Chapter 50 Karma
Nigel used his toes to apply pressure against Phoebe’s chest. “I’m not a saint, Phoebe. I’m not that great of a man. I didn’t send Isabel into prison because she still carries some of the Taylor Family’s blood, but I’m not going to give her anything else!”
“No… No…!” Phoebe shook her head while screaming in terror. Is Nigel going to chase my daughter out of the Taylor Family? Is he going to make her leave without a single penny in her pocket? No. No! How could Nigel do that? His daughter is my daughter—she has the Taylors’ blood and should be a well-respected woman in the family.
My daughter should be a proud Taylor, and she should receive all the love from her family. I used to picture her having a grand marriage where she gets married to a man from another wealthy family. That way, the Taylors would have pampered her for the first half of her life, while her husband’s family would pamper her for the second half. That’s what my daughter’s life should be like. How could Nigel be heartless enough to kick his own daughter out without giving her any money?
Fear and agony made Phoebe’s chest tighten. She was crying so hard that her whole body was shaking, and she was in so much mental and physical pain that it felt like she was caught in a cycle of dying, coming back alive, and dying again. “Please don’t do this, Nigel. Please don’t do this to Isabel… She’s innocent… She doesn’t know anything…”
“When you say that she doesn’t know anything, you’re indirectly claiming that you know everything, right?” Nigel pressed his foot against her chest before bending down lower. “So, you knew all about your father’s nasty plans! Your father bribed the driver and hit my son. My son’s leg isn’t fully healed, yet here you are, sucking the blood out of my son and enjoying the good life that the Taylors offered you! …You’re so evil, Phoebe!”
“No… I didn’t… I didn’t know… I don’t know anything…” Phoebe was sobbing so hard, she could barely breathe. In the past, she genuinely didn’t have any idea about what happened as her father didn’t tell her anything. When her father, on his deathbed, requested Nigel to get married to her, she was actually surprised. Her father knew that she liked Nigel.
There was once when Phoebe’s father caught her gazing at Nigel and checking him out. Her father then brought her home and shut the door before giving her a scolding. “Nothing good comes out of coveting a man like that, especially when you’re just a servant. You should stay away from Nigel,” Phoebe’s father said. This hurt her pride, and she had a huge fight with her father after that. She wailed and blamed her father for being a useless cook—she thought that he was the reason she was a servant.
Phoebe hated her parents for their bad genes, as Nigel didn’t even take a second glance in her direction. After the huge fight, they didn’t talk much about it, but Bryan stayed up the whole night burning through packets of cigarettes. A while after that, Bryan got terribly injured to save Dan and was rushed to the hospital. When Bryan uttered his wish for Nigel to get married to Phoebe, Phoebe was both surprised and elated.
At the start, Nigel didn’t agree to it. The doctors claimed that Bryan was about to pass on, yet Bryan held onto his last breath while glaring at Nigel. Bryan refused to let himself release his last breath. In the end, Nigel had no choice but to agree to marry Phoebe. After Nigel made that statement, Bryan’s expression and complexion became much better.
However, the doctors told Bryan to write a will since he was nearing the end of his life. Everyone left the room, and it was just Phoebe and Bryan inside. Phoebe held Bryan’s hand as he whispered into her ear. “You cannot ask anyone about my money once I’m dead. If you want to get married to Nigel and live a good life with him, you cannot mention anything about the money in front of them!”
Phoebe questioned her father as she didn’t understand his intentions. Her father widened his eyes before addressing her in a creepy, ghost-like voice. “If you talk about our family funds, then Nigel probably won’t get married to you. He might hate you and chase you out instead,” her father told her.
Bryan had instructed her not to hunt for money within her own family. There was no money at home, so he told her that there was no point in looking there. He even said that she wouldn’t need the money from then onward. “Once you get married to Nigel, and once you become the woman of the Taylor Family, you will have money! So, you shouldn’t look for the money at home. Don’t look for it, okay?!” Bryan reminded her.
She would lose Nigel, and she would ruin the rest of her life if she went to search for her family’s money. Back then, she didn’t understand what her father meant by that. She even felt sorry for herself. Her father was the main chef in the Taylor Family, so he received quite a good amount as his salary. Even though she was a big spender, she was sure that her father had savings of at least 200,000. Where did all of that money go? Why didn’t Dad leave the money for me?
As much as she was curious about this, she was more afraid of losing the chance to get married to Nigel. So, she promised her father that she wouldn’t look for the money at home. She wouldn’t tell others that her family had zero funds, either. After Phoebe made this promise to her father, he finally passed away peacefully.
Phoebe was completely clueless about her father’s final wishes, and the curiosity she felt was like an itch she couldn’t scratch. Bryan had warned her that Nigel would abandon her if she went to look for their family’s funds. So, no matter how curious she felt, she could only try her best to forget about it.
As she grew older, she put her father’s medical condition and the missing funds at home together, and she made some guesses from there. However, she didn’t want to think too much about it. She would rather believe that the accident was legitimate. She wanted to think that her father had genuinely shown up to save Dan, who was nearly hit by a car. Phoebe could sense a lingering danger in the air when she finally made sense of what her father must have meant when he told her his final wishes.
So, throughout the years, Phoebe had kept her mouth shut and never uttered a single word about their family’s money. Right now, it turned out that her guess was correct! Her father had used their family’s funds to hire someone to murder Dan! He reminded Phoebe not to tell anyone about the family funds because people would grow suspicious of Bryan if they found out about it, and they would send men to investigate Bryan.
If Bryan’s plot had been exposed, Phoebe wouldn’t have had the chance to marry Nigel at all. She had obeyed her father and kept the mysterious disappearance of her family funds a secret. It had been more than 20 years, yet she had never told anyone a single thing. Despite this, her father’s scheme was still exposed in the end. She finally understood the whole picture then.
My father used this plot to exchange the remaining time he had to live for my marriage and happiness. Now that it has all been revealed, and now that Nigel knows everything… My good days are over.
The way Nigel glared at Phoebe made him look like he wanted to stab her a thousand times. She felt sorry for herself. She genuinely didn’t know about the plan at all. Bryan was the one who sneakily made his own decisions, and he hadn’t spoken to her about it at all. Phoebe didn’t technically do anything wrong, so why were they blaming her?
She reached her arms out and held onto Nigel’s ankles as she cried. “Please, believe me, Nigel. I really didn’t know anything. Please let me go! Please don’t get mad at Isabel. She’s your child, Nigel! Nigel…”
Nigel raised his leg and kicked her away hard before staring at her icily. “You’re the person who’s the closest to Bryan. You guys lived together. I don’t believe that you didn’t know anything!
And so what if you don’t know anything? Bryan only plotted against me and hurt my son for the sake of your happiness. Since you got to enjoy all the joyous outcomes of Bryan’s plot, you will also have to suffer all the hatred and anger that I feel from being cheated by Bryan! And Isabel! …Isabel only enjoyed the life of the wealthy because of Bryan’s plan. So… the same logic applies to Isabel!”
