Chapter 525 The Goad
“What are you saying, Michael?”
I walked to his side and looked at him disapprovingly, upset with the things he said. While we were all struggling to find a way to save Janette, he, conversely, was pushing her to jump.
Michael merely continued onward in Janette’s direction. In spite of me expressing in no uncertain terms how I felt about that, he did not even look my way.
“If you really want to jump, then stop wasting everybody’s time. Go on and get it over with. There wouldn’t even be a chance for you to be resuscitated if you jump from here, so I’d have your funeral arrangements seen to. As far as this goes, you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Michael remained as poker-faced as ever as he spoke, and there was a sliver of impatience in his tone.
As opposed to comforting her, Michael instead urged her to jump down as soon as possible. That really took Janette by surprise. She was quite stunned for a moment before she responded with some anger.
“You! You’re really too much! Are you looking forward to seeing me die so that Anna would become my mother’s only daughter? So that you could both hoard my mother’s assets all for yourselves?” said Janette as she seethed at Michael.
“Clever. Were you to pass on, Anna would become the only heir to your mother’s immense empire. All of it would become hers, while all that you’d be is a pile of ashes.”
Michael’s lips lifted into a sardonic smirk while he moved in on Janette once more.
So consumed by her own rage, Janette failed to realize how close Michael had gotten to her.
“If you don’t have to guts to jump, why don’t I give you a hand?”
When Michael reached Janette, he extended his hands as though he meant to push her off.
That set Janette into a panic. Shrieking and screaming, she leaped the other way and was aptly caught inside Michael’s arms.
All of us let out a sigh of relief in reaction to this. I finally realized that Michael was deliberately goading her. Perhaps he reckoned that Janette did not have the courage to jump to her death, to begin with.
Upon seeing Janette safe and sound, a tearful Alicia rushed up and hugged Janette.
“Did you know that you scared me half to death? What am I to do if something were to really happen to you? Don’t you ever try anything like that again, you hear?”
Alicia was all choked up as she held Janette.
“I’m in so much pain, Mom. Please tell me what I should do…”
A positively bawling mess, Janette held onto my mother tightly as a hapless child would.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get through this. With our family’s background, you’ll surely be able to find a boy that you fancy in time.”
Alicia kept patting her on the back and comforting her.
My heart ached upon the sight of this affectionate display of motherly love, so much so that it turned me away from the balcony.
She was as much my mother as she was Janette’s. That being said, even though I never had to go through anything as traumatic as this, she had also never shown such concern for me before.
Janette had always been the apple of Alicia’s eye ever since she was little. I was akin to an unwanted urchin in relative comparison, regarded with harshness throughout my formative years. Though born from the same mother, the treatment we received could not have been more starkly contrasting.
Michael came out after me and pulled me into his embrace.
“I misunderstood you just now. You only said what you did because you wanted to save Janette,” I felt guilty inside as I recalled how I had wronged him on the balcony just now.
“Yeah. Considering the sort of person that she is, I was sure that she wouldn’t have what it takes to jump. She was just overwhelmed, and I knew that the fear factor would just kick in when she’s pushed to the brink.”
With no discernable change in Michael’s expression, he remained as staid as ever at my words.
“It was fortunate that you came by. I wouldn’t have known what to do if you didn’t.” I leaned into Michael’s chest and spoke with unease.
Even though this crisis had been averted, I was not as happy as I ought to be. Seeing the mother and daughter’s relaxed demeanor really stabbed at my heart.
“We should leave them to handle the rest here on their own. Let’s go on home.”
Perhaps he had also sensed that I was not in a good mood, Michael had an arm over my shoulders while we departed.
While seated in his car, I was feeling a little down.
“Have you discussed Janette’s issue with Mrs. Campbell? Does she plan to file a report?”
The car had traveled some ways before Michael broke the silence.
“No. I haven’t the time to do that yet. This came to her as a major blow, so I think I may prefer to do that at a later time.”
Going to the police would be the most ideal solution, but I could not be sure if they would be amenable to this.
“Yeah,” Michael replied casually and left it at that.
In the next few days that followed, Alicia had not called again. I guessed that she must have been busy keeping Janette company. Or perhaps, she had already forgotten about my existence.
Although Janette was in a delicate situation and needed to be taken care of, it did not feel good to be neglected like this. Maybe it was the lack of attention from my foster parents that made me a little sensitive in this regard.
A week later, I finally heard from Alicia.
When the call came through, she told me to head over to her place. I would have said “no” in any other instance, but when I figured that they could use some support in light of what had happened to Janette, I decided against turning her down.
Janette was spotted within minutes of my arrival. In spite of her emaciated disposition, she looked to be in markedly better spirits than she did at the beginning. It would seem that she was slowly stepping out of the shadows of that misadventure.
She regarded me with mild indifference when she saw me approach and made her way upstairs with nary a word.
Since we had never really gotten along that well all this time, to begin with, I chose not to take this affront from her personally.
“You’re here, Anna.”
Alicia regarded me with welcoming eyes and approached me immediately as soon as she caught sight of me.
Having not seen her in a week, I found a smidgen of pallor and weariness upon her countenance when I gazed upon it.
I supposed that Janette’s predicament must have weighed heavily on her mind. With everything that had transpired, she must not have felt any better about it than Janette herself.
“Yeah. Do you have something to ask of me when you called today to have me over?” I replied blandly before asking.
“It’s nothing in particular. After not seeing you these past few days, I just missed you, so I thought about having you over so that we can have dinner together,” said Alicia warmly while she came up beside me.
“I see,” I grunted as I did not know what else to say, for right now, I was finding those formalities that were expected from me a little hard to parse.
