Chapter 11
Back then, after giving me the divorce papers, Damon had seized my throat and snarled, “What spell did you cast on the old man to make him let you go?”
Everyone thought I loved Damon desperately. They thought that no matter how badly the Locke family treated me, I still wanted to stay by his side.
No one knew the truth.
After my father disappeared, the only one left beside me was Ranger.
That dog was my family.
For Ranger, I endured everything.
And still they wouldn’t spare him.
Now, after seeing my father with his own eyes, Damon’s earlier arrogance had drained out of his face. He had gone gray. Even his voice shook.
“Serena… is your daughter?”
How could Damon not know my father? In the daily lectures from his grandfather, my father’s shadow had always been there. Damon both admired and feared him. Years of hearing his name had formed an instinctive terror inside him.
“That’s impossible,” Damon muttered. “The old man said Serena was an orphan. Just some stray he picked up…”
Then he suddenly screamed at me, his mind unraveling.
“It’s you, isn’t it? You planned this! You found an actor, had him dressed up and made to look like Mr. Hale, because you know I’m afraid of him! You did all this just to scare me!”
He no longer cared about the pain in his hands.
“You just wanted to beat me! You always wanted to beat me! What gives you the right? You’re a filthy woman—what gives you the right?”
We had studied together when we were young.
In everything, I outperformed him.
Because of that, his grandfather used me to pressure him constantly, and Damon grew to hate me more and more.
It wasn’t that I had never tried to get closer to him. I had.
But every time I showed him kindness, he responded with worse cruelty.
He locked me in dark rooms and threw in snakes, rats, insects, forcing me to live among them. He withheld food so that if I wanted to survive, I had to eat those disgusting things.
How could I forget days like that?
I looked at Damon and laughed.
“Did you forget what your grandfather said the day I entered the Locke family?”
That day, the old man had brought me home and told Damon, “From today on, Serena is your little sister. Protect her with everything you have. If her real family comes back and finds out she was wronged, you won’t have a good ending.”
I smiled at him now.
“Well, Damon. My family has returned.”