Chapter 293

Chapter 293

Sophie held the agreement, her fingertips cold as ice.

The stack of papers, dense with terms, felt scorching in her hands.

Accept it?

That would be an insult to the five years she had spent, and to the harm the Scott family had suffered.

Refuse it?

Would that mean letting him finish his little "redemption" act and then walk away with a clean slate?

Why should he be allowed to do that?

Sophie suddenly felt trapped. Whatever she chose, it was wrong.

She was distracted all day. Even when Juniper called from Monaco, she barely heard a word.

The perceptive Thomas and Timothy quickly noticed her anxiety.

That evening, after dinner, Thomas and Timothy ran to Sophie's side.

Thomas immediately noticed the manila envelope Sophie had casually left on the nightstand. Timothy followed his gaze and noticed it too.

"Mommy, what's this?" Timothy asked curiously, reaching out to touch it.

"Don't touch it." Sophie instinctively pulled the envelope away and hid it behind her back, looking uneasy.

Her reaction only made the children more curious.

Thomas tilted his head, his dark eyes fixed on her. "Mommy, you've been unhappy all day. Is it because of this?"

Sophie's heart skipped a beat.

Just then, two nurses' hushed conversation drifted in from the hallway.

"Did you hear? Mr. Brown, who had been moved out of the ICU, is giving all his assets and shares to Ms. Scott."

"Really? That's half of the Brown Group! And he's giving up custody of the children too. Isn't that basically leaving with nothing?"

"Exactly. I wonder what Mr. Brown owes Ms. Scott that would make him do this. He's cutting himself out of Ms. Scott's life..."

The voices faded away, but phrases like "leaving with nothing" and "giving up everything" still seemed to hang in the room.

Thomas's little body went rigid.

He linked it to Sophie's strange behavior all day and the manila envelope she was hiding behind her back.

In an instant, fear seized him.

Thomas's little face instantly lost all color, and his big eyes quickly filled with tears.

He rushed to Sophie, his voice trembling with pure childhood terror.

"Mommy!"

"Is what the nurses said true?"

He pointed at the envelope behind Sophie's back and asked through tears, "Is... is Daddy going to be abandoned?"

The word "abandoned," so direct and final, stabbed at Sophie's heart.

Timothy didn't fully understand yet, but seeing Thomas cry, he caught on and started crying too.

"I don't want Daddy to leave! Daddy... maybe he did something wrong before, but he got hurt saving Uncle Steve!"

"He's a good person! Mommy, you can't abandon him!"

Timothy and Thomas's heartbreaking cries completely shattered Sophie's defenses.

For the first time, she clearly realized that the grudge between her and Benjamin was no longer just between two adults.

In the children's world, their father was a hero who had been hurt saving a loved one.

And she had become the bad person who wanted to "abandon" the hero.

This incident eventually reached Benjamin's ears.

From that day on, he changed completely.

Benjamin no longer looked at her with that mix of pleading and pain in his eyes.

He became polite and distant.

He could stay up all night on video conferences with Steve, calmly coordinating a global network to track down Alfonso, his voice steady and his logic sharp.

He could also patiently play chess with Timothy and Thomas, tell them stories, and meet every little request they made.

Only when facing Sophie would he politely nod in acknowledgment, then silently look away.

He never mentioned the agreement again.

He accepted his role as an "outsider," quietly waiting to recover, fulfill his final duties, and then leave.

This feeling of being completely shut out made Sophie's chest feel unbearably tight.

More painful than arguments and cold wars was this polite distance.

The children were the most sensitive to the wall built by this politeness.

Timothy no longer spontaneously shared interesting things. Thomas kept watching Sophie and Benjamin with worried eyes.

They even tried to play peacemaker, carefully telling Sophie, "Mommy, Daddy's wound seems to hurt again."

Sophie didn't know what to do about it. She could only stiffly say, "I know," and cut the conversation short.

One night, Thomas suddenly developed a high fever.

When Colt came to give a work report, Thomas accidentally saw a cliff rescue video on his tablet.

The images of landslides and cars plunging off cliffs turned into nightmares he couldn't shake.

"Daddy! Don't fall! Daddy!"

Thomas cried out miserably in his dream, his small body shaking violently under the covers, his forehead burning hot.

The family doctor diagnosed it as high fever convulsions triggered by acute stress disorder.

Physical cooling and fever medicine had little effect. The child was delirious with fever but stubbornly kept calling out, "Want Daddy... want Mommy... we need to be together..."

Sophie had no choice but to have the nurses wheel Benjamin's hospital bed into the children's room.

Despite the tearing pain in his back wound, Benjamin forced himself to sit up halfway and pulled his burning son into his arms.

"Thomas, don't be afraid. Daddy's here."

He soothed Thomas over and over in a hoarse, off-key voice.

He told Thomas stories about Ultraman fighting monsters and hummed a tone-deaf "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," trying to give him a greater sense of security.

Thomas gradually stopped crying in his arms. Though still sobbing, the little hand clutching Benjamin's collar never let go.

Sophie stood in the shadows of the room, quietly watching it all.

She watched Benjamin exhaust himself for Thomas, his face paler than paper, his lips completely bloodless.

She watched Thomas's most instinctive dependence on and trust in Benjamin during his nightmare.

The high wall she had built with five years of hatred groaned under the weight at that moment.

Then it came crashing down.

Sophie could no longer control herself and rushed out of the room.

She hid at the end of the deserted nighttime hallway, covering her mouth tightly and letting the tears she'd suppressed for too long pour out, crying until her whole body shook.

Steve appeared behind her at some point and gently laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Steve..." Sophie turned around, her eyes blurred with tears, her voice choked. "I hate him... I really hate him."

"But..." She covered her heart, where the pain made it almost impossible to breathe.

"Just now, all I could think about was being afraid he wouldn't hold on."

Her hatred for Benjamin was real.

Her fear of him dying was also real.

These two extreme emotions had been tearing her heart apart for five years.

Tonight, she finally fell apart.