“I heard your father left behind some rather questionable debts in the U.S. years ago. If I dig them up, maybe I’ll find plenty of people eager to ‘help’ you through another crisis. Then you’ll have even more opportunities to repay kindness—how wonderful, don’t you think?”
“Sophia! You’ve gone too far!”
Ethan shot to his feet, fury rising in his eyes.
“I was trying to think of you, and this is how you repay me? Mocking me? The Miller Family clearly misjudged you. How could you be so heartless as to refuse compassion for an orphaned girl?”
I calmly gathered the documents back into the folder.
“Why, Ethan? Is it fine for you to pull strings and hand out titles to outsiders, but unacceptable for me to reopen old accounts?
And tell me—why is it that you bend over backward to force someone with no real design ability into my projects? Could it be the two of you are hiding some… unspeakable secret?”
The office fell into a suffocating silence. Even the low hum of the air conditioner sounded harsh against it.
Ethan’s chest rose and fell violently, but no rebuttal left his lips. The air itself seemed to freeze solid.