The words hit Rebecca like a slap across the face.
She looked at her mother’s twisted, furious expression and suddenly felt an overwhelming exhaustion.
“Enough.” Rebecca closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, her gaze was calm, though beneath that calmness hid a faint trace of hurt.
“Mom, stop making a scene. This is my business. I’ll handle it. You just stay put. You’ll never lack food or clothes again.”
“I don’t want your food and clothes!”
Martha shoved her hand away, shouting hysterically.
“I just want you to tell me the truth! What do you really want? Do you still hate me? Hate me for not protecting you back then? Hate me for being too useless to give you a good life?”
Rebecca stared at her mother losing control, and the fragile knot of emotion inside her finally snapped.
She remembered her father once saying Martha was the kind of woman who only knew how to cry and throw tantrums, and nothing more. Looking at her now, he had been right.
“Think whatever you want.” Rebecca turned her back on her.
“Just stay out of this. Connor is about to go bankrupt. You can’t rely on him anymore. From now on, this family depends on me alone.”
She picked up her phone and walked straight into her bedroom, slamming the door shut with a sharp bang that cut off her mother’s sobs and accusations.
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Chapter 288 No Way Back
The room was dark.
Finished
Rebecca leaned against the door and slid slowly to the floor. The phone buzzed in her hand with Scarlett’s reply: “Send me the address.”
She looked at the message, the corner of her mouth curling into a cold smile.
Fine. Let every grudge and feud be settled in this game of power and profit.
—
Martha was a
As for her mother… she let out a long sigh. Maybe her father had been right woman destined to live in someone else’s shadow, never able to stand on her own.
Outside, the sky grew darker as neon lights lit up across the city, reflecting countless broken dreams and entangled hearts.
Rebecca stood and walked to the window. The flow of headlights below reflected in her eyes, no longer clouded with anger, only with cold stillness.
She knew that from the moment she hit send, there was no turning back.
And the mother still crying in the living room she would always be Rebecca’s bond, the last fragile softness in her heart.
But in the face of survival, that softness was nothing at all.
She drew a long breath, deleted the message, and began packing. Whatever lay ahead, she had no choice but to keep moving forward.
In this city of illusions, you either advanced or you were left behind. No one would stop and wait for you.
The crystal chandelier in the private lounge cut through the air with its cold light. Every facet glinted like a blade, shattering the mocking curve of Rebecca’s lips into shards of icy light.
Her fingertips traced the leather sofa’s ridges, the chill sinking through her bones, unable to smother the scorn rising in her eyes.
“Scarlett, bringing me to a place like this
―
aren’t you afraid someone might see us?”
“Then again, weren’t you the one who used a voice changer to trick Connor in front of thousands in that livestream?”
The powder on her face had left an uneven pale streak under her eyes, a mark from when Martha had interrupted her earlier touch–up.
Scarlett’s hand paused on the porcelain teacup she held. For a fleeting second, the rim reflected a shard of ice in her gaze, like a crack splitting across a frozen lake.
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Chapter 288 No Way Back
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Finished
“Rebecca.” She set the cup down on its glass saucer, the porcelain base striking a clear note.
“You better be able to keep talking to me like this after you hear what I have to say.”
Before the last word faded, she pressed the speakerphone button. The metallic gleam of the round key caught the light like a live grenade waiting to detonate.
Beeps echoed through the line, a silver thread winding tighter and tighter around Rebecca’s
nerves.
She was about to demand an answer when a man’s voice spilled through the receiver, striking her like lightning.
“You really had to pick a place like this? What if someone sees—”
“My dad?”
Rebecca’s throat closed around the words, the taste of iron sharp on her tongue.
She jerked her gaze toward Scarlett. The woman was tapping her nails against the table, her diamond–studded watch winking in the shadows like a metronome ticking out a preordained
ending.
Then another voice – a woman’s
—
rasped through the line, coated in thirty years of resentment, every word spilling like rusted nails from an old iron box.
Send Gifts
978
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