Alistair opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Eleanor fell into a stunned silence as well, her lips trembling visibly.
Seeing the sudden shift in the room's dynamic, Lauren tried to subtly lean over to peek at the papers. But Alistair immediately shoved the folder into his jacket, keeping it far out of her sight.
Lauren wanted to ask, but the absolute rage radiating from Alistair kept her quiet.
However, she fully realized Seraphina had just crossed a massive line. The woman had to be insane to provoke their parents like this.
But honestly, the crazier Seraphina acted, the better it was for Lauren...
"What exactly do you want?" Alistair demanded, his voice dropping to a gravelly rasp.
Seraphina met his gaze evenly. "I don't want anything. As long as Arthur's job remains completely untouched, these documents will never see the light of day."
"You—"
Alistair pointed a violently shaking finger at her. His face was beet red, yet he couldn't formulate a single sentence.
Eleanor was trembling with pure outrage, her voice shrill as she spat, "Seraphina... you ungrateful, wretched daughter!"
Seraphina pressed her lips together and didn't offer a single word in response.
She simply turned on her heel, opened the heavy front door, and walked out into the night.
Behind her, she heard the sharp crash of a teacup shattering against the wall, followed by Eleanor's hysterical screaming. Seraphina pulled her collar tight against the chill and kept walking.
This wasn't the first time Alistair had threatened Arthur's livelihood to get her to submit.
From the very moment she had been brought into the Lennox household, it had been a relentless cycle of emotional manipulation. If she refused to bow down, they immediately threatened her adoptive parents.
She had planned her counterattack carefully, hacking into Alistair's personal system to quietly gather evidence of his illicit financial operations.
In the past, a lingering hope for biological connection had kept her from weaponizing the files. But now, she was simply too exhausted to care.
She refused to be held hostage by the Lennox family for another second, and she was entirely done catering to Lauren's endless victim complex.
Staring up at the darkening sky, a profound wave of homesickness washed over her. She missed her real home. The warm one.
Seraphina fought back the lump in her throat, hailed a cab, and gave the driver the address to the Sinclair apartment.
Standing in front of the modest residential building, she was just about to knock when the heavy lobby door pushed open. Clara stepped out, holding a bag of trash.
The shock on Clara's face instantly melted into overwhelming joy the second she spotted Seraphina.
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