Chapter 116
Emily Windsor's POV
Shirley's meticulously maintained face instantly frosted over.
Watching her son openly defy her, she trembled with rage, her lips quivering as she slammed her teacup down on the table with a sharp crack.
"You've lost your mind! Lawrence, you've completely lost your mind!" she shrieked, her long-cultivated aristocratic authority fracturing under her fury. "For some trashy nobody, you dare contradict your own mother! Do you have any respect left for this family?"
Lawrence remained utterly unmoved.
He simply pulled me deeper behind him, those sinister peach-blossom eyes now resembling two unfathomable frozen abysses, coldly staring back at his mother.
"My woman is none of your concern." He curled his lips into a smile devoid of warmth, brimming instead with warning and provocation. "Why don't you worry more about which of your bridge partners lost money this time?"
Without giving Shirley any chance to respond, he gripped my wrist like an iron shackle and forcibly dragged me out of that suffocating sitting room.
Occasional guests in the corridor caught sight of our confrontational state and wisely averted their eyes.
He hauled me along, through the gilded hallway, finally shoving me roughly onto a deserted terrace.
He slammed the glass door shut behind us, cutting off all the clamor from the ballroom.
The night breeze was cool, lifting the hem of my black gown, yet I felt nothing but bone-deep cold.
Lawrence pinned me hard against the ornate balustrade, trapping me in the narrow space between his body and the railing.
"What did you say to my mother?" He leaned down, his handsome face particularly sinister in the moonlight, each word grinding through clenched teeth.
The fragile spark of hope for escape that had just ignited was now crushed by his own hand. All that remained in my heart was a desolate wasteland of ashes.
I lifted my gaze to meet his scrutinizing stare and pulled my lips into a weary, mocking smile.
"What do you think?" I countered. "Nothing more than the usual elite family drama. She thinks I'm beneath you, that I'm an embarrassment, so she wanted to pay me off."
My candor seemed to catch him off guard, though the suspicion never left his eyes. He moved closer still, his warm breath mixed with alcohol washing over my face, making my stomach churn violently.
"And what did you say?"
"I said," I deliberately paused, savoring the brief flash of impatience in his eyes before continuing slowly, "the price wasn't right."
This half-truth successfully ignited his fury.
The last shred of patience in Lawrence's eyes burned away completely, replaced by undisguised rage and desire.
"Emily, you're playing me again."
The next second, he seized the back of my head, his face radiating aggressive intensity as he pressed down hard toward me.
Acting purely on instinct, I summoned every ounce of strength and slapped him hard across the face.
The crisp sound rang particularly sharp in the silent terrace.
Lawrence's head snapped to the side from the impact, a vivid red mark rapidly surfacing on his handsome profile. He clearly hadn't expected me to strike him, not in this situation.
"Lawrence, stop going insane!" I stared at him, my chest heaving violently, my voice trembling with fury and humiliation.
He slowly turned his head back, running his tongue over his swollen cheek. Those beautiful peach-blossom eyes had lost all trace of amusement or mockery, leaving only the kind of apocalyptic malevolence that comes from touching a dragon's reverse scale.
He suddenly grabbed my jaw in a crushing grip, the force nearly fracturing my mandible as he compelled me to meet his gaze.
"Me going insane?" He laughed lowly, the sound laden with cruel savagery. "Emily, are you still thinking about your dead boyfriend? Still believing he's alive, that he'll come play hero and rescue you?"
My heart seized violently, as if gripped by an invisible fist.
"Still counting on that idiot Lily to help you?" Lawrence's eyes grew increasingly deranged. He relished the terrified expression on my face as he spat out the most venomous curse: "Let me tell you—stop dreaming."
He leaned close to my ear, his tone becoming a demonic whisper as he enunciated each word with crystalline clarity: "Luke was already blown to bits ages ago. Oh, and his dear sister Lily—a few days ago she had a little car accident. Went straight into the Hudson River, car and all. They still haven't fished her out."
"I don't believe you!" I practically screamed, all the blood in my body seeming to drain in that instant, my limbs turning ice-cold as if plunged into a frozen lake. "You're lying! Lawrence, you're a liar!"
"Lying?" He sneered, his eyes brimming with triumphant satisfaction. "Emily, feel free not to believe me. But Lily hasn't contacted you in three days, has she? Do you really think, given how much she cares about Luke, she'd disappear without reason for this long?"
My mind went completely blank except for a buzzing in my ears.
Lily... she truly hadn't sent any word for three days. I'd assumed it was because Lawrence's surveillance was too tight, that she couldn't find an opening.
"It was you... you did this!" I glared at him with blood-red eyes, tears of blood seeming to stream from them. "Lawrence, you monster!"
"So what if I did?" He shrugged indifferently, though his fingers tightened even more cruelly around my jaw. "I told you long ago—anyone who betrays me meets a bad end. Now you don't have a single person left to help you, Emily. What right do you have to defy me?"
My world collapsed utterly into ruins in that moment.
Lily was dead.
Those words were like a poison-laced blade, carving out another piece of flesh from my already shredded heart.
It was me. I dragged her into this nightmare. I got her killed.
Overwhelming hatred and crushing despair swallowed me whole. I couldn't even feel how cold the balustrade pressed against my back was, couldn't hear the howling night wind in my ears.
I simply stared at Lawrence with those blood-weeping eyes, burning with a madness that sought mutual destruction.
Our commotion finally drew attention.
Several young men holding wine glasses emerged from the shadows nearby. They'd clearly witnessed that slap in its entirety.
"Well, well, if it isn't Mr. Lowe. Getting physical with your own woman at a family gala? How utterly ungentlemanly." The leader spoke with heavy sarcasm, his gaze toward Lawrence brimming with schadenfreude before shifting to me with instant hostility and contempt.
"Lawrence, your taste is really questionable. Making such a mess with your family over this piece of trouble—is she really worth it?" Another man joined in the mockery. They looked at me as if I were merely an object causing discord, their eyes filled with disdain.