Family on Their Knees Heart Turned to Ice novel Chapter 11

Who did Bella think she was?

On what grounds was she saying these things to her?

Lillian stared at her, her gaze so cold it seemed to freeze the air.

In the end, she couldn't be bothered to say a word. She pushed Bella's hand away and walked off.

Bella shouted after her, “Lillian, stop! Are you really going to let your own son die?”

Lillian didn’t look back. Bella stood there, then immediately called Sebastian and the Mercer family.

Meanwhile, Lillian took the new dress she had bought and hailed a cab to the psychiatric hospital.

Eleanor Lancaster was only in her early fifties, but she looked far older than her years.

Lillian gently stroked her mother's face, her heart aching too much for words.

Before prison, she used to visit twice a week without fail.

But for the past two years, had anyone visited her mother at all?

She took her mother’s hand and pressed it against her own cheek, tears silently streaming down her face. “It’s my fault. I was too stubborn, and I lost two years when I should have been here taking care of you.”

Eleanor smiled like an innocent child and used her hand to wipe the tears from Lillian’s face.

“Dress... pretty. You... pretty too!”

Lillian knew her mother was complimenting her. It seemed she recognized her, but not as her daughter.

Lillian pressed her face against her mother's hand, trying to make up for the lost time.

She remembered the days when her parents’ marriage was happy, when their home was filled with love.

Then, her mother started suspecting her father was having an affair. She became obsessed, frantically searching for any sign of infidelity.

But her father was always clever enough to cover his tracks, leaving her with no concrete proof.

Her illness probably started back then.

Driven mad by the lack of evidence and constantly being gaslighted by her husband, who accused her of being paranoid, she slipped into a deep depression.

Until one day, Martin Mercer was careless. She saw his unlocked phone and rushed to a hotel, catching him in the act.

A huge fight erupted, and in the heat of the moment, her own husband struck her on the head. The blow permanently damaged her mind, leaving her with fragmented memories. She was sent to a psychiatric hospital, and she had been there ever since.

The scandal was too big to hide, and with her grandmother still in charge at home, Martin Mercer had to break things off with Sabrina Ward.

But who would have thought that as soon as her grandmother fell into a coma and she went to prison, her father would bring Sabrina back into the Mercer home.

Lillian looked at her mother, thinking of how her brothers had silently accepted Sabrina’s presence, and her heart ached with an unbearable pain.

When visiting hours were over, she left the hospital and went to the nursing home where her grandmother was.

She never imagined that she, her grandmother’s own flesh and blood, would be denied entry to her room.

Lillian had no choice but to call the Mercer residence.

And when it came down to it, they had weighed the options and thrown her away.

In their eyes, she, Lillian, was utterly useless.

After her emotions settled, Lillian contacted a lawyer through Nathan.

She voluntarily signed an agreement: she renounced her inheritance rights to the Mercer family fortune, relinquished her shares in the Mercer Group, and gave up her shares in the Blake Group.

The lawyer took a sharp breath when he saw the documents. It was more money than most people could earn in ten lifetimes.

And with a stroke of her pen, Lillian had given it all up.

The lawyer felt a pang of regret for her and asked, “Ms. Mercer, are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?”

“I’m sure.”

Today, she was cutting all ties, walking away from both the Mercer and Blake families with nothing.

The lawyer was highly efficient. He worked overtime to process the paperwork and delivered the documents to the Mercer estate. As it happened, Sebastian was there.

He glanced at the papers, then tore them up and tossed them in the trash.

Martin Mercer, however, read them carefully, his hands trembling with rage. “This is a tactic, a way to make us feel guilty for sending her to prison. She returns the dividends we gave her as compensation, trying to play the victim.”

Brandon frowned. “She returned all the shares, dividends, and money the family gave her through her lawyer.”

Colin, on the other hand, was optimistic. “She doesn’t have a penny to her name. She won’t survive out there. I bet she’ll be back soon.”