Heron looked at Helin with an icy stare. "Since your mother left, I've been responsible for your life. I will spare no effort to intervene if you keep dating Roger. I don't need him in my company anymore. You'd better stay at home and get your head together. You're grounded."
"You're grounding me?" She looked at him incredulously. "You're really trying to ground me?"
"I didn't want it to come to this, but it's for your sake," he said more gently. Then he turned to the servant and demanded, "Sheena, take her to her room and keep watching. She's not allowed to leave without my permission, for any reason."
Helin started getting fidgety and anxious, realizing that Heron was dead serious. "Heron He, you bastard! You can't do this to me! I'm in love with Roger. I love him. I'll spend the rest of my life with him, no matter what. Once I have chances to get out, I would definitely elope with him."
Sheena pulled at Helin's arm and tried to calm her. "Miss He, please don't say that. What master did is for your sake."
"No. He did it to save himself, for his stupid image." Helin shook her head in disapproval as she walked. "He just won't allow his daughter to marry someone who doesn't meet his stupid status standards. That's why he's doing this to me. I'm not marrying anyone else, Heron He. Just give up."
Sheena took her upstairs, and all the while, Heron could hear Helin throwing a fit in the room, throwing things against the wall and groaning in frustration. It made him feel a bit dizzy.
When it finally calmed down and there were no longer any angry sounds coming from the room, Sheena came downstairs.
She saw Heron sitting on the sofa staring at nothing in particular. "Mr. He, are you hungry? Would you like me to prepare some midnight snacks for you?"
"No, I'm good." He put out the cigarette in his hand and asked her instead, "How is she?"
"She's exhausted. It's time for a little peace and quiet tonight." She smiled at him. "Mr. He, since you strongly oppose the relationship between Helin and Roger, he must not be good enough for her."
Sheena had been serving the He family all her life. She was around to see Heron grow up, every step of the way, and she knew him very well.
Heron forced a smile in return at her words. "Sheena, you do know me best."
"So…" Sheena started. "Why don't you just talk to Miss He?" She frowned in concern. "Miss He isn't ignorant. If you were to talk to her about this properly, I believe she would listen to you and not resist you so much like she just did."
"Sheena, there's something… something I don't want Helin to know." He sighed, at a loss for how he should deal with everything. Other people probably didn't know how Roger debuted, but Heron knew all too well.
He knew everything that went down between him and Rachel.
Helin wouldn't believe he was doing this for her sake from the get go, but this was really why he was so strongly opposed to her being with Roger.
He didn't care about his wealth, or his lack of it. But if he did despicable things to get where he was, and it was unforgivable for him to claim to be clean.
He looked at Sheena with rather sad eyes. "Helin lost her mother when she was very young. I protected her as much as I could." He smiled in spite of himself. "She's a delicate flower, that one. Too afraid to deal with difficult things. I'm afraid she won't know how to stand it if I told her the truth about Roger."
"But… Wouldn't it be much more of a problem later if you didn't tell her the truth? She might resent you, even."
Sheena's frown was tight as she knew Helin as well. She knew that in the long term, she would prefer to have been told the truth.
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