Chapter 199

Chapter 199

Marlowe kept repeating herself, going over the same few lines again and again.

But the more she did, the more guilty she looked.

No one in the room believed her.

Lester stood there listening to her weak excuses, his expression slowly shifting from anger to something closer to a cold sneer.

That sneer looked particularly harsh on his weathered face, his mouth twisted to one side, showing a row of tobacco-stained teeth.

He didn't rush to argue back. Instead, he slowly reached into his inner jacket pocket and felt around for a moment. "Don't know me? Then how do you explain these photos?"

He flipped through the photos one by one in front of everyone.

He walked up to Marlowe and shoved the phone right in her face. "Look at this. Look. You still want to say you don't know me?"

Marlowe's face had gone beyond pale.

Her lips trembled violently, her eyes darting around as she desperately searched for some excuse that might hold up, but her mind was completely blank.

She stumbled over her words, her voice barely audible.

"What is that? That's when you and I were together — don't tell me you've actually forgotten?"

He bent down and moved close to her face.

Close enough that she could smell the mix of sweat, cigarettes, and construction dust on his clothes. Close enough to see the lines of an old scar at the corner of his eye.

"You told me you weren't happy with the Tudor family. You said Brent didn't care about you, that Henry was difficult, that you were lonely—"

"Shut up!"

She finally found her voice, but it came out hoarse and broken — less like a command, more like a plea.

Tears welled up in her eyes. Not tears of hurt feelings, but the kind that come from being stripped bare in front of everyone, with nowhere to hide.

"Shut your mouth. You're making things up. You're slandering me!"

"Slandering you?"

Lester straightened up and held the phone high, turning it toward everyone in the room.

"Look for yourselves. Is that her or not? Marlowe, you say I'm slandering you — so what, these photos are fake? I had someone doctor them?"

Marlowe shot to her feet. She reached out and shoved at him, trying to grab the phone out of his hand. "Give me that! Give it to me!"

"You want to take it? Go ahead, try. Won't do you any good. I've got backups. I'm telling you, Marlowe — I've backed everything up in over a dozen places."

"Even if you smash my phone today, even if you beat me to death right here, those photos will still show up online tomorrow. You want me to keep quiet? What exactly are you going to offer me?"

At those words, Marlowe finally stopped. The fight drained out of her all at once, and she swayed on her feet.

Then, somehow, Lester gave her a shove, and Marlowe stumbled forward.

In the chaos, a pair of hands reached out from behind and caught her.

Marlowe steadied herself, swaying a couple of times before finding her footing.

She didn't turn around.

Not because she didn't want to — because she didn't dare.

Because she already knew whose hands they were.

Henry was standing behind her, his arms still in the position of having caught her.

His face was expressionless. Those eyes of his, usually so warm, looked completely hollowed out.

Lester looked at Henry with no trace of guilt or fear — in fact, with a strange kind of brazenness.

The brazenness of someone from the bottom who has suddenly realized they hold power over someone at the top.

He waved the phone in his hand. The photo on the screen flashed for a moment, then went dark, reflecting his rough, sneering face.

"Mr. Tudor, you're a smart man, so I'll be straight with you."

His voice dropped a little from before — no longer that rough, shouting tone, but somehow even harder to stomach.

"You know in your own heart whose child your mother is carrying, don't you? Some things don't need to be spelled out. If I have to say it that plainly, it's going to be uncomfortable for everyone."

Henry didn't answer, but his hand on Marlowe's shoulder slowly tightened. His knuckles went white, his fingertips pressing into the fabric of her shoulder.

It hurt, but Marlowe didn't make a sound.

Because she knew that right now, anything she said would only make things worse.

Then Ryan, who had been sipping his coffee, cut in. "If Marlowe could have an affair, who knows what else might have been going on back then that we don't know about?"

He slowly lifted his gaze from his cup and let it rest on Marlowe's face for a moment, the corner of his mouth curving into the faintest smile.

Then his eyes drifted away, unhurried, and landed on Henry's face, where they stayed.

He didn't say anything more.

But the less he said, the more damage those words did.

Marlowe could have an affair — so what about Henry?

If Marlowe could carry on with a security guard and hide it from everyone for so long, what else might she have hidden?

Henry was born while Brent was still alive — but what did that really prove?

A woman who could keep a secret lover while living under the same roof as her husband — couldn't she just as easily have had other men?

So was it possible that Henry wasn't Brent's son either?

