Chapter 11
1274words
It only made my "emptiness" more concrete.
My father, Robert Windsor, moved into the suite next to mine at Silas's arrangement. Silas gave him 51% of the group's shares, but he didn't ask for anything,
he just came to keep me company every day.
He told me about my childhood, those things I had long forgotten, about my mother.
He tried to warm me with familial love.
Silas also came every day.
He no longer knelt in the snow. He just came at fixed times, bringing Lancaster Group documents for my father to "sign," and then looked at me
once through the door of the hospital room.
We maintained this strange, precarious balance.
Until Savannah dropped her final bomb.
That day, Oliver Sterling burst into my hospital room in a rage.
He held a tablet in his hand, his face ashen, as if he wanted to smash it to pieces.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"It's nothing……" he seemed to have walked into the wrong place and wanted to leave with his tablet.
The more he acted like this, the more curious I became.
I locked onto the tablet in his hand and took it from him.
It was a top gossip website from New York. The headline featured my photo.
The title was: "Mrs. Lancaster's Double Betrayal: Revealing the True Scandal Behind the Miscarriage."
Oliver tried to grab it back, but I stopped him with my hand.
I calmly clicked on the article.
It was an "exclusive" by Savannah.
Posing as "someone closest to Silas Lancaster," she "revealed" in detail the "truth" about that accident.
"Fiona Windsor (she wouldn't even acknowledge my status as Mrs. Lancaster) is nothing but promiscuous."
"While stringing Silas along, she was also entangled with her personal doctor (Oliver). That child... no one knows whose it really was."
"She had a miscarriage, clearly it was her own fall, yet she poured all the dirty water on Silas!"
The article also included some craftily angled "evidence" - photos of Oliver pushing me during walks at the sanatorium, described as "a lover's attentive care"
。
This report portrayed me as a shameless con artist who toyed with people's feelings.
"Bastard!" Oliver was shaking with anger, "She's insane! This is defamation! Fiona, I'll contact a lawyer immediately..."
I looked at the article that went to great lengths to be filthy.
I looked at those unbearable comments below.
Suddenly, I burst into laughter.
"Heh..."
"Fiona?" Oliver was stunned.
I couldn't stop laughing.
I, the "Snow Queen" who had almost lost all emotional function, didn't cry when my father was wrongfully accused, didn't cry when Silas knelt before me, but now I was
laughing to tears at my own "indecent rumors."
How pathetic. How absurd.
I became a complete joke.
I laughed while picking up my phone. I started to "eat melon" (meaning: watch drama unfold).
I began to see how the gossip tabloids were reposting and embellishing the story.
Just then, the door to the hospital room was pushed open.
Silas walked in. He was holding a document in his hand, obviously coming to see my father.
As soon as he entered, he saw the smile on my face.
Then, he saw the tablet in Oliver's hand and the headline on my phone screen.
His blue eyes instantly turned into an icy sea from hell.
He strode toward me.
I thought he was going to explain.
But he made a move I didn't expect.
He snatched my phone away.
"Stop looking at this."
His voice came through clenched teeth.
The smile disappeared from my face. I looked at him coldly: "What? Mr. Lancaster. The trouble caused by your own 'close female friend,' and I, the 'sinner
', don't even have the right to 'watch the drama'?"
"I said, stop looking at it."
On his face, which had always been humble with guilt, there appeared for the first time that cold, undeniable controlling power that he only showed the night he abandoned me at the hospital.
He didn't get angry with me.
In front of me, he took out his phone and dialed his Chief Assistant's number.
"Jackson."
His voice was ice cold.
"Where is she (Savannah)?"
Something was said on the other end of the line.
"Good." Silas looked at me, but his words were directed to the phone, "She likes to leak information, doesn't she?"
"Give all my father's (criminal) files and the recording of my father's 'hateful' will before his death to The New York Times."
Oliver and my father were both stunned.
That was the Lancaster Family's biggest scandal!
"Also," Silas continued, "Savannah Green, bribing Dr. Evans, faking amnesia, malicious defamation... and the dashboard camera footage of that car accident.
Submit all the evidence to the New York prosecutor."
"I don't care what methods you use. I want her to be formally charged before the sun sets."
"I've had enough."
He hung up the phone.
He had done all of this.
He didn't look at my father's shock, nor at Oliver's bewilderment.
He just gently placed my phone back on my bedside table.
"Fiona," he said hoarsely, "I promise."
"You will never... see her again."
…………
The next day.
In the public lounge of the sanatorium, the Swiss morning news was playing.
Father pushed me in my wheelchair, stopping in front of the television.
"...Yesterday evening, a shocking scandal erupted involving the Lancaster Group in New York."
On the news screen was a photo of my father, Robert Windsor, when he was younger, along with the words "wrongful conviction overturned."
The anchor's calm voice continued reporting: "Behind this 'exoneration' lies an astounding fraud perpetrated by two generations of the Lancaster Family."
The scene switched to the electronic front page of the New York Times, with a bold headline that was shocking to the eye: [Lancaster's Lies: An Empire Built on "Repaying Kindness with Betrayal"
].
Following this was a chaotic video from a scene in New York. In front of Lancaster Tower, the bronze statue symbolizing the honor of Silas's father (Senior Lancaster)
, had been splashed with scarlet paint, and a protester was holding up a sign that read "LIAR."
The footage even cut to a leaked internal video—in the group's boardroom, Silas Lancaster himself, expressionless, personally took down his father's
huge founder portrait from the wall, letting it crash to the floor, glass shattering everywhere.
"The 'ghost' has been liquidated," my father, Robert Windsor, whispered behind me in a relieved, hoarse voice.
The broadcaster continued: "And this family scandal exposed personally by the current CEO of Lancaster Group (Silas) has uncovered another shocking case...
…”
Then, the scene changed.
It was Savannah Green.
She was wearing handcuffs, apprehended by the police while attempting to board a flight at New York's Kennedy International Airport.
The once-prominent socialite now struggled and cursed like a madwoman as she was shoved into a police car.
The news anchor reported with perfect diction:
"...Savannah Green has been officially arrested for alleged multiple counts of financial fraud, evidence forgery, and malicious defamation... What awaits her is a long prison
sentence."
Completely disgraced.
Left with nothing.
Silas had fulfilled his promise.
Is this the "satisfying revenge" I deserved?
I looked at the disheveled woman on the television.
I felt no satisfaction.
Savannah's fate could not bring back the child who disappeared on that cold operating table.
I just felt... everything should come to an end now.
I picked up the remote control and turned off the television.
"Dad."
"Yes."
"I want to go home."
"Okay." He patted my hand, "Let's go home. Back to London."
