"Hou family? I don’t understand. Why would Nuwa ever go there?" Zhuo Zihan stared at them.
Before Jia could respond, the doors burst open.
"Zihan!"
Mrs. Zhuo strode in with a force similar to a gloomy thunderclap, followed by her husband. The tension in the room escalated immediately with the angry flare present in her eyes.
"What is the meaning of this?" She barked, her voice echoing off the marble. "How dare you come here and interrogate my son like he’s a criminal!"
Jia stood up, not backing down. "We are not here as accusers and certainly not blaming him for anything. We are only trying to find the truth about a woman named Miss. Nuwa."
"My son has nothing to do with that wretched name!"
"Mom!" Zhuo Zihan trembled. A steep iciness filled his eyes as he cast a doomsday glare at her.
"I’m only trying to protect you and you are throwing those glares at me? Why did you even agree to this meeting!"
"Because I asked him," Yang Bingqing replied coolly.
The couple stared at her with narrowed eyes. Mrs. Zhuo clenched her fists. "Why would you do something like that? If you think you can bully my son into confessing something that he has got nothing to do with them you haven’t seen what I can do Mrs. Yang."
Yang Bingqing raised her brow. "Hooo. And what will you do?"
"Don’t get too cocky-"
"You won’t speak to Mrs. Yang like that!" He stormed up from his seat, gritting his teeth.
The parents looked at him, shocked.
"Zihan! Is that a way to speak to your mother!?"
"That’s perfectly the right way to speak to a mother who had pushed my brother from the staircase thirteen years ago!"
They froze. Jia’s eyes widened. The last thing she had expected to hear was Zhuo Syaoran’s own mother behind his tragic fall.
His eyes reddened and his fists balled. "First, you kept me separated from my brother and why? His fault was that he was born with a weak body? Instead of supporting him, you shunned him all his life because you felt he was a disgrace! Because you thought how useless he was to take over your political legacy!"
"You..." Mrs. Zhuo shook with fury.
"You locked him up and forced him to grow isolated. You never allowed us to meet. He...He was the first person you stole me from," tears brimmed his eyes. "Then it was Nuwa. Despite knowing how much I loved her, you manipulated her into leaving me. No matter what kind of lies you spin, I will never believe that she took that check from you and disappeared."
"You will stop this nonsense right now," She said coldly, walking toward Zihan with heavy steps. "Nuwa was a gold digger! She saw her chance to escape that filthy place and that’s why she was using you! That’s the truth. And now you are dredging up old wounds for what?"
A steep silence came, his breaths becoming shaky.
"...I’m sick and tired of you," Zihan said quietly but icily that dropped the temperature by sharp degrees.
"The truth wasn’t that she was a gold digger. The truth is that you are ugly."
She froze.
He chuckled with a hint of madness. "You don’t like anything that is ugly and imperfect around you. That’s why you could cut off your own son from your life so easily. Just because he was sick. Imperfect. Not the son you two hoped he would become. And I’m not living in any illusion either. The only reason you dote upon me is because I’m perfect in your eyes. Not the defective son like my brother is. That’s how twisted and ugly you are!"
Mr. Zhuo’s hand raised to throw a slap on his cheek when Yang Bingqing stopped his wrist. She gripped it so hard that he could feel his nerves squishing and bones cracking.
Bingqing cut in, her tone icy. "That’s not a nice way to talk to your son, Mr. Zhuo."
He gasped with pain.
"Leave my husband! This is our family matter!"
"Right. This is a family matter. For me too. Zihan is like my son and so is Syaoran," she pouted. "So much better and responsible than my own blood."
Aunt...Jia’s brow twitched.
"As such, I cannot allow you to raise your hand on them. They are my cutie pies!"
Zhuo Zihan trembled.
Jia watched Yang Bingqing’s grip on the husband’s wrist and stared.
That’s quite a strong grip.
"So you will answer Jia’s questions because Jia is my cutie pie too!"
"..."
Yang Bingqing threw his hand and he let out another gasp, sweating buckets.
"Just what kind of monster grip do you have!"
"The kind that gripped my husband in my passionate loooooooove all these years~" Discover more novels at N0veI.Fiɾe.net
Jia choked. She somehow regained her poise and stepped forward. "Do you know if Miss. Nuwa could have visited Hou villa at any time?"
Zihan said, "That’s not possible. She had no reason to. Why would you ask that?"
"That’s enough!" Mrs. Zhuo barked. "Why are you bothering us with such questions about the Hou family and entangling my son into it? And do you even have any warrant to interrogate my son like that! I can get you fired for this!"
Yang Bingqing smiled. "I would love to see you try, my dear."
A cold glint passed her eyes that forced her to take a step back as Yang Bingqing stepped closer.
"You have a lot of power, yes I agree but you shouldn’t forget families like Zhaos’ and Yangs’ who are keeping that balance. Your politics cannot survive without the underworld. So I believe you shouldn’t get too cocky~"
"You..."
"And with the way you so eagerly want to throw us out of your home, I’m tempted to believe that you do know the answer to Jia’s question," she tilted her head. "I smell fear from miles away and I’m never wrong about it. So it’s perhaps true that Nuwa might have visited the Hou family...or more precisely, you pulled those strings yourself?"