I Got a Second Chance, So I Stopped Saving My Brother Chapter 10

I Got a Second Chance, So I Stopped Saving My Brother Chapter 10

The day the police brought Mason home, my father was so furious that he nearly collapsed.

Mason had been gambling and had gotten into a fight, hitting someone with an object and injuring them.

If my father had not covered the victim’s medical bills and hired an attorney to handle the case, Mason would have faced far more serious consequences.

Mason sat in his wheelchair with bruises across his face, still cursing.

“They looked down on me! They deserved it!”

My father slapped him across the face.

“Hasn’t this family been through enough because of you?”

The blow snapped Mason’s head to the side.

He slowly turned back, a vicious look in his eyes.

“You think you can hit me now? Is it because I’m paralyzed?”

My mother stepped between them, crying.

“Mason, stop this. Your father is only trying to help you.”

Mason abruptly laughed.

“Help me? The only person either of you cares about now is Willa.”

He turned toward me.

“The moment she came home, you cast Paige aside. Now that I’m crippled, you’re planning to throw me away too.”

I stood nearby and said softly, “Mason, you’re misunderstanding Mom and Dad.”

He grabbed the ashtray from the table and hurled it at me.

I stepped aside.

It struck the wall and shattered, and a fragment cut a bloody line across the back of my hand.

My mother rushed over and caught hold of me.

“Willa, does it hurt?”

When Mason saw that, he completely lost control.

He screamed and swept everything from the table onto the floor.

“You’re all choosing her over me! You all deserve to die!”

My parents called 911.

The paramedics who arrived had to sedate him.

Even as he slipped into unconsciousness, he kept muttering Paige’s name.

“This is all her fault… She owes me the rest of her life…”

That night, I went to find Paige.

She was doing backstage grunt work for a small regional theater company.

The moment she saw me, she instinctively stepped back.

“What are you doing here?”

I placed a cashier’s check on the table.

“It’s for a hundred thousand dollars. Leave town. Use it to go to school out of state or continue pursuing theater somewhere else.”

She eyed me warily.

“Since when are you this generous?”

I studied her face, which had grown noticeably thinner.

“Mason keeps talking about making you pay for what happened to him. If you stay here, something will happen to you sooner or later.”

Paige was silent for a long time.

“Don’t you hate me?”

“I did.”

She looked up.

I continued, “Then I realized you weren’t the person I should have hated most.”

She had merely benefited from their favoritism.

The people who had truly ground me into the dirt were my parents and Mason.

Paige took the check.

Three days later, she disappeared.

That same evening, Mason overheard my parents talking.

My father said, “Mason can’t go on like this. We need to move him into a long-term care facility.”

Through her tears, my mother asked, “What happens to the company and the properties?”

My father was silent for a long time.

“Leave everything to Willa. At least she’s normal.”

Outside the room, Mason’s breathing grew heavier.

I stood at the far end of the hallway and stopped the recording on my phone.

He had taken the bait.