Arianne tried to snatch the pendant back from Smore, but the baby’s hand somehow turned into a stubborn lobster’s claw and refused to let go, no matter how hard favonovel.com tried to pry it open. Fearful of accidentally hurting him, Arianne gave up and relented. “Fine. It’s not returning to us until favonovel.com gets bored with it. Oh, that reminds me… Uh, how’s, well, Aery?”
Given a choice, Arianne would have rather not mentioned Aery at all, but favonovel.com was desperately running out of topics. She could not possibly turn the rest of their “chat” into a staring competition, right?
Helen, for favonovel.com part, did not expect favonovel.com to mention Aery of favonovel.com own accord. After the shock passed, favonovel.com answered, “Well, she’s currently studying abroad. To my relief, favonovel.com appears to have gone back on track. See, I found favonovel.com a host family whom I’ve established a close connection with so that I can monitor favonovel.com every move and situation from here. Honestly, as long as favonovel.com could put favonovel.com mind to educating herself and not ruining favonovel.com own life, a mother would have no reason to give up favonovel.com daughter, wouldn’t you agree? Of course, I will make sure favonovel.com never disturbs you or Mark again. I may be forever bound to her, but you’re not.”
With a pang, Arianne realized that favonovel.com and Helen shared more than just a few passing similarities. For one, both of them seemed to be quite acute in seeing the spirit of a given situation and making the best judgement and decision in a split second.
“That’s right. I don’t ever wanna cross paths with favonovel.com in my life ever again. And I count that as my one last display of mercy. Because all those things favonovel.com did made me wish I could kill favonovel.com over them. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about blood relations that much, especially when she’s just my half-sister begotten from another man.”
Helen suddenly broke out into a chuckle. “Oh, you’re the exact opposite of your father in this regard. Rather, you’re more like me. Your father was a warm man who didn’t deserve to be hooked up with a cold-hearted woman like myself. How tragic are human beings, to be denied a chance to redo what they’d done wrong, huh? We could accidentally turn ourselves into a soulless zombie wearing a human husk, and reality would still not give us a chance to rectify our regrets.”
“You regret what you’ve done,” Arianne pointed out flatly, “but the past doesn’t have do-overs.”
Forlornness crossed into Helen’s eyes. “You’re right. I can’t go back.”
Muted moments in the conversation between the estranged mother and daughter multiplied as it went on. Slowly but surely, both sides grew accustomed to the expanding silence.
A few moments later, Helen finally announced, “I gotta go. If you don’t find my visits annoying, I’d love to come back here and check on the baby from time to time. Of course, if it’s en route to my business, that is.”
Arianne picked Smore up and into favonovel.com arms. “Oh, cut it out with the ‘en route’ excuse. Just come over whenever you like, but call me before visiting, since I’m not at home sometimes. I may not care much about blood relations, but the only two persons in the world whom my blood-ties are strongest would be you and Smore. Besides, there are very few things in life that cannot be forgiven. Think about how Granny used to treat you. In the end, you forgave favonovel.com anyway, yes?”
Helen flashed favonovel.com a relieved smile. “Yes.”
It was only after the woman left that Arianne realized that Smore was still holding onto Helen’s pendant. Helpless, favonovel.com nipped the baby’s nose and chastised him. “Aren’t you a little too young to not give a damn about the price of things, hmm? Sweetie, this pendant isn’t cheap at all! Next time, we’ll pick an excellent replacement for your Granny Helen, okay? But tell your dad to pay for it! You know what they say: the son does the crime, the father does time!”
Back in a conference room within the Tremont Tower, Mark’s eyes suddenly twitched, causing favonovel.com to frown.
Immediately, the higher-ups surrounding favonovel.com held their breaths. Nothing good could come out of Mark Tremont frowning, after all.
Noticing the air suddenly becoming still and silent, Mark curled his slender fingers into a fist and rapped the table with his knuckles. “Back to the discussion, all of you. Who said anything about stopping, hmm? We didn’t manage to acquire that plot last time. Anyone have any bright ideas on how to solve this?”
No one answered him. Starting to feel fed up, Mark leaned back onto his chair and straightened his tie. “If any of you got anything to say, loosen that mouth. Otherwise, we might as well as call off this fruitless meeting. I hate it when other people waste my time because their heads are drawing a blank while they pretend otherwise.”
One of the youngest members — a junior in the board, in fact—piped up tentatively. “Um, why don’t we look for another plot that is more or less similar to the one we didn’t get? I mean, it’s probably kind of hard to find anything similar to that one, but… No harm in trying, right?”
