Chapter 349 What Goes Around
Damn it. How am I supposed to explain this to Dad?
Claire pressed her fingers to her temple, jaw tight. She wasn’t without self-awareness. She knew how much Richard had riding on this trip to Planet A001, especially given the state of his health lately.
“Mommy! I want food! I want it now!” Adrian had given up waiting and gone back to wailing, fists hammering the seat cushion.
“I said shut up!” The fury and anxiety she’d been bottling snapped loose. She whipped around, eyes blazing. “Keep it up, and I’ll throw you off this ship!”
Adrian had never seen his mother look like that. He burst into full, sloppy tears, face crumpling
Which only made her head pound harder. She had to swallow her rage and scramble to undo the damage. pulling him close, voice sugary through gritted teeth. “Okay, okay. Mommy’s sorry. Stop crying, Adrian. please. Mommy shouldn’t have yelled. When we get home, we’ll go shopping, all right? Toys, whatever you want, as many as you want…”
1
The ship touched down at Centria Planet Spaceport.
Claire didn’t bother with appearances. She practically dragged the still-sniffling Adrian off the ship and into the first hover car home.
She wasn’t thinking about what she’d done wrong. She was already composing her version of events. How to pin it all on that woman and her bastard kid. How to make her father believe the farm had started it, that some lowlife employee had disrespected her first, and she’d had no choice but to push back. How to make it their fault.
It was the farm’s fault. All of it.
If Richard pulled the right strings, between the Rhodes name and NovaSea Transport’s reach, he could force that insufferable Elizabeth to back down, get the blacklist lifted, maybe even make her hand over the products like a good little nobody.
Yes. That was exactly how this was going to go.
Claire didn’t take this kind of humiliation lying down. Elizabeth was going to pay for this.
The hover car swept through the gates of the Rhodes family estate in the heart of Centria Planet’s most exclusive district. She marched through the garden with Adrian in tow, heading straight for Richard’s study. He’d be there at this hour. He always was.
The door was slightly ajar. She didn’t knock. She shoved it open and launched straight in, voice already cracking with righteous tears. “Dad, you have to back me up on this! That farm, the nerve of them, they had absolutely no right to”
The words died in her throat.
What met her wasn’t Richard’s worried face. It was his palm, open and moving fast, cracking across her cheek with a sound that rang through the quiet room like a gunshot.
8:56 am Pppp
Chapter 340 What Goes Around
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The blow knocked her sideways. She stumbled back two steps, hand flying to her face, eyes wide, mind completely blank. The sting radiated outward in waves.
Even Adrian froze. He’d been gearing up to throw himself at Richard’s feet and perform his own tantrum, but the sight of the old man’s fury sealed his throat shut mid-cry.
“Dad…” Claire found her voice at last. Tears welled up, half pain, half wounded outrage. “Have you completely lost your mind? I got treated like garbage out there, and you’re hitting me? Why? What did I even do?”
“Hit you?” Richard’s face was ashen, his chest heaving, every trace of his usual indulgence burned away by the fury in his eyes. “That slap was the least you deserved, you useless fool. What did I do to end up with a daughter who hasn’t got a brain in her head?”
His finger jabbed toward her, shaking with the force of it. “You’d better start praying, every single day, that there’s still some way to patch things up with that farm and get that blacklist reversed. Because if there isn’t, you can get out of this house. I don’t have a daughter who embarrasses this family and torches every opportunity I hand her.”
Claire stared at him, genuinely lost. Get out? Was he telling her to leave? Over some backwater farm on a garbage planet?
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