Dumped My Cheating Ex. Now I'm Sleeping Next to a Billionaire CEO novel Chapter 1701

Sylvia forcefully pulled the farm gates shut. The metal hinges let out a dry, grating squeak, almost as if weeping for the land. She turned around and looked at the utter devastation scattered across the courtyard, her eyes instantly brimming with tears. In her memories, this place had always echoed with her grandparents' laughter, and it was the sole source of warmth from her childhood. But now, it was all gone. The brutal tracks of the machinery had crushed Margaret's favorite lawn, leaving the ground dotted with deep pits of churned mud. The fruit trees that Arthur had spent half his life carefully cultivating had been chopped down, leaving behind only rows of bare stumps.

Stepping over the scattered bricks, Sylvia stumbled her way forward. Near a dirt pit, she spotted a dismantled wooden swing. It was the one her grandfather had built for her with his own hands on her tenth birthday. With trembling hands, she picked up the mud-caked seat, desperately trying to reattach it to its original wooden frame. But the mortise and tenon joints had long been smashed to pieces. No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn't put it back together. With a heavy thud, the swing seat fell back into the mud.

Sylvia's tears could no longer be contained, heavy drops crashing down one after another. Her heart felt as though it was being viciously twisted by the tip of a blade, the pain so intense she could barely breathe. Everywhere she looked, there was nothing but ruins. This was the place where her grandparents had lived their entire lives. Every blade of grass, every single tree here had been cultivated and planted by the hands of those two elders. Yet today, only a year after her grandfather had passed away, this sanctuary that held all her precious memories had been ravaged into such a horrific state.

Wiping her tears away, she gritted her teeth and walked back to the room she used to sleep in. The room was coated in dust. She didn't even have the energy to open her suitcase, simply dropping it onto the floor. Digging out the incense and joss paper she had purchased earlier, she headed toward the back of the mountain.

Halfway up the mountain sat the joint tomb of her grandfather and grandmother. The biting wind sliced across her face like a knife, but Sylvia felt entirely numb to the cold. Kneeling before the tombstone, she struck a match and lit the paper. Looking at the kind faces in the black-and-white portraits of her grandparents, the grievances she had suppressed the entire journey finally exploded.

"Grandpa... Grandma..." She sobbed silently, her slender shoulders trembling violently. "I am sorry. I am useless. I failed to protect the farm for you..." As she fed the paper money into the fire, she stared at the tombstone with red, swollen eyes. "But please do not worry. I absolutely will not let those people ruin this place any further. I will take the farm back. No matter the cost, I will restore it to exactly the way it was..."

Pressing her hands into the dirt, Sylvia slowly pushed herself up from the ground, raising the back of her hand to wipe away the blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. She brushed the dirt off her knees and stared coldly at the two people who were supposedly her blood relatives. "The farm was left to me by my grandfather."

Hearing this, Madeline let out a loud, mocking laugh, as if she had just heard the most ridiculous joke in the world. "Left to you? You are a girl. You are going to marry into someone else's family sooner or later. What, are you planning to take this piece of land as a dowry to another family? At the end of the day, I am their biological daughter. I am their only child. Even if you try to argue it to the heavens, I am their absolute legal heir. How could an outsider granddaughter like you possibly inherit this over their own flesh and blood?"