At that time, I had no intention to chat with her, so I told her calmly, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
Glancing around, I did not see Danny, so I turned around to leave. But Tessa stopped me and said, “Oh, why? You seem to be looking for someone.”
“Get out of my way!” I had no time or patience for people like her.
However, she continued to use her chubby body to block my way and taunted, “Why are you so aggressive? Are we not good friends? Don’t you remember all the dangerous situations that we had been through in Venria? Do you treat Nora and the others like this, too?”
I glared at her and scoffed. “Friends, huh? What kind of friend would put me into a mortuary cabinet? And what kind of friend would plot my death every day? Tessa, you’ve insulted the term ‘friends.’ Don’t compare yourself with Nora and the others. You’re downright disgusting!”
Suddenly, she burst into laughter. “I’m disgusting? Scarlett, did you forget that you were the one who caused me to be sexually assaulted in Venria? Did you seriously think that I could act like nothing had happened after we left there? Do you know the feeling of being gang-raped in front of everyone else? No, you don’t. You were the one who saw me being violated by those men. You knew that they raped me because of you, and yet, you did not do anything to help me. And now you even have the audacity to think that it’s not your fault. Maybe everyone else had forgotten about it, but I can’t. It will forever be engraved in my memory. From the moment I left Venria, I vowed to make all of you suffer as much as I did!”
She looked at me sinisterly as her eyes blazed with hate and wrath. I was rendered speechless as I thought that she had let go of the past. After all, I knew that there was nothing I could do to undo the hurt that I had inflicted on her. That was why I did everything I could to make a deal with Armond to let him send us back to our country and even begged him to find the best doctors to remove the kyanine in their wombs. I naively thought that she would forgive us and move on.
But she’s right. Why does she have to forgive us, especially me? She would not have been hurt if it weren’t for my little mistake. Hence, it was understandable why she hated me and wanted to seek revenge against me.
Completely absorbed in my thought, I did not know when she had left. When Ashton found me looking devastated at the corridor, he frowned. “Anything happened?”
I shook my head, lay my head against his chest, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It was my fault. I know that it happened because of me, but I don’t know what I can do about it now!”
“What happened, Scarlett?” Ashton hugged me as he patted my back.
I did not know how to tell him about the incident in Venria, so I just shook my head and remained silent.
After that, Ashton brought me back to the villa. I lay on the bed and felt dejected, but I did not want to continue to wallow in misery. Whenever people were accused, they would always defend themselves and find numerous reasons to convince themselves that it was not their fault. But, wrong is wrong.
I also kept trying to comfort myself, reminding myself of what I had done for her – I was the one who helped her escape from Venria, I harbored no grudge against her after she purposely threw away my documents at the airport, and I could even forgive her for harming me several times. However, all of these could not deny the fact that she was hurt because of me.
After laying on the bed for a long time, I realized that Ashton had not come back from the study. So, I went there and saw him staring at the monitor. When he heard me enter, he looked up and asked, “Are you feeling better?”
I nodded in reply and went over to sit beside him. As I landed my gaze on the computer screen, I was shocked to see that he was looking at some surveillance footage. “I thought the footage from the hospital was destroyed. How did you get this?”
He looked at me and replied, “I hired someone to fix it, so the footage at the elevator and the morgue had been recovered. Even though Abe and Tessa were wearing masks, we could still identify them from this footage.”
I hesitated for a moment and looked at him. “What are you going to do next?” The reason why he put so much effort into recovering the footage was to put Tessa into prison. This footage would be enough to charge her for cooperating with Abe in attempted murder. Although she could not be sentenced to life imprisonment, she would definitely be imprisoned for several years.”
Ashton watched the footage with a solemn look. After a while, he said, “It’s too dangerous to let her stay in the society. She should be thrown into prison for a few years.”
I fell silent. After a long pause, I asked, “Can you not pass this to the police?”
“Why?” He frowned, baffled.
“I owe her for that. When we were in Venria, she was hurt because of me. And that was the reason why she has been targeting me.” I was not sure if it was right to do so, but if I sent her into prison now, I would feel guilty for the rest of my life. After all, it was my fault that she was violated, even though I was not the one who harmed her.
