Chapter 266: Meeting Vivian

Aria didn't know where she had seen the news, didn't know how all this had happened, and didn't know why she was here meeting her face to face.

She just stood there, looking at Jessica, her lips trembling uncontrollably.

"Jessica." Her voice was soft, so soft it seemed to be separated by a layer of dream, "You are my daughter. You've always been my daughter."

Jessica looked at her, tears streaming down continuously. She wanted to walk over, but her legs felt so weak they wouldn't obey, unable to take a single step forward.

She stood there, looking at Aria, as if looking at a dream lost and found again.

Joseph supported her, walking step by step toward Aria. Aria reached out her hands, cupping Jessica's face. Her thumbs slowly moved back and forth across Jessica's cheeks, as if confirming her warmth, confirming she was a real person and not some cruel illusion.

"I saw the news." Aria's voice was shaking, "They said you were Jeremy's biological daughter. I was so stupid. I should have realized long ago that you must be my daughter. Back then your father said you were adopted from an orphanage, said your biological parents didn't want you, said you were the one he found among all the children who looked most like our daughter. I believed it all. I didn't dare acknowledge you, didn't dare get truly close to you, didn't dare treat you well, because I felt that if I was good to you, I would be abandoning her." Her tears fell, "But you are her. You are my daughter. I've been doing the cruelest thing to you all along."

Jessica suddenly threw herself into her arms, crying so hard her whole body was shaking.

Aria held her tightly, with such force as if loosening even slightly would make her disappear from her embrace again.

More than twenty years had passed.

She had waited for more than twenty years, been tortured for more than twenty years, trapped in loss and guilt for more than twenty years.

She had always thought her daughter was lost forever, thought she would never have a chance to find her in this lifetime, thought she could only pour all her longing and regret onto a girl who "looked a lot like her."

But that girl had been her daughter all along.

Meanwhile.

When Benjamin woke up, the lights in the hospital room weren't on. The curtains were drawn, leaving only a sliver of hallway light seeping in through the crack under the door. That thin line of light stretched from the threshold all the way to the foot of his bed, like a cold knife cutting the darkness in half.

He lay there with his eyes open, motionless, staring at the shadows on the ceiling.

Those shadows pressed heavily against the ceiling, showing a deep color that seemed about to overflow, as if they had taken on a life of their own.

Whenever someone passed by in the hallway, footsteps moving from far to near and then far again, the shadows would tremble slightly, as if something was curled up in the darkness, slowly crawling, breathing, waiting.

He lay in the darkness for a long time.

So long that the last footsteps in the hallway completely disappeared, the light under the door went out too, so long that the entire room seemed sealed in a closed black box, and even the air began to thicken.

Then he sat up.

His wrist was still wrapped in gauze, beneath which were the teeth marks left by that little girl.

He looked down at the scabbed wound, pressed it with his finger—no pain.

Or rather, he could no longer feel pain.

From the moment those memories came flooding back into his mind, it was as if he had been violently uprooted from his original life, and his pain nerves had been severed along with it.

Physical pain, emotional pain—all of it retreated into the distance, like watching a fire through a thick, hard layer of glass that had nothing to do with him. No matter how bright those flames were, they couldn't burn him.

He had completely become another person.

He pulled out the IV needle from his hand, tore off the electrode patches from his chest and body, threw back the covers, and stepped barefoot onto the floor.

The floor was cold and hard, the chill creeping up from the soles of his feet bit by bit.

He stood in the darkness, standing until his body completely adapted to this shell that had returned to his control, and until something buried deep in his bones was slowly awakened and unfolded again.

What came back from his previous life wasn't just picture-like memories, but also the abilities he once possessed.

He walked to the window and pulled open the curtains.

Outside was still pitch black, no stars visible, no moon either, only a faint line of light at the edge of the distant city. He stood by the window, looking at that lonely light, his lips slowly curving into a very faint smile.

That smile was so faint it could almost be ignored. If you only looked at his mouth, you'd think his emotions were calm, even somewhat gentle.

But if anyone stood beside him, they would immediately feel a chill down their spine—because there was no trace of a smile in his eyes. Those eyes were so deep you couldn't see the bottom, containing only something cold to the extreme, like shadows crawling up from the deepest part of hell.

The next day, he left the hospital.

He just walked straight out, still wearing his hospital gown, nothing on his feet, swaggering right out the hospital entrance.

The security guard raised his hand to stop him. Benjamin looked up at the guard, and that broad-shouldered, sturdy man suddenly seemed bound by invisible chains, frozen in place, unable to move even a finger, until Benjamin's figure disappeared around the street corner.

For the next three days, Benjamin locked himself in his villa.

He didn't go out, didn't see anyone, didn't answer calls. The curtains stayed tightly drawn from morning to night, the door was locked from inside, the entire house quiet as a tomb that had just been sealed.

What he did inside, no one knew.

Only when he appeared again, he had lost a lot of weight, his cheekbones protruding, eye sockets sunken, but those eyes were brighter than before, bright to the point of being somewhat dangerous, like two flames burned to the highest temperature.

The first thing he did after leaving the villa was to start trading again.

In his previous life, he had followed Nathan for so many years—he knew every loophole, every gap, every weak point that could be breached in the Jones Group.

He knew exactly when to buy in, when to sell, when to release information to muddy the waters, when to close the net and take the chips.

Those seasoned judgments didn't belong to him in this life, but in this life he possessed something else—memories from his past life, so clear it was as if he had just lived through them yesterday.

He made nearly a billion dollars in the stock market in less than a week.

Every move he made was calculated with extreme precision, as if he was simply following a game plan that had already been laid out, with an unchangeable outcome.

Every person who appeared on the other side betting against him was an old opponent he had dealt with in his previous life. Their weaknesses, their bottom lines, when they would break, when they would admit defeat and leave—he knew it all clearly.

When Nathan called, Benjamin was sitting in his study, with the ownership transfer documents for the Colosseum spread out before him. Vivian had already signed and stamped it; only his signature remained in the last column.

"What are you doing?" Nathan's voice was heavy, as if deliberately suppressing his temper. "You left the hospital without even telling me?"

"I'm busy."

"Busy with what?"

Benjamin didn't answer.

He picked up his pen and signed his name on the ownership transfer document.

The sound of the pen tip dragging across the paper was soft, like fine metal cutting an invisible seam in the paper.

"Benjamin, I'm talking to you."

"I heard you." Benjamin put down the pen and closed the document. "Do you have anything else?"

Silence on the other end of the phone.

Nathan probably wasn't used to this attitude from him.

The old Benjamin had always been carefully pleasing in front of him, even if he wished Nathan would drop dead, he would maintain an obedient, compliant expression on his face.

But now, that disguise was gone.

"Have you run into some trouble lately?" Nathan's voice lowered a bit, with a hint of probing that even he himself hadn't noticed.

"No." Benjamin hung up directly.

The Colosseum had completely fallen into his hands.

After the ownership transfer document was signed, Vivian no longer had any chips left to hold.

Benjamin had roughly guessed what Vivian wanted to do after his rebirth, but he still chose to accept it all.

It's just that if there hadn't been such deep hatred between them, Vivian could have walked away perfectly.

But at this critical moment, Benjamin had completely regained his memories from his previous life.