Chapter 227 Retribution
The shop was quiet, with only the old fan creaking overhead.
Cecilia looked at Stefan in front of her.
This was the first time he had so openly exposed his family's wounds in front of her.
Those weren't just Dione's wounds—they were his too.
After a long while, Cecilia gently put down her spoon.
"I'm a woman too," she began, her voice soft. "I can imagine how terrified and suspicious a woman would become after going through all that."
"But that doesn't mean I can immediately forgive what she said to me. Being humiliated like that—of course I feel hurt, of course I'm angry."
Cecilia's gaze was clear and firm.
"But I won't hold it against someone who's sick."
"Dione is ill, very ill. I'll treat her as a PTSD patient who needs help, not as a vicious woman deliberately targeting me."
These words made Stefan's tense shoulders instantly relax.
He looked at Cecilia, complex and burning emotions surging in his eyes.
She was always like this...
Able to ruthlessly punish enemies, yet also able to understand pain with complete clarity.
"You..."
Stefan wanted to say something, but it only turned into a low laugh.
"Eat up, the clam chowder's getting cold."
He picked up his spoon, scooped up a clam, blew on it, and put it in his mouth.
But his eyes never left Cecilia across from him.
When the phone vibrated, Cecilia was sitting on the balcony trimming a nearly dead pothos plant.
It was an unknown number.
"Who is this?"
"This is Suburban Third Psychiatric Hospital."
The emotionless voice on the other end delivered what sounded like a death notice. "Patient Blair Ember in bed 201 was confirmed dead at 4:03 AM. Cause of death was cardiac arrest triggered by multiple organ failure."
A withered yellow leaf fell onto the tiles.
Cecilia said nothing.
She didn't even stop what she was doing, just changed angles and continued trimming the next branch.
The person on the other end seemed surprised by her silence. After a few seconds' pause, they added, "Someone specifically instructed us that if you answered the phone, we must notify you immediately. They said... they wanted you to come see her one last time."
Rufus.
No one else would do something so pointless.
He probably thinks that killing Blair proves something to me. Or maybe he wants to use that corpse to intimidate me—look, this is what happens to those who betray and deceive me.
"Got it." Cecilia tossed the scissors into the toolbox with a sharp clang of metal. "Send me the address."
She wasn't some saint—she had her own selfish motives and dark side too.
Cecilia did want to go see... what had become of Blair, that once-arrogant socialite of the Ember family who had trampled her in the mud.
Suburban Third Psychiatric Hospital was in a remote location, surrounded by wasteland, with only crows cawing in dead tree branches. The air was thick with the lingering smell of disinfectant mixed with an old, moldy stench that made your stomach turn.
The morgue was on basement level two.
The staff member leading the way was a sallow-faced middle-aged man carrying a large ring of keys, shuffling along with his shoes scraping the floor in an ear-piercing noise.
"Right here."
He pointed at morgue drawer number 3, not even bothering to reach out and pull it. "Don't know why that person wanted you to come see this, but the body... it's pretty bad. You should prepare yourself."
Cecilia walked over, gripped the cold stainless steel handle, and pulled.
She lifted the white sheet.
Even though she was mentally prepared, the sight before her was physically disturbing.
Before her eyes was a shriveled, curled-up corpse, skin stretched tight over bones, showing a strange grayish-pale color covered with a network of purple-blue veins.
Dead Blair's mouth gaped wide open, her jawbone severely twisted, her cloudy eyes bulging out, frozen in a moment of extreme terror.
All ten of her fingers were broken, her nails full of plaster and blood from clawing at walls.
This was CPH4.
It didn't just burn through life—it amplified pain countless times over.
Blair must have suffered a lot before she died.
Cecilia stood there, looking down at this face that was both familiar and strange.
Strange.
She felt no wild joy of revenge fulfilled, no sorrow of shared fate.
Not even the slightest ripple stirred in her heart.
She was like someone looking at a dead rat crushed by a car wheel on the roadside—feeling nothing but disgust, nothing more.
"I used to think if I could watch her die with my own eyes, I'd be too happy to sleep," Cecilia murmured to herself. "Turns out, it's nothing special."
Blair had died too easily.
Compared to the torment I suffered in the flames in my past life, compared to Patrick's despair when he was driven to death, what did Blair's little bit of pain amount to?
"Um..." The staff member rubbed his hands beside her, clearly not wanting to stay here any longer. "What should we do with this body? No family came to claim it. The higher-ups said if you don't care, we'll just take it to the crematorium and burn it as an unclaimed body."
Cecilia took out her phone, aimed it at that twisted, grotesque face, adjusted the focus, and pressed the shutter.
The image froze.
"Burn it. Throw it wherever."
Cecilia put away her phone, turned and walked out, her high heels echoing in the empty corridor.
"I'm Amelia, not Cecilia."
She tossed out a line without looking back. "Cecilia's sister died—what does that have to do with me?"
Outside the hospital entrance, the sunlight was a bit blinding.
Cecilia squinted and raised her hand to hail a taxi.
"Driver, to the city detention center."
Blair was dead, but Brad was still alive.
If Brad, who doted on Blair, found out this news, the expression on his face would surely be quite something.
With Stefan's arrangements, Cecilia's visitation procedures went unusually smoothly.
In the visiting room, separated by thick bulletproof glass, Cecilia saw Brad, who used to be well-dressed and powerful in Harmony City's business world.
Compared to their last meeting, he had aged more than ten years.
His head had been shaved, revealing scalp with several suspicious bruises. The prison uniform that should have fit hung loosely on him, and his exposed wrists showed obvious burn marks and ligature marks.
Looks like Rufus really was "taking care of" Brad.
Brad kept his head down, his body trembling slightly beyond his control, mumbling something incoherently, until Cecilia sat down across from him and tapped on the glass.
"Mr. Ember, long time no see."
Hearing the voice, Brad jerked his head up.
The instant he saw the face across from him clearly, he was so frightened his whole body shook violently, jumping up from his chair and pressing his back hard against the wall corner.
"Don't come near... don't come near!"
He shouted hoarsely, his eyeballs bloodshot from extreme fear. "Cecilia! It's you... you're a ghost... you've come for my life!"
Amelia's face bore a sixty to seventy percent resemblance to Cecilia's.
Combined with this demeanor, it was enough to terrify Brad, whose mental state was on the verge of collapse.