The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 109

On the stage, Clarissa's ghostly face looked almost translucent under the frantic assault of camera flashes.

The "frozen embryo" excuse—her final, desperate lifeline—had just been obliterated into dust by Elias.

Her lips quivered violently.

She wanted to scream, to fight back, to run away.

But her legs felt encased in concrete, rooting her firmly in place.

At the head table, Lizzie's sanity was fully slipping into the abyss.

She stared blankly as Elias delivered his cold, clinical facts, her cloudy eyes swimming with utter confusion.

Then, with the jerky, mechanical movements of a rusted animatronic, she slowly turned her head toward the woman in the wedding dress.

She stared at Clarissa, the daughter-in-law she had treated like her own flesh and blood, the woman she had viewed as the future of their family.

The affection in Lizzie's eyes bled out instantly.

The confusion morphed into suspicion.

The suspicion twisted into horror.

And finally, every emotion violently condensed into the manic, bloodthirsty rage of a woman stabbed in the back by the person she trusted most.

"You lied to me..."

Lizzie's voice grated like metal scraping against stone.

"Clarissa... you lied to me?!"

She pointed a trembling finger at her, and at the terrified, screaming child in her arms.

"That kid... that kid isn't Elias's..."

Her eyes darted back and forth like manic spotlights, snapping between Clarissa and the pale, sweating Hackett.

The most revolting, absurd, yet entirely logical conclusion hit her fragile mind like a bolt of black lightning.

Finally.

Her gaze locked squarely onto her handsome, refined younger son—the boy who had always made her so incredibly proud.

"It was you?"

But this time, it wasn't the delicate, calculated weeping she usually utilized to gain sympathy.

It was the raw, guttural breakdown of a woman realizing she was utterly destroyed.

Clutching the wailing child, she collapsed onto her knees, dragging her priceless gown across the floor as she bowed before Lizzie.

"Mom!"

Her scream was desperate and harrowing.

"Mom! Let me explain! Please, just listen... it's not what you think..."

She was still trying to weaponize her tears for one final scrap of pity.

But Lizzie was no longer the soft-hearted matriarch who could be swayed by a few drops of water. The only thing burning in her eyes was a raging inferno, the kind of absolute fury that comes from being brutally humiliated.

Annelise sat quietly in her corner, watching the scene unfold. She saw Lizzie's hand drift slowly, almost subconsciously, toward the waist of her dark brown traditional dress. Tied around her waist was a woven black silk sash. An antique jade pendant hung from the end of it.

But hidden ingeniously within the folds of the fabric was a long, slender cord crafted from tightly braided calfskin.

The Lehman Family's Disciplinary Whip.