Chapter 17
“I know I was wrong; I’ve done Rowena wrong! Please stop treating me like this and let me out! Please!” Jasmine cried.
“Ha!” Jordan snorted. “Have you already had enough? Did you stop to think about the torment Ro endured for the past three years? How did she make it out alive? You’ve yet to experience even a thousandth of her pain. What makes you think you deserve forgiveness?”
He seemed to be forcing the words out, and he sounded like he wanted to kill her. He clenched his fists tightly before releasing them after a long while. Murder was not an option- He had to make Jasmine experience all the suffering Rowena had been through before he killed her!
The door slammed shut. After Jordan left, all that awaited Jasmine was endless torture.
Meanwhile, both the Shore and Pallet residences were filled with dead silences. The warmth and happiness of the past had disappeared without a trace.
The Shores and Jordan were like the walking dead. They would only show some sort of reaction when something relevant to Rowena happened.
-not yet.
The Shore residence had been burned down. Though they rebuilt their home, there was no way to return to the past. The house was filled with everything Rowena loved, but the place was still eerily quiet.
One day, Roland stormed into the house, looking murderous as he held a USB. He snarled, “Jasmine’s a psycho! Ro had nothing to do with the abduction after all!”
He threw the USB onto the table.
“What did you say?” Melinda, Philip, and Jordan asked simultaneously. Their gazes were filled with astonishment. Then, they were overwhelmed by regret and panic.
The USB contained a blurry and unsteady video. A nondescript middle–aged man was talking drunkenly as he smoked a cigarette.
He wrapped his arms around two beautiful women, looking smug as he said, “The Shore and Pallet families are all fools, if you ask me! They bought my lies hook, line, and sinker!”
He stroked a bank card lovingly and even kissed it as he continued, “That Green bitch paid me to abduct her and the other woman, even paying me extra to lie before leaving the country. It’s so easy to make money off these rich people!”
Jordan’s eyes widened. He instantly recognized the man to be Tom, the one who’d abducted Rowena and Jasmine!
Melinda and Philip were equally stunned. It turned out they’d thoroughly misunderstood Rowena.
What had they been doing when the bomb had gone off? They’d been coaxing Jasmine. If not for Rowena doing everything she could to save herself, she would’ve already died in that explosion.
To make matters worse, they’d all chosen to save Jasmine over Rowena. If any of them had chosen to save the latter, perhaps things wouldn’t have reached this stage.
The memories of that day filled their minds and kept replaying. The Shores and Jordan lapsed into silence.
Rowena was their family and fiancée, yet they’d ridiculously chosen to trust Jasmine. Just learning the truth was enough to make them feel tormented–how had Rowena suffered through all of this?
She’d initially looked at them with reliance and trust, but it had gradually turned into numbness and indifference. The light in her eyes had slowly faded. Yet they were the culprits of that! Would everything have turned out differently if they’d decided against getting a stand–in for Rowena and instead firmly waited for her to wake up from her coma?
Regret engulfed the four, making them feel like they were suffocating.
