This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter novel Chapter 194

Chapter 194 Missing Memories

From the very first moment they’d met, Edric had held the reins of every single conversation.

45 Pearls &

George, Toby, and Alfred wound up standing there, waiting to be assessed and judged by him in turn. They’d barely crossed paths more than a handful of times, yet Toby felt as though he’d been slid under a microscope and picked apart down to his very last molecule.

He had a deep, visceral aversion to dealing with people like this.

Edric was particularly impossible to read, which made it so much worse.

He seemed to understand Toby with an almost unsettling thoroughness, anticipating every word before it left his mouth and every reaction before it surfaced on his face.

Toby, on the other hand, knew virtually nothing about this older brother.

The information gap between them was a chasm, and Toby couldn’t find a single piece of leverage to bring to the table.

Every round had been a total, humiliating defeat.

George yanked on Toby’s arm. “You’re genuinely useless. Why didn’t you fight back? And did you actually say that to Maya? How are you still walking around after Mom found out?”

“I don’t know him at all,” Toby said. “Even if I’d wanted to engage, I had nothing to work with. We need you for this. You know Edric better than anyone.”

Toby skipped right over that last question, fixed his gaze on George, and made the swift, strategic decision that perhaps he ought to be a little gentler with this particular creature. He added, “I know you’ve got something up your sleeve. You always do, brother.”

He still remembered the first time Maya had called him that, the jolt of stunned, flustered disbelief it had sent through him.

It worked the exact same way on George.

George went completely still.

The last time he’d heard that word from Toby’s mouth, they’d been little kids, and George had dangled a lollipop in front of him to get him to say it–just that once.

After that, never again.

George was still standing there, a little dazed, when something tugged at the hem of his shirt.

He looked down.

The boy was already looking up at him with his face tilted back and his eyes wide and carnest. “Please, brother. You’re the only hope this whole family has.”

Chapter 194 Missing Memories

45 Pears

George stood there with both his younger brothers looking at him like that.

One with absolute, unshakeable trust written across his face. The other with “please” still warm on his lips.

George hadn’t cared one way or another about coming here.

Genuinely. Not even a little bit.

But.

They’d called him brother.

“Edric.”

The teenager’s voice cut through the air without warning, carrying the particular weight of someone marching bravely toward their own undoing.

Edric stopped walking. He didn’t turn around.

George moved forward two steps and blocked his path. “Do you remember when I used to flip through your old photo albums? There was a little girl in one of them. You had absolutely no idea who she was.”

“And?” Edric’s voice stayed that same crisp, unruffled tone, cool and unhurried as ever.

Silence stretched between them for a beat.

“When I first met Maya, I had this nagging feeling I’d seen her somewhere before.”

George freely admitted he was terrible with faces.

But that particular photo he remembered perfectly.

Because…

“Remember when that photo went missing?” A grin edged into his voice. “Funny story. I took it.”

He’d been secretly delighted with himself for lifting something of Edric’s at the time. [

With nothing better to do, he’d pull it out and look at it sometimes.

It’d left such a stubborn impression on him as a kid that when he eventually met Maya, the familiarity tugged at him relentlessly.

The next second, he felt Edric turn to face him..

Those eyes held something unsettling in them.

George ignored it entirely and pressed on. “It clicked eventually. She looks remarkably like the girl in that photo from your album.

“I know you’ve always been curious about your life before you turned ten

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Chapter 194 Missing Memories

You re missing two stretches of memory, right? Once at eight, and once at nine.

+5 Pearls

“You’ve been searching for someone who resembles the person in that photo. If she’s still alive, she’d be somewhere in her 20s or 30s by now.

“So I wondered whether she might be Maya’s mother.

“But I looked into her birth parents recently, and it turns out Maya doesn’t actually resemble her mother at all.

“It goes beyond a simple resemblance. I studied her bone structure and features carefully, and everything pointed back to one person. It felt genuinely strange to me at the time.”

George’s voice was clear and bright, edged with something keen and sharp, his smile holding not one ounce of apprehension. “Edric, maybe nothing in this world ever feally catches you off guard.

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