Chapter 9
“Joyce, I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I’m the one who ruined you!”
I stood silently beside him, finding the whole scene absurd-almost laughable.
If he had trusted me even a little back then, if he had rushed to the garage in time and gotten Joyce to
the hospital before she took her last breath, I believe she would still be alive.
If I had filed for divorce the moment I discovered his affair, maybe she wouldn’t have died.
But life doesn’t deal in “what ifs,” and there’s no medicine for regret.
At the
very end of the funeral, my mother arrived at the cemetery, putting on a grand display of grief as she wailed loudly.
The moment she saw me approaching, she quickly stifled her sobs. “While Joseph is feeling guilty, talk to him-ask him to send eight million to the family again!”
I lifted my head and gave her a look full of biting sarcasm.
Pointing at the urn, I asked each word with deliberate clarity, “Joyce’s ashes have only just been buried, and you’re already talking to me about money?”
She froze in awkward silence and was just about to retort when I pulled the warmed-up severance docu- ment from my pocket and slapped it right in her face.
My voice was calm but resolute. “From today on, we are no longer mother and daughter. Whatever hap- pens to you or the Reid family has nothing to do with me.”
Her thin brows shot up, ready to hurl insults, but Joseph cut her off. “Take her away.”
A flurry of footsteps followed, her curses growing fainter until the cemetery returned to its deathly qui-
After that, Joseph drifted through his days in a daze. He stopped going to the office entirely and stayed home with me every day.
On the surface, we looked almost like we had when we first got married-cooking together, doing chores side by side.
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However, we never really spoke.
Either he muttered to himself, or I stayed silent.
One day, Reuben burst into the study with a stack of documents, his voice more urgent than I had ever
heard it.
“Mr. Barnes, someone online is stirring up a storm, saying that the top scorer in New York’s SAT was nailed to death with 500 steel spikes by her own father. We had people working on damage control, but someone got their hands on Katherine’s confession video. She says on camera that she acted on your or- ders that you told her to kidnap Ms. Barnes and do all those things. The company’s stock is plummet- ing, and shareholders have surrounded the building!”
Joseph froze, as if the words didn’t register-until he opened his phone and saw the flood of headlines tearing him apart.
“Top scorer with a score of 1,500 points reduced to a bloody corpse! Five hundred steel nails used to kill his own daughter!”
“Mistress dissolves girl’s body in acid-madness beyond redemption!”
“Joseph is a devil! An animal! Not fit to live! Rot in hell!”
The blinding red headlines drained the color from his face, and he nearly lost his footing.
It was a long while before he steadied himself against the desk and replied slowly, “Is that bitch dead yet?”
Reuben shook his head quickly.
“No. You told us to take our time with the 500 nails, so only 300 were used. She was still alive… but later, the location where she was being held was somehow leaked, and someone rescued her!”
Joseph let out a short laugh, the sound disturbingly calm. “Find her, and nail her to death.”
Reuben, unsettled by the hint of madness in his eyes, felt a chill run through him.
“Mr. Barnes, the police are on their way. Shouldn’t you hide somewhere?”
Joseph waved him off. “Go. I’ll handle the police.”
Reuben hesitated, wanting to say more, but at this point, it was far too late to save him.
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