He Gave Away My House During the Vows, So I Canceled the Marriage Chapter 08

He Gave Away My House During the Vows, So I Canceled the Marriage Chapter 08

Jason sat frozen, and a dark stain spread across the front of his suit pants.

He had lost control of himself.

Margaret finally snapped out of her fantasy that her son was making half a million dollars a year.

She didn’t understand criminal conversion or commercial bribery. But she understood “ten years

in prison.”

She threw herself at Jason, wailing. “Jason! Say something! You told me everything was fine, you

said you had it all planned out!”

Jason’s lips trembled. He couldn’t get a single word out.

Margaret suddenly spun around, crawled on her hands and knees to Thomas’s feet, and wrapped

her arms around his pant leg.

“Please, sir, please! Jason is young! He didn’t know what he was doing!”

“It’s my fault! Blame me! I pushed him into it! Please don’t put him in prison!”

“Lily is still carrying Jason’s baby! If you send him to prison, that child will grow up without a

father!”

Thomas let out a laugh with no warmth in it, pure disgust.

“The baby? Didn’t someone just say it might not even be Jason’s? Now it suddenly is?”

Margaret froze for a second. Then she hauled off and slapped herself across the face. Hard. Twice.

“That was me talking nonsense! I shouldn’t have said that! The baby is Jason’s! I swear it is! Please,

for the sake of the child-”

“Enough.” Thomas cut her off, his voice cold. “You don’t get to call yourselves my family.”

He turned to me. “Lily. You decide. What do you want to do with them?”

I stood there, the cut on my lip still throbbing.

I looked at Jason, crumpled on the floor. The face that once made me feel so safe now looked ugly beyond words.

Then I looked at Margaret, her cheeks red and swollen.

I took a deep breath. “Uncle, with the house, he took what my parents left me. I don’t just want the money and be done with it.”

“The slap. I want to file a police report. I want a medical exam and to let the law handle it.”

“As for the bribery, that’s about your firm. I’ll stay out of it.”

Then I turned to Margaret, still kneeling on the floor.

“As for you. Back in the dressing room, you wanted me to kneel and apologize, and the whole thing would be over.”

Margaret was shaking, all her earlier arrogance gone.

I looked down at her and spoke one word at a time.

“You want a letter from me asking for leniency so your son gets a lighter sentence? Then here’s the

deal.”

“You and your son. Go out to the reception hall. Right now. In front of all your relatives. And kneel. Apologize to me.”

Jason’s head snapped up. His eyes were bloodshot. “Lily… you’re… you’re trying to kill me…”

“Kill you?” I laughed. “You’re not worth my time.”

Seeing that I wasn’t going to budge, Margaret gritted her teeth and pushed herself up from the

floor.

She walked to Jason, bent down, and tugged at his arm. “Jason… get up…”

Jason shook her off. “Mom! Just leave me alone!”

“If you don’t kneel, you’re going to prison!” Margaret’s tears were falling like rain. “Ten years… How am I supposed to live through that?”

She crouched down and wrapped her arms around Jason’s head, and the two of them sobbed

together.

Finally, Jason let go first.

He hung his head and walked toward the end of the hallway, numb. Margaret followed behind him,

wiping her eyes, shuffling and unsteady.

They stopped in front of the crowd of relatives.

Jason’s eyes were red. He looked at the familiar faces.

The faces that had once called him “successful,” “a good son,” “the pride of the town.”

Then he slowly lowered himself to his knees. They hit the tile floor with a dull thud.

Margaret knelt down right next to him.

The relatives were dead silent.

Someone covered their mouth. Someone else turned away.

Jason didn’t lift his head. His forehead was scraped raw, a thin line of blood mixing with the tears

running down his face.

I stood a few feet away and watched. I didn’t feel satisfied, just an empty kind of quiet.

Seven years. A million-dollar inheritance. A baby. A wedding.

And in the end, it all came down to nothing more than humiliation,

I turned, took my uncle’s arm.

“Come on, Uncle. Let’s go.’