When Tobias noticed that his mother seemed off, he approached her to tug on her shirt. “Mommy, are you crying again?”
So that she would not worry her child, Camelia quickly wiped her tears away and took a deep breath before turning around to smile at Tobias. “No, I’m fine.”
After embracing her child to assure him that she was okay, Camelia shifted her attention to me. “Scarlett.”
The woman’s tone was so stern that it stunned me for two seconds. “Yes?” I nodded at her to show her that she had gotten my full attention.
“You saw how Marcus is. Even though he never mentioned it, you and I both know that you’re the one he wants to see. It has always been you, so I hope you can come to visit him for the next few days. He may have the necessary medications to keep him alive, but that’s not all he needs. Marcus needs a reason to continue living, and you’re the only one who can give it to him. Will you help?” requested Camelia somewhat helplessly.
In response to that, I nodded hesitantly. “I should…”
“No,” interrupted Ashton suddenly before I could finish my sentence. Right there at the entrance stood the man with a cold visage.
Since he knew that Marcus had feelings for me, there was no way he would ever agree to let me see the man every day, even though the man only had very little time left.
Worried that Ashton would make a scene, I hurriedly darted over to calm him down. This is not the right place to have a heated discussion. Whatever it is that Ashton wants to say, it’ll have to wait until we get home.
After giving me a reassuring look and placing his hand firmly on my shoulder, Ashton turned to look at Camelia. “You’re almost as crafty as Marcus himself, so I would say that you two are a match made in heaven. If he fails to see that, it’s his loss.”
Somehow, what Ashton said to the woman sounded oddly puzzling, but before long, I realized that he was belittling Camelia.
The man had always been a gentleman, but when facing someone as unreasonable as Camelia, he would not hesitate to speak his mind.
“Mind your words,” I reminded Ashton because I did not want him to take his anger out on Camelia when Marcus was the one that he had a beef with.
“Tell me. Was I wrong?” Ashton continued to glare at the woman without even blinking. “You’re smart; I’ll give you that. You knew that Letty would never come here with you, so you deliberately requested that she meet you at the gate alone. You also knew that she was a softy. That’s why you fed her the sad stories.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Refusing to meet Ashton’s glare, Camelia quickly turned aside to avoid the man’s hostility.
To that, Ashton scoffed condescendingly before continuing, “Okay, let’s assume that you have no idea what the man’s been up to all these years just so I can tell you how unoriginal I find his schemes to be. That man is either pretending to be sick or purposely going MIA. So, I’m going to be as straightforward as I can with you. The answer is no.”
Without giving me a chance to say anything, Ashton then grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to enter the elevator.
“Wait! I’m not done here yet!” I writhed and struggled to go back to Camelia, unwilling to end our conversation like that. Ashton has a point because Marcus did try many tricks on me, but I saw the corpse-like man lying almost lifelessly on the bed myself. There’s no way anyone could’ve faked that. I took a total stranger under my wings just so the child could have a bright future. What makes Ashton think I can just turn off my compassion for a dying man?
Still upset, Ashton refused to listen to anything I had to say and continued to hold me so that I could not leave his side, but while waiting for the elevator, the man gave Camelia and her child another cold glance.
