Chapter6 Broken Family

Linnea didn't know how much time had passed when she regained consciousness again.

This time, the bedside was empty, without that person who always took and never tired. Linnea breathed a sigh of relief like a survivor. Finally, she didn't have to be forced to keep having sex by a man with excessive energy. That person simply didn't know how to write the word stop.

New clothes were placed by the bed, along with a note.

It only had a string of phone numbers with a message: [Contact the chief secretary if you need anything.]

Linnea curled her lip. A man cold after getting out of bed. She burrowed into the covers, took out her phone to record it, but had absolutely no intention of taking the initiative to contact him. She didn't dare annoy him. Everything had just begun. She could be patient.

...

Knight Manor.

Having not returned to this place for five years, Linnea still entered smoothly because the security guard at the gate was still dozing off, neglecting his work. Like the entire small manor, maintaining superficial prosperity while rotten inside.

A mask covered Linnea's face, but on her way to the main house, several gardeners recognized her. They had been hired by her to help her mother tend the garden. Perhaps because she had delegated this matter to the butler, seemingly having nothing to do with her on the surface, these girls were able to escape the fate of being fired.

They were shocked, then excitedly called out, "Miss! You actually came back!"

Linnea smiled at them but didn't go to chat. She found it hard to feel close to people or things already bound to the Knight family. The girls noticed her attitude and left disappointedly.

Linnea entered the main house. At noon, the interior was covered by heavy curtains. Everything was dull and monotonous gray. She couldn't believe that the once warm and bright home, after being taken over for just a few years, was about to die.

She came this time to take back what belonged to her mother.

But when she opened her mother's bedroom door, everything inside shocked her.

Her mother, Laurel Clair, was a woman with artistic sensibility. She had decorated the room like a kaleidoscope, with walls covered in artwork she had purchased from around the world, as well as little Linnea's childish simple drawings.

But all of this had vanished without a trace. In its place were her stepmother's ugly and ostentatious old belongings.

The room was covered in dust. Linnea was choked into repeated coughing, tears uncontrollably spilling from her eyes. Her and her mother's little sanctuary had all been destroyed!

She cried, her heart and stomach twisted tightly together, followed by overwhelming hatred. She rushed to the dresser, grabbed that clunky vase, and threw it forcefully out the door. The vase shattered, but the fire burning fiercely in her chest still hadn't extinguished.

Until everything had been thrown out by her, she collapsed sitting by the bed, looking at the empty bedroom, the ordeals she had suffered in the past surging up again.

Five years ago.

After scattering her mother's ashes into the sea, Linnea returned home to find her father embracing a strange woman, directing the gardeners to uproot all the lavender. That was her mother's beloved flower.

Too shocked, Linnea stood frozen in place. "Father?"

What was the relationship between her father and this woman?!

The strange woman immediately turned her head. Seeing her, she stammered speechlessly. Linnea recognized her. Carla Shaw, a nanny who had once received her mother's support.

She came from a single parent family and had suffered abuse from her father for years. When little Linnea was in kindergarten, she had just dropped out of middle school, escaped from her family, and came to their house to make afternoon tea for Linnea. Even though Linnea loved her exquisite pastries, her mother felt sorry for her, advised her to go back to school, and paid for all her tuition and living expenses.

She asked painfully, "Carla, why did you destroy my family?"

But her father was eerily calm. He held Carla, looked at his unfamiliar daughter, and said gently, "Please respect your stepmother, Linnea. Your mother has passed away, but life must go on. You need to adapt to the new family."

"New family?" Linnea laughed mockingly. "Adapt to my cheating father and my ungrateful stepmother?"

Carla had already begun sobbing softly, while her father, like a masked theatrical actor, smiled at her. "Linnea, I understand your pain. But as our daughter, you shouldn't be so rude to me and your new mother."

Linnea was about to vomit.

But the next second, a sharp shout came from behind her. "Don't you dare insult my mother!"

She turned around. It was a punk teenager with an earring. He and his twin sister beside him both looked strikingly like her father.

"These are your younger brother and sister." Her father's words were cruelly bone-piercing. "They'll be entering your school next week. As their biological older sister, you should care for and cherish them."

Linnea finally broke down. Like a cannonball, she rushed up to knock the two over and disappeared at the doorway.

She couldn't believe that even before Carla entered her home as a nanny, her father had been having an affair with her and had even had a pair of twins!

That night, she got drunk at a bar.

Afterward, her stepbrother removed his earring, entered school, and put on an aristocratic air. She, who had previously been an excellent student, spent all day climbing walls to skip school and wandering various adult venues.

These days were repetitive and tedious. Linnea didn't like them. She wanted to pick mushrooms in the forest with her mom. But that could never happen again.

And her father had no objections to any of this.

He was just like all fathers rendered helpless by rebellious girls, smiling and telling others, "Linnea doesn't need to study. She just needs to be healthy and happy."

Until her eighteenth year, when the famous head of the Thorne family, Alistair Thorne, came to visit. He brought news media and met with her father, first expressing pain and regret over the tragic news of her mother's passing, then solemnly bringing up the marriage arrangement he had made with her mother to have his eldest son, Caius, marry her.

That night, her father knocked on her door. "Linnea, you're very independent. I believe you won't like an arranged marriage. Why not let your sister..."

Linnea was stunned for a long time.

Months of silent resistance were like a joke.

"This is the marriage my mother left for me." She only said, "Give it to your illegitimate daughter? Absolutely not."

If this marriage could let her escape this family, she was willing.

Linnea never went to nightclubs again. She began adapting to the role of a noble wife.

However, she didn't notice that her stepsister's jealous gaze grew stronger and stronger.

Three months later, invited by Alistair, they boarded a yacht to attend the Thorne family's party. On the deck, her stepsister Vivienne was cornered by several rich young masters. They forced her to drink potent cocktails, with stimulating perfume masking the smell of aphrodisiac. Everyone knew Vivienne was an illegitimate daughter. No one came forward to stop it.

Linnea hesitated. She wasn't sure if Vivienne was worth helping.

But when Vivienne cried and said, "I'm allergic to alcohol," she still came out to intervene. So she drank the wine and was drugged.

When the drug took effect, she was in the corridor.

What followed was dense gunfire.

Linnea's consciousness began to blur.

She only remembered desperately crawling into a storage room and bumping into a strange man's chest. Just a wall away, those rich young masters whispered disappointedly, "Where did that bitch hide? Does she know we're trying to kill her?"

Finally, what made her completely sink was the strange man's satisfied low growl.

...

When she woke up again, the gunfire had stopped.

Survived. Linnea thought silently.

Someone was lying beside her. The man from last night, right? She thought, turning her head.

The next second, her eyes widened in extreme shock.