Chapter 158
Seeing Maelis glaring furiously at Zinnia, Howard frowned and said, “Mom, weren’t we here today to apologize to Zinnia? I get that you’re ups what happened with Betty, but this time, it wasn’t Zinnia’s fault; she’s the real victim here!”
Betty came home yesterday after just five days in the detention center, looking visibly thinner. Seeing her like that, Maelis was torn between anger and
heartache.
Though the brothers understood how much Maelis had worried about Betty, they felt it was still no excuse for Maelis to take it out on Zinnia.
Betty’s actions left Howard utterly disillusioned. No matter how tearfully Betty apologized or how much she insisted it wasn’t intentional, Howard could never see her the same way again. Between them now stood an unbridgeable rift.
The love Howard once showed Betty now struck like a cruel boomerang, mocking the fact that their sibling bond meant nothing.
Howard thought, ‘To frame Zinnia, Betty was even willing to play with human lives. As her brother, I probably don’t hold an ounce of affection in her heart.‘
Right now, all Howard wanted was to make things right with Zinnia.
“Mom, this incident has nothing to do with Zinnia. It’s all Betty’s fault. We’re the ones who spoiled her rotten,” Yosef said sternly.
Yosef was also deeply disappointed in Betty. He complained inside, ‘Mom spoiled Betty rotten. I’d already warned Betty not to cause any more trouble, but within a day, she made such a huge mess, completely ignoring my warnings.
‘And after all the mess Betty caused, Mom still blamed Zinnia. How does Mom end up being so unreasonable?
‘This morning, Howard said he wanted to come to see Zinnia, so Timothy and I decided to join him. Just as we were about to leave, Mom said she wanted to come with us.
‘Who would have thought that the moment she arrived, she’d try to hit Zinnia? Didn’t she realize that if she did, there would be no turning back between us and Zinnia?‘
Timothy stayed silent, but his thoughts were a tangled mess. Thinking that he had spent the entire afternoon suffering from diarrhea caused by his Betty, he felt extremely conflicted.
Then Jackson’s words from last time echoed in his mind. He thought, ‘Did Betty think Mom would like that set of jewelry, or was it just something she wanted for herself?
‘Come to think of it, this kind of thing happened way too often. At least twice a month, Betty would drag me along to pick out gifts for Mom, but they rarely matched Mom’s taste. In the end, they all ended up in Betty’s possession.‘
It suddenly hit Timothy that Betty, whom he’d grown up with, wasn’t at all the person he’d imagined her to be.
Once again chastised by her sons, Maelis seethed with scalding fury churning within her chest. The past few days had left her mentally exhausted, teetering on the edge.
Her venomous gaze locked onto Zinnia, who was shielded behind the security guards, as if she could kill Zinnia with a single glare.
The way Maelis glared at Zinnia was no longer that of a mother but of someone facing a sworn enemy. She shot back, “So what if Betty did something
wrong? It’s all Zinnia’s fault! Why can’t we settle our family matters privately?
“Zinnia made such a scene at school and turned our family into a laughingstock. She’s the source of our family’s troubles. If she hadn’t come back, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
“Betty would never have done those things if not provoked by Zinnia. Zinnia is the root of all our troubles. I wish I had never brought her back into our lives.”
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Chapter 158
Zinnia replied coolly, “I’m the finx, then what are you? The mother of a finx? You’re a jinx, too. And your mướn vores sang là thYA whole family is just as much of a fine as I am.
Maybe it was because she’d spent so much time with Yannis lately that even her way of speaking had begun to mimer his.
