After I Learned To Obey Why Did My Family Start To Regret It? Chapter 08
When Tiffany’s leg healed, she returned to the academy.
Sean cleared his schedule so he could take her himself.
As he opened the door, he ran into an attendant carrying a tray. Tiffany saw the bangle in the box, and her expression brightened.
“Did you buy me another present?”
She opened the box and slipped the bangle onto her wrist.
Before she could admire it for long, Sean caught her hand and removed it.
“It’s not for you.”
It was my foster mother’s bangle.
Sean had sent it to be repaired.
He placed it back into the box.
“It belonged to Harriet’s foster mother.”
Tiffany drew back her hand.
She had been indulged for too long. She was not used to being refused.
With a cold little sound, she turned and climbed into the carriage.
“You don’t need to take me. I can go by myself.”
She was being willful, but Sean only smiled helplessly and shook his head.
After the carriage left, he went to Tiffany’s favorite shop himself. Without hesitating, he chose the most expensive bracelet there.
Then he carried the gift to the academy to apologize.
He knew the way to Tiffany’s classroom by heart.
Just before he turned the corner, he heard voices.
“Did you hear Harriet died?”
“She was pitiful, honestly. Tiffany made her blind in one eye and ruined both her legs. Even after that, she still paid people to humiliate her and beat her.”
The other person sighed.
“Tiffany paid well. I slapped Harriet too. Now that I think about it, I feel awful.”
Sean stepped out from behind them.
“Who told you to spread lies?”
They begged. They tried to explain.
Sean ignored them and had them dragged to the dark prison, then thrown in front of Gerald.
“Question them,” he said through clenched teeth. “I want to know who’s trying to smear Tiffany.”
They broke before Gerald even touched them.
Once they began talking, the truth spilled out.
“We weren’t lying. You can check.”
The man tied to the rack sobbed and screamed through his confession.
“Everyone at the academy knew Tiffany bullied Harriet. We all did it because Tiffany told us to.”
“Her attendants paid us. The harder we hit Harriet, the more money we got.”
Sean ordered Tiffany’s attendant brought in.
He looked almost eager, as if he could force the answer he wanted out of her by needing it badly enough.
Tiffany was kind.
Tiffany would never hurt Harriet.
But the attendant saw the bloodied people on the racks and went weak in the knees.
When someone brought a hot iron near her, she dropped to the floor.
“It was Tiffany,” she cried. “She told me to do it. She forced me. It wasn’t my idea.”
The bracelet Sean had bought snapped in his hand.
“You’re lying to me too? Who paid you? Who told you to frame Tiffany?”
Screams filled the prison.
Gerald’s fingers tightened until his knuckles went white.
“What else did she tell you to do?”
Sean stared at him.
“Are you insane? You believe her?”
“I don’t.”
Gerald’s answer was short.
But he followed the attendant’s confession anyway.
The students who had bullied me were brought in.
So were the servants assigned to me, Tiffany’s other attendants, and everyone connected to the academy.
By the end, belief was no longer a choice.
Sean sank into a chair.
He had shouted until his voice was ruined. When he covered his mouth and coughed, blood stained his palm.
“It’s fake,” he whispered.
If it was true, then what did that make him?
What was the price he had made me pay for Tiffany?
