The Man She Loved For Ten Years Let Her Father Die To Protect His Mistress Chapter 04

The Man She Loved For Ten Years Let Her Father Die To Protect His Mistress Chapter 04

I collapsed onto the floor, every part of me numb with disbelief.

My father had lived a life of irreproachable dignity.

His career had been spotless. After my mother died, he had devoted his life to raising me and never remarried.

And now Adrian, just to protect Sienna, was using my father’s corpse as a shield for his mistress.

But there was nothing I could do.

Only one door separated me from the funeral, and on the other side of it, the two people who had destroyed my father were now presiding over his final goodbye.

I was his daughter, his only child, and I couldn’t even walk him to the end.

The funeral music gradually faded into the distance as the service moved on toward the cemetery.

I had no idea how much time passed before the door suddenly flew open.

Adrian stormed in, furious, and seized my face so hard pain shot through my face.

“So this is how vicious you are,” he spat. “Sienna bent over backward for you, and you still wouldn’t let her go.”

His grip tightened. “The internet is tearing her apart right now. They’re calling her shameless.”

“Calling her a slut who slept with her mentor’s son-in-law and stabbed her mentor’s family in the back.”

“ The hospital is suspending her research program. They’re firing her. Do you have any idea that ten years of her life went into that work?”

He stared at me like I was filth. “You ruined her. Are you happy now?”

I shook my head over and over. “I didn’t do it.”

He didn’t believe me for a second.

Instead, he laughed from pure rage. “Good. If you won’t let Sienna live in peace, then I won’t let you have any either.”

He yanked me upright, then yanked me to my feet, dragged me outside, and threw me in front of the gathered mourners.

The screen that had been showing photographs from my father’s life suddenly went black.

Then a shaky recording started playing.

It was a masterclass in character assassination.

“Where does it hurt? Let me take a look.”

The sound of it turned my blood to ice.

It sounded exactly like my father.

Then the woman let out a sharp, panicked scream. “Professor Wren, don’t!”

The video cut off abruptly.

A second later, a new clip appeared: ten minutes later, the same woman stumbling out of an office clutching her disheveled clothes to her chest.

I would have known that silhouette anywhere.

It was Sienna.

Then the screen switched again, this time to a disciplinary termination notice that clearly stated Professor Professor Wren had been dismissed for misconduct.

Almost everyone in the room was one of my father’s former students or colleagues. Their expressions changed instantly. Shock first. Then disgust.

“I can’t believe he was a predator. He really had us all fooled.”

“So that’s why he stepped down when he was being considered for the National Academy. I knew something had to be off.”

“Unbelievable. Disgusting.”

“No!”

I clapped my hands over my ears and screamed until my throat burned raw. “That’s not true! My father never did any of that!”

Through the ringing in my head, I saw Sienna standing near the front in a white mourning dress, her eyes red, her face arranged into helpless sorrow.

I lunged toward her like a drowning woman reaching for something that floated.

“Sienna,” I begged, grabbing at her, “tell them. Tell them my father never did that. Tell them.”

Back then, I had begged my father for months before he finally agreed to take her on as a graduate student, even though she hadn’t been qualified.

After she graduated, he had personally arranged work for her.

He used to tell me to invite her over for dinner all the time. He had treated her like a daughter.

How could he possibly have had those intentions toward her?

But before I could say any more, Landon shoved me away.

He looked at me with open disgust. “Stop making her relive it! You don’t deserve to be my mother.”

I fell hard, my back slamming into my father’s memorial portrait. The flowers and offerings on the table crashed to the floor around me.

Landon didn’t spare any of it a glance.

But when he noticed the red mark on the back of Sienna’s hand, he flew into a rage. He snatched up my father’s memorial portrait and hurled it to the ground.

“I don’t want a disgusting grandfather like that anyway!”

“Dad!”

I threw myself forward and grabbed the portrait off the floor before anyone could step on it, clutching it to my chest, dust and all.

Then I looked up at Landon.

The hatred on his face was so naked, so absolute, that something inside me finally went silent for good.

By the time the mourners drifted away, I could barely stand.

I stumbled to my father’s grave and stopped dead.

Everything there was wrecked.

His urn had been tossed carelessly in front of the open plot. The headstone leaned crooked in the dirt, covered with muddy footprints.

I dropped to my knees.

With shaking hands, I tried to reclaim what was left of him from the dirt and put them back into the urn, sobbing so hard I could hardly breathe.

Then I pulled it into my arms and held it there like that was all I had left in the world.

“Dad,” I whispered through tears, “this place only gave you nightmares. Let’s leave.”

The love I had cherished and the friendship I had trusted had both turned out to be nothing but lies and cruelty.

I took out my phone and blocked all three of them.

Then I carried my father’s ashes out of that city and boarded an Amtrak train.

The only thing I left behind for Adrian and his son was a signed set of divorce papers.