Chapter 164: This Is Your Retribution
Stella cut her off.
"You say you love Allen?" Stella curled her lips into a sharp, mocking smile. "Then whose bastard are you carrying right now?"
The rooftop went dead silent.
The reporters exchanged glances. The comment stream in the live broadcast froze for a second.
Irene's face drained of color instantly. Her body gave a violent shudder, and she instinctively pressed both hands over her stomach.
"You — you're talking nonsense! I'm not pregnant!" Irene shrieked, her voice cracking from pure guilt.
Stella didn't give her a second to breathe. She raised her hand, spoke one word into the walkie-talkie behind her. "Play it."
The next second, every reporter's live-streaming phone screen flickered black.
Then the live feeds were forcibly cut, replaced by a segment of high-definition security footage.
The setting was the living room of Atticus's suburban apartment.
In the video, Irene was wearing nothing but a black lace bra and underwear, her chest pressed against Atticus's shirt.
She was straddling his lap, arms wrapped around his neck, her body squirming restlessly.
Her soft, flirtatious voice came through clearly near his ear. "Daddy, I don't want to marry that lunatic Miles. I'm carrying your baby. We can take the money and disappear together — just the three of us, start a real life. Can we?"
Then Atticus's cold voice followed. "You're nothing but a pet I pay to keep. The only thing that baby is worth right now is helping you lock down the position of Miles's wife and getting my five million back."
The clip ended. The screen shifted immediately.
Dozens of explicit photos began cycling through the live feed one after another.
Irene and her foster father Atticus, tangled together in bed. The images were stomach-turning.
A few seconds later, the reporters lost it completely.
This was a massive scandal. A foster daughter sleeping with her foster father, getting pregnant, and trying to pass the baby off on Miles.
Every camera swung around and locked onto Irene's face.
"Ms. Palmer! Is the man in that video your foster father, Atticus?"
"You're pregnant by your own foster father and you were trying to trick Miles into marrying you?"
"You just said you love Allen — so what were you thinking when you were sleeping with your foster father?"
The questions came like blows, one after another.
The live chat had completely exploded. The whole internet was watching this disgusting incest scandal unfold in real time.
Every person who had been attacking Stella moments ago had already turned and was tearing Irene apart.
Irene snapped.
She lunged at the reporters, throwing her hands in front of their cameras, screaming like a woman unraveling. "Stop filming! Turn it off! It's fake! Stella made it up! Don't believe her!"
Nobody listened.
Stella watched her fall apart with cold, steady eyes.
She had dug up the whole ugly story between Irene and Atticus a long time ago. She hadn't planned to drag it out this publicly — but Irene had walked right into it herself. So be it.
Irene was already on the edge. She had a serious threat of miscarriage, and she had ripped her own IV out at the hospital and run out just a short while ago.
Then she let out a piercing scream.
"Ahh!"
Irene clutched her stomach, her legs buckled, and she dropped hard onto the rough concrete ground.
A thick, iron smell of blood spread through the air.
Dark red blood poured down the inside of her thighs, quickly soaking through the gray hospital pants, spreading across the seams in the concrete — a sight that turned the stomach.
"My stomach — it hurts so much — help me —" Irene writhed in the pool of blood, cold sweat and tears streaming down her face, both hands covered in red.
The reporters around her stumbled back in shock. No one moved to help her. They just kept shooting, capturing every moment of her complete collapse.
Stella walked toward her, heels striking the ground with each step.
She looked down at the woman twisting in agony on the floor. "Does it hurt?"
Irene's vision was blurring from the pain. All she could do was fix her eyes on the tips of Stella's shoes.
"When you bribed the housekeeper to slip a neurotoxin into Jared's milk — when you were trying to turn a three-year-old child into a vegetable — did you stop to think about how much that would hurt him?"
Stella stared down at her, pulling the last of it into the open. "This is what you deserve."
Ambulance sirens wailed from the base of the building.
Paramedics rushed onto the rooftop and lifted Irene — soaked in blood — onto a stretcher.
Stella stood where she was, looking at the blood on the ground.
She felt nothing close to pity.
Only relief.
---
At the hospital.
Irene lay in the bed, everything below her waist completely numb.
The doctor told her the baby was gone. And because of the hemorrhage, she would never be able to get pregnant again.
She stared at the white ceiling and listened to the nurses whispering in the hallway. They were all talking about her — about the scandal with her foster father.
The video had spread everywhere.
She was finished.
Not just her reputation. What terrified her even more was what Stella had said out loud — about poisoning Jared.
That was a serious criminal charge.
If the police came for her, she would spend the rest of her life in prison.
Fear wrapped itself around her throat and squeezed.
Irene ripped the IV needle out of the back of her hand.
She didn't even stop for shoes. She grabbed a coat from the chair beside her, waited until the nurse looked away, and slipped out through the hospital's back door.
She couldn't go back to her apartment. She couldn't contact anyone.
She moved like a fugitive, fleeing under cover of darkness to the farthest edge of the city — a run-down slum — where she rented a filthy basement room that asked for no ID, and hid.
---
The next day.
Atticus paced back and forth in his apartment, barely holding himself together.
Irene wasn't picking up her phone. He went to the hospital to find her, and a nurse told him the patient had already left on her own.
Atticus knew perfectly well that once that video went public, he had become the laughingstock of the entire city. But what scared him more was the thought of Irene getting arrested.
That stupid woman — the moment she cracked under questioning, she would give up everything. Every dirty job he had ever put her up to.
To protect himself, Atticus decided to strike first.
He walked straight into the downtown police station, slammed his hands on the desk, and shouted. "I want to file a report! Stella kidnapped my daughter! She hid Irene to get back at us!"
---
Two hours later.
Two officers walked through the front door of the AURE studio.
Stella was at her desk reviewing documents. She looked up when the officers came in, and she wasn't surprised.
"Ms. Carter, Mr. Atticus has filed a report alleging that you illegally detained and abducted his foster daughter, Irene. We need you to cooperate with our investigation." The lead officer kept his tone strictly professional.
Stella leaned back in her chair and let out a short laugh.
Atticus had absolutely no shame. He had been the one to push his own foster daughter to the breaking point — and now he had the nerve to come in here and play the victim.
"Officers," she said, "do you really think I would bother kidnapping a woman who's been all over the internet for getting pregnant by her own foster father?"