Sasha was thinking of apologizing to appease him enough to stay.
Before she could finish, Devin interjected. “I want to ask you something. If something were to happen to your child that day, what would you do?”
“What?”
“I know that it wasn’t my mother’s doing. But the fact remains that your children were still poisoned. After that, you have nursed the children back to health fairly quickly. Forgive me for being presumptuous, but I can’t help suspecting that you’ve concocted that story to set my mother up.”
Sasha was stunned, not expecting him to have turned it around against her.
She stared at him with wide unblinking eyes, wondering if she had misheard him.
“What are you saying? What story?”
“Do you not understand? I sympathize with what you did, I really do. Charles and his family are gone. Connor is no longer here as well. The only person left to have caused your family to be broken up is me. Isn’t dealing with me the next logical step for you?”
As he spoke, he reached a hand out toward her face.
Before Sasha could react, she felt two fingers beneath her chin preceding a forceful tug and a sudden chill. Her mask was peeled off so quickly that it took her completely by surprise.
“You-”
Her mind a blank, she stood glaring at him wordlessly.
Devin too was momentarily stunned, not expecting to actually peel off her face.
Another possible reason for his reaction was that it was the first time he was gazing upon the true face of the woman whose death he had almost caused.
After ten or so seconds, Sasha regained her composure.
She snatched back her face from his hand, stumbling backward as she did so.
“So you knew it was me. Very well, Devin! Under these circumstances, you could still think of me that way. Sebastian is very lucky to call you his brother.”
Suppressing the torrent of emotions within her, she laughed jeeringly in an attempt to hide how she truly felt.
Devin turned pale. “I-I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“That’s fine,” Sasha said unexpectedly. “It’s better this way for us to speak frankly with one another.”
Devin felt slightly assured. “Okay. What would you like to talk about?”
“I think I should be asking you that question. What did you mean by what you said earlier? Why did you think I was luring your mother out? Do you think of me as an enemy?”
“Aren’t you?” demanded Devin, his gaze darkening like never before.
Sasha was speechless with indignation. How could he say such a thing?
Upon further reflection, she could not blame him for thinking this way. Since the bloodline of Jared was extinct, his would be next in line.
Sasha clenched her fists.
“No, I am not thinking of avenging myself just yet.”
His eyes brightened up considerably like an extinguished ember regaining an optimistic glow.
“It doesn’t matter to me whether you choose to believe it or not. As I’ve said, I do not have the intention to avenge myself just yet. Aside from still recovering from having all the bones in my body broken, my face is still in ruins. The reason why I wear a face mask is so that my face could heal. Other than that, I could spare no energy thinking about anything else.”
She did mean every word. Being a patient recuperating from severe injuries, she could not handle too much at the moment. Vengeance was something that would cost too much energy than she was physically able to spend.
Therefore, the most important thing to her at that juncture was that she could nurse Sebastian back to health.
With his greatest worry neutralized, Devin brightened up considerably.
To the couple, he was the villain.
When Devin had noticed that Jonathan changed his mind about Sebastian, he opted to back out and save himself the pain and embarrassment of competing with him.
To his immense relief, Sasha was confirming that she had no intention of avenging herself against him.
Devin suddenly felt that he found a glimmer of hope.
“I know now.”
“What do you know?”
“While we’re on the subject, my mother really wasn’t the one to have poisoned the children. Your denial about your own involvement makes me certain that there are other things going on behind our backs. I will get to the bottom of this.”
Frowning suddenly, his expression grew serious at the mention of that.
Sasha’s face paled at the conviction of his testimony.
Was it really not the doing of his mother? Whose, then?
At the recollection of that horrifying incident, Sasha felt a cold creeping down her spine. Her limbs grew cold at the forceful reminder of the fear she felt that day.
Meanwhile, in the room of the hut, the man in the white shirt had been writing for a very long time. So long, in fact, that the other man outside felt his calves numbing from kneeling for that duration.
“Have you found out the truth? Was it that little sh*t who have caused the death of Hubert and the rest?”
“That’s right, but we have no evidence. After he had made a scene at the military base, he boarded a helicopter and headed for Norland in front of everybody. We were unable to apprehend him because that was his alibi.”
The man who had been writing snorted coldly.
“He had planned for that in advance. Hubert was a fool to have provoked that mad dog out of all the other people. I’d heard that he had not only placed something in his brain. He mutilated him as well?”
“Y-Yes, he did,” the man kneeling outside chimed in without thinking, his mind’s eye suddenly filled with the grotesque scene he had witnessed.
The man inside the hut grew interested. “Then how did he die? I’m curious to find out how would the madman avenge his lackey.”
“H-He lost his p-parts down there,” the other man stammered. “His organs had been pulverized as well. When they found him, all of his insides had turned to mush. They suspect that he was pumped full of corrosive liquid.”
The man who had been writing failed to suppress a shudder.
A madman indeed!
