My Husband Murdered My Parents to Please His Mistress

Chapter 4

Quite a few people used the child as an excuse to come asking for money over the years. Besides, the paternity test results were not even back yet. Isabelle might not even be Elijah’s child.

Yvette hurried over and quickly covered Isabelle’s ears.

“Miss Quarles, I’m begging you, please don’t say things like that in front of Isabelle. Ever since she was little, people have called her a bastard. If you really can’t accept her coming back, I can take her and leave right now.”

But the word "bastard" seemed to stab straight into Elijah’s heart.

Even though he was sitting in a wheelchair, he still moved at once to shield the mother and daughter behind him.

His face turned cold as he pointed at me.

“That’s enough. Why do you have to say things like that in front of Isabelle? Stacie, if you’re upset about something, take it out on me. Why are you picking on a child? I bought those clothes in the first place. So what if Isabelle stepped on them a few times?”

At that moment, the three of them looked more like a family, and I was the outsider.

All of a sudden, I felt like a complete joke.

I let out a small laugh.

“Elijah, think whatever you want. We’re over anyway.”

Elijah frowned, his tone full of impatience.

“So you really have to blow a tiny thing out of proportion, is that it?”

In the blink of an eye, I had somehow become the unreasonable one.

After a while, he sighed again, as if he were forcing down his temper.

“Fine. I was too impulsive just now. I’ll have Isabelle apologize to you.”

Isabelle immediately dropped the smug, defiant attitude she had shown when we were alone. With reddened eyes, she cried and said to me, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

But this time, I did not want to back down anymore.

I yanked the bracelet off my wrist.

It was a family heirloom. Back when I agreed to be with Elijah, his mother had placed it on my wrist with her own hands.

I held it out to him.

“Take it back.”

Elijah stared at me in disbelief.

“She already apologized to you. What more do you want?”

His eyes seemed to be questioning how much longer I planned to keep this up.

“We’re about to get married, and now you want to break up with me?”

I looked up at him and asked, word by word, “If I tell you right now to send them away, Elijah, can you do it?”

I kept my eyes on him.

Maybe my emotions were too tangled. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones. But in that moment, I suddenly wanted an answer more than anything.

As long as he said he couldn’t do it, I would leave immediately.

Elijah let out a cold laugh.

“This is my house. Who stays and who leaves is my decision. Since when is that up to you? What, are you going to threaten me with those five years of taking care of me again? Did I ever beg you to take care of me? I honestly don’t understand what you’re so wronged about now. Stacie, you were the one who cried and knelt in front of your father, insisting on being with me. You brought this on yourself.”

I shot my head up to look at him, trembling all over.

Last night, that same mouth had been kissing me. Today, it was spitting out the ugliest words to humiliate me.

The same lips, yet every word that came out cut deeper than the last.

A sharp ache spread through my chest, as though shards of glass were being pressed into it one by one, dull and unbearable.

In a daze, I thought back to the beginning, when the way he looked at me had been full of love.

Back then, he had said he would treat me well for the rest of his life.

I also remembered those late nights.

I had supported him all the way to the bathroom, exhausted and drenched in sweat.

He would wipe my sweat away with a pained look in his eyes and apologize to me over and over again.

“Stace, I’ll work hard to stand up again. I’m going to marry you.”

But now, he had recovered. He could already stand.

And the first thing he thought of was not telling me the truth, but how to keep hiding it from me, how to keep fooling me.

I raised a hand, wiped away the tears on my face, and smiled at him.

“You’re right. I deserved it. I wasted five whole years for nothing.”

All these years, no matter how exhausting or bitter it had been to take care of him, I had never cried, and I had never regretted it.

But now, I finally did.

Elijah was clearly stunned.

By the time he came to his senses, all those hurtful words had already been said. There was no taking them back.

Over the years, there had actually been no shortage of people who came to him asking for money in the name of a child.