Logan and Benedict instantly crowded around her. "Yeah, Serena. Grandma loved you the most. She always wanted us to get along. A harmonious family is a prosperous family, remember?"
"Just take us back to Vaelion City. You want Grandma to rest peacefully, don't you?"
They all parroted the word 'Grandma' endlessly, trying to leverage her dead grandmother to force her hand.
Serena stood in the doorway, staring blankly at their sickeningly eager, groveling faces.
Listening to them endlessly drag her grandmother's name through the mud just to score emotional points.
It was downright hilarious.
She let out a cold laugh. "You've been exiled to the countryside for this long, and not a single one of you has ever bothered to visit her grave."
"Yet here you are, dropping her name left and right, pretending you actually gave a damn about her."
"Don't you find your own pathetic acting completely ridiculous?"
The smiles on their faces instantly froze, their fawning expressions cracking at the seams.
Patrick cleared his throat awkwardly. Forcing his smile back on, he stepped forward and reached out to grab her hand. "Serena, we... we've just been so busy just trying to survive. We..."
Serena raised her hand and viciously slapped Patrick right across the face.
The force behind the strike was monstrous.
Patrick stumbled violently backward and crashed to the floor.
He sat there, utterly dazed.
Serena actually hit him?
She laid her hands on him?!
Even if he was the one begging for favors, he was still her elder!
How dared she strike him?!
Marianne shrieked at the sudden violence, scrambling over to help him up. "Serena, are you out of your mind? He's your father!"
Serena slowly turned her head.
Her beautiful eyes were filled with an agonizing, glacial frost.
Just one look, and every word Marianne had was violently choked back into her throat. She didn't dare make another sound.
It finally jogged his memory.
"Yeah... yeah, I took some blood. But... but that was just for a physical, to enter into a database. What's the big deal?" Why was she so furious over something so trivial?
It had happened so long ago, he had completely written it off.
To him, it was just another transaction in the business world.
It was just a vial of blood. What could possibly go wrong?
Back in Vaelion City, he had drawn tubes of blood every single year for his own checkups.
Serena had no intention of keeping Patrick in the dark.
Since his absolute stupidity had caused her grandmother's tragic death.
Why should he get to play the innocent victim?
Why should he get to remain blissfully ignorant, comfortably enjoying the peace that her grandmother had bought with her own life?
"That EverLife Capital you kissed up to like a dog is a front for the most notorious international terrorist syndicate in the world... the Obsidian Sun!"

Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: Messing With Her? Are You Crazy!