Chapter 43
Chapter 43
Clara’s POV
Arthur’s face darkened. It wasn’t calm darkness, but the kind forced down after being publicly confronted with something he couldn’t refute. He tried to speak again. “Clara, you misunderstood what I meant. I was saying—”
“I understand exactly what you meant, Dad,” I cut in. “You’re implying that I should prescribe a little extra medication for you and Monica? Fine. For the sake of our father-daughter relationship, I’ll even take a loss and prescribe you three years’ worth while only charging you for two—are you satisfied now?”
As soon as those words fell, a few guests nearby couldn’t help but laugh softly.
Those few laughs acted like a fuse, and whispers quickly spread through the banquet hall.
I stood still and took in those voices from the corner of my eye.
One woman lowered her voice, but in the quiet room every word landed clearly. “Now I remember. The ‘Monica’ Ms. Bennett mentioned should be Arthur’s current wife, right? I heard that when she married Arthur, their illegitimate daughter was already in high school.”
Another picked up immediately. “That’s right, that whole scandal. It caused quite a stir back then. This Mrs. Bennett was the third party who broke up someone else’s marriage. Iris is the child from that affair.”
“I’ve never heard Arthur mention that he has an older daughter. Is he trying to use this Ms. Bennett from Gloria Nguyen’s medical team to prop up Bennett Corporation?”
“Arthur really knows how to scheme—using his younger daughter’s relationship with Mr. Voss for benefits, then turning around and exploiting his older daughter’s connections for profit. Shameless.”
I listened without letting my expression change.
Then I heard Nora Khan’s voice. She didn’t lower it very much, but it was enough for everyone nearby to hear. “Now I remember. I played cards with Monica a few times, and she told me Arthur’s older daughter was a useless good-for-nothing, bad at school, and later went abroad just to loaf around. Monica said she worried herself sick over that stepdaughter, but the girl was hopeless.”
She paused. “But looking at Ms. Bennett now, how is she anything like that? Her achievements clearly far surpass those of her younger half-sister, who only got where she is by getting pregnant.”
Arthur stood at the center of those remarks, his face darkening layer by layer until he could no longer hide it. He turned toward me with a livid expression.
“Clara, I’m your father. Don’t take this too far.” He lowered his voice, but he couldn’t suppress the tremor in it. “What kind of daughter curses her own father to get sick? That’s a terrible act of unfilial disrespect—don’t you understand that?”
I let out a cold laugh.
Ever since the day he had driven my mother to her death for Monica’s sake, I had already erased any father-daughter bond in my heart. Standing here now, using that title and saying those words, he stirred not anger in me, but a total, icy contempt.
I looked him straight in the eye. “You never fulfilled your responsibilities as a father. What right do you have to demand my respect?”
“Dad, let me advise you—go home and take care of your Bennett Corporation. As for everything else, don’t even think about it. Let me make myself clear: don’t imagine for a second that you can get any benefit from me, or from anyone connected to me.”
“Of course, if some blind fool decides to invest in your company, that’s their business and has nothing to do with me. But no matter what happens, neither I nor Gloria Nguyen’s medical team will ever cover for you or Bennett Corporation.”
“I’ve said what I came to say.”
I turned to leave.
This night had already been disrupted enough. I didn’t want to stay here one second longer.
But the moment I took my first step, I felt movement behind me. I instinctively tried to turn aside, but I wasn’t fast enough.
Arthur’s palm struck my face. It wasn’t a light blow. It sent me stumbling sideways a step.
In that instant, every sound in the banquet hall vanished.
I steadied myself, turned my face back, and met his eyes.
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Kael’s POV
I stood on the other side of the hall and saw everything clearly.
From the moment Clara entered the banquet hall, my eyes had never fully left her. It wasn’t deliberate. It was an instinctive pull I couldn’t control—there was something about the way she stood among the crowd that I couldn’t quite put into words. It had something to do with beauty, but it was more than beauty.
I had seen too many women move effortlessly through settings like this. They knew how to smile, knew what to say to make others comfortable, knew how to place themselves advantageously in a crowd. Clara did all of those things too, but not in the same way as those women. She wasn’t performing. She was real.
Then Arthur walked in, and I saw her expression change. It was a kind of restrained coldness I recognized, as though she were suppressing something from beginning to end beneath her skin.
I listened as she said those words, listened as the whispers spread through the banquet hall one by one, and compared the things Iris had told me about Clara against the facts unfolding right in front of me.
Iris had said Clara was ungrateful, morally corrupt, and utterly disrespectful to her parents.
But standing here, what I saw was a father brandishing his daughter’s name all over the business world, while that daughter stood there drawing a clear boundary—not to humiliate him, but because she had to protect the reputation she had spent years building.
In my mind, I crossed out Iris’s words one by one.
Then I saw Arthur’s hand rise and strike Clara across the face.
It was a hard blow.
I felt my hand clench. It was instinctive, a reaction completed before my mind had even caught up.
I started forward, crossing through the crowd toward Arthur.
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