“Look at you two! You were made for each other. If I hadn’t planned all of that, do you think you would have ever met in the first place? I was the one who gifted you with such a beautiful marriage, my son. How could you bear to blame me for it?”
What?
The culprit is suddenly playing the victim?
“I’m just speaking the truth, but it’s up to you whether you want to believe me or not. Our original plan that year had been to completely wipe you out from existence and forget that we’d ever given birth to such a defective product. If I hadn’t pitied you, you would have disappeared because of that car crash a long time ago! What right do you think you have to stand in front of me pretending to be a victor and interrogate your own father?”
Ashton immediately started trembling, digging his nails into his palms so tightly that I could see the veins on his forearms.
In the Hall couple’s eyes, Ashton was not only an obstacle blocking their way, he didn’t deserve to continue living either.
From their point of view, “family” was nothing more than a manufacturing process. They expected only perfect products and destroyed any that were not “up to par” with the high standard of quality that they’d set.
But they were talking about a person. How could someone say “you should have died a long time ago” to another person so easily?
Ashton didn’t speak for a long time. I related to his feelings; the more precious something is to you, the harder it is to cope when it’s suddenly destroyed.
Yet, for some reason, Nicolas viewed his silence as silent agreement.
He turned his attention towards me, squinting at me as if we were the ones currently being locked up in a cage. “I must say: your grandma, Winona is a smart woman. She knew to team up with George Fuller and match you two together in order to resolve Ashton’s grudge against the Murphy family. Her hard work and care are large reasons why Ashton is where he is today.”
“Too bad that the lower-class will always stay lower-class for a reason,” he shrugged, starting to pace around the cell. “They never realize when the thing they’re trying desperately to protect is stolen from them right under their noses. No, that’s not the right way to say it. If it weren’t for that petroleum contract, I wouldn’t have returned to the Hall family so easily. I should thank her for that.”
“You stole the contract?”
If that were the case, then what was the reason for Armond’s stubbornness all these years?
A horrid idea abruptly crossed my mind as soon as the words left my mouth.
Nicolas’ lips quirked up into an evil, satisfied smile. “I guess you’re not as stupid as you look. What do you think? Don’t you want to applaud my perfect scheme and praise my smarts after realizing the truth?”
Praise?
Applaud him for taking away the contract and manipulate Grandma and George in his hands as if they were mere puppets and leading them to their demise?
Or does he mean his scheme to make the Fullers and the Murphys hate each other so that Ashton would live the rest of his life in wrath and loathing?
Ashton might have found himself unable to talk back to his birth parents, but I found no problem in doing so.
“So you saw through the Murphys’ plan since the very beginning and took the chance to pull the wool over their eyes,” I inhaled deeply to calm myself. “Not only did you take away the contract for the petroleum farming project, but you also used the fake death case to escape from the public eye. You left a bunch of crippled victims behind, then proceeded to let Ashton battle the Murphys tooth and nail all alone. Am I right?”
If my assumption was correct, it would mean that I had also been a part of his calculations.
Nicolas merely shrugged in admittance.
The relief of closure was quickly followed by a wave of fury and shock, crashing down and overpowering my rationality.
“You were the one who ruined Ashton as well as Armond! You knew that you could just take the contract away because of your background as a Hall, and the Murphys wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop you. Instead, you wanted Ashton to harbor those unnecessary feelings of revenge against his parents, and you wanted him to be tortured daily by nightmares and guilt! How could you do that to him?”
Nicolas spread his arms wide in a show of self-proclaimed innocence. “If I could perfectly wipe out the bloody past, why would I need to take the risk and get myself involved with those low-class vermin? Besides, I was merely acting in self-defense. The Murphy family had been planning for us to take the fall for their mistakes, but I was brainy enough to find a way out and escape my fate. They wanted to kill me, and Ashton is my son, so it makes sense that he would want to avenge me. What did I do wrong?”