The expressions on several of the older relatives changed in an instant.

They looked at each other, their eyes complicated.

Shock. Suspicion. Dawning realization. And underneath it all, a barely concealed excitement that no one quite dared to voice first.

If there was really a question about Henry's birth, would the inheritance of the Tudor Group need to be reconsidered?

Maurice had always been the most impatient of them, never good at keeping things in. He opened his mouth, hesitated, opened it again, and finally couldn't hold back. "Henry, did your father ever say anything to you before he passed?"

The question was carefully worded, but the meaning was crystal clear.

Henry's expression darkened instantly.

He snapped his head up. "Maurice, what exactly are you implying?"

Maurice shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, looked away, and cleared his throat. "I'm just asking. No other meaning."

"No other meaning?"

His face flushed deep red. The veins at his temples stood out one by one. His eyes were shot through with red.

He let go of Marlowe's shoulder, stepped forward, and planted himself in the center of the room, facing every elder present.

"You're asking whether my father said anything to me before he died. Aren't you really asking whether I'm actually his son?"

Henry drew a slow breath and swept his gaze across every face in the room.

"I'm telling you all — I am Brent's son. The heir to the Tudor Group. Without question."

He turned, and his eyes landed on the one who had started all of this.

Ryan was still in his chair, legs crossed, turning his empty cup in his hand.

His expression hadn't changed once throughout any of this. A faint smile played at the corner of his mouth, his eyes slightly narrowed, like someone watching a performance that had nothing to do with him.

"Some people in this room — only they know what they're really after."

The words landed hard. Hard enough that several of the elders' expressions shifted.

This was a direct shot at Ryan — in front of everyone, accusing him of bad intentions.

But Ryan simply raised an eyebrow, and if anything, his smile deepened slightly, like someone who'd just heard a joke that wasn't very funny but felt obliged to acknowledge it.

"That's quite something, coming from you. I just asked a simple question out of curiosity, and now you're getting worked up. Anyone who didn't know better might think I'd hit a nerve."

Henry took a step forward, his clenched fist white at the knuckles.

Then someone moved.

Gloria walked over to Keith at an unhurried pace and stopped in front of him.

"Nobody wanted things to get this far today. But since they have, there's no point in hiding anything anymore. Better to just say it plainly."

Keith looked up at her, his gaze deep and unreadable, carrying a kind of scrutiny that was hard to pin down.

Gloria didn't flinch from it. She met his eyes, steady and composed.

"Everyone here knows you don't air family business in public. But the problem is, this can't be kept quiet anymore. If Lester could find his way here, someone else will come tomorrow, and reporters will be at the door the day after. Better to get ahead of it than to be caught off guard."

"We should sort this out ourselves, right now — acknowledge what needs to be acknowledged, deal with what needs to be dealt with, handle what needs to be handled."

"Behind closed doors, however we handle it is our business. But once it gets out, it's out of our hands. So I think this should be decided by the Tudor family itself."

Keith looked at her. Something complicated moved behind his eyes.

He had lived seventy-six years and seen plenty of smart people — and plenty of people who only thought they were smart.

Whether Gloria was genuinely looking out for the Tudor family or had her own agenda, he couldn't tell yet.

But at least right now, what she said made sense.

So he didn't press further. He simply nodded, and tapped his cane lightly on the floor.

Then he turned to Bianca, still on the ground. "We'll set everything else aside for now. But you clearly cannot remain part of the Tudor family."

"Everything the Tudor family has given you — the house, the car, the money, everything else — I want it all back. Every last bit."

Bianca's face went ashen, but faced with the Tudor family elders, she couldn't get a single word out. She could only cry in silence.

The other relatives chimed in one after another.

Their voices came at her from all sides, like a net closing in around her, tighter and tighter.

Bianca knelt on the floor, shaking all over, listening to those voices, her face white as paper.

Her tears had run dry. All that was left were her dry eyes, twitching over and over.

She wanted to say something — to defend herself, to beg them for mercy — but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.

Because she had no right to speak. From the day she first walked through the Tudor family's door, she had known that the same hands that smiled and gave her things also held the power to take them back.

She had nowhere to go. No way out.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Gloria.

Gloria was standing apart from the group, as if none of this had anything to do with her.

But her eyes.

Bianca didn't know why, but a bone-deep chill rose from somewhere inside her and spread all the way to her fingertips.

She couldn't shake the feeling that Gloria had been waiting for this day for a very long time.