Chapter 4

After working endlessly over a few nights, I got promoted.

Mother's call came out of the blue, and her words were sugar-sweet. "Celine, why didn't you come visit? I miss your cooking. Come and visit me, you know well you're the only person I like."

After hurting me so badly, Mother tried to mend my broken heart.

I sneered, "But Mother, I've taken care of you for such a long time. Didn't Belle come to take care of you?"

"What are you talking about? Isn't Belle going to get married soon? Parents will always wish their children well," she whispered softly, as if that were some intimate conversation between mother and daughter.

I did not care about it.

"Mother, I have to earn a living too. I have to go to work. Belle, on the other hand, isn't working as she's getting married soon, so it's just right that she's there to take care of you, who loves her so much."

Bang! The sound of a loud kicking in the cabinet was heard.

I smirked.

"Celine, that is your mother. You owe her! We raised you!" Father roared. He could not help but gasp, "How could you be so ungrateful—"

"What about you all scheming against me for so long?" I interrupted. "What does that mean?"

Was it my retribution?

However, Father refused to give in.

"In that case, you have to pay me back for all the money we have spent on you since you were a child! Let me remind you that I recorded the money spent clearly."

They finally revealed their ultimate objective.

My hands were shaking, and at that point, my anger seemed pathetic.

"Fine, but don't forget Grandmother partly raised me. Don't record her supply on your blue notebook. Don't go claiming things like I took care of you when Belle didn't bother showing up back then, but I owe you four hundred fifty dollars."

Slap!

The phone was snatched away, and Mother's anxious voice was heard. "My child, Father was just joking with you! How could he do this to you?"

She was a good actor, I would give her that. However, I remembered how she asked me to pay back the money when we were at the hospital earlier, so she could leave without any further worries. They would all leave together with Belle after she got married.

"Call me once you're done calculating my debt. We can sever our relationship then."

I said nothing else. There was nothing else I could say anyway.

After hanging up the call, I thought back to the time when I was a child, and I had felt so sad when Mother was always abused by Father.

How did things get to this point?

I felt so sorry for Mother, yet she transferred the pain to me and gave her heart to Belle.

I heard that Mother did not manage to get Belle to visit and take care of her in the end.

She instead went on to hire a nurse to take care of her. Of course, the money spent was recorded in my blue notebook again.

I laughed bitterly.

That was who Mother was to me. All she would do was to calculate the money spent and get me to repay them.

From this moment onward, I just wanted to wait for them to settle the debt they claimed I owed, and sever our relationship completely. I did not want to be blackmailed by them again.

A few days later, I returned home and realized my chicken ​​was missing. I could hardly stand straight; fear and panic filled every cell in my body.

I was trembling when I was planning to check the surveillance. Suddenly, I remembered something.

The only person except me who knew the password to my house's main door was Mother.

I saw this coming, I did, but fury still took me entirely. They were petty enough to even involve a chicken!

I immediately rang Mother's phone, my hands trembling. My heart was filled with hatred.

"Mother, where's my chicken?"

My voice sounded coarse as my heart ached, unable to raise my voice any more than that. The call was silent at the other end of the call.

Mother then complained and accused me, "Not only do you not call me regularly, but you also refused to care for me and made me have to hire a caregiver. But now you're calling me just to ask for your chicken?

"I killed your chicken and cooked it for your sister. I heard that chicken meat is good for pregnant women."

I could hear Belle's coquettish voice in the background, "Mother loves me so much. I just casually mentioned my craving for chicken meat to her, and she got it for me almost immediately…

"Celine, you're just plain selfish!"

I felt as if I was torn into halves. It was like my whole body was stabbed by a knife and I bled openly.

"Grandmother left that chicken for me!"

My mother merely said, "It's just a chicken. Your grandmother is dead, so why would you be mad at Belle? Do you have to be mad at her just because of a chicken?"