My Husband Accused My Family of Stealing His Mother’s Gift Chapter 11

My Husband Accused My Family of Stealing His Mother’s Gift Chapter 11

I thought I had made my refusal clear enough.

The door had been shut in his face again and again, and we had said everything there was to say. Adrian was a proud man, so surely he would know when to back off.

But I had underestimated his persistence.

Or rather, I had underestimated how desperate and irrational he could become when he had

nowhere left to turn.

A few days later, an even bigger scandal exploded online.

Maya posted it herself on X. Her lengthy thread included screenshots of private messages and a

medical visit summary.

She accused Adrian of cheating on me with her before our divorce was finalized.

She claimed he had groped her in his office, plied her with alcohol at a business dinner, and gotten

her pregnant.

Every allegation landed like a bomb.

The internet erupted.

[He cheated while he was married? So his ex-wife was basically forced into the divorce!]

[Everyone called his ex petty, but it turns out she knew what was going on all along.]

[What a disgusting man. He cheated on her, then tried to make her look like the problem.]

[I feel terrible for his ex-wife. Thank God she got out.]

Public opinion reversed overnight.

The people who had once filled my account with snide remarks suddenly went silent. In their place came a flood of sympathetic messages and apologies.

Adrian’s public image was completely destroyed.

Suppliers cut off his credit and stopped shipments. The bank froze the company’s credit line and called in its outstanding loans, while clients and business partners terminated their contracts one

after another.

Mercer Industries lasted less than a month before filing for bankruptcy.

The night before the company was scheduled to begin liquidation, Adrian came back again.

The doorbell rang while I was helping Mom wash dishes in the kitchen.

Dad answered it and stood in the doorway for a moment without letting Adrian inside.

I dried my hands and walked over.

Adrian stood outside in a badly wrinkled white shirt. He had not shaved in days.

He had once been meticulous about his appearance. His hair was always perfectly combed, and his dress shoes were polished until they shone.

Now he looked completely drained. His eyes were sunken, and his lips were dry and cracked.

“Sienna, please. Just talk to me.

His voice was low and carried a panic I had never heard from him before.

I remained inside the house. I neither stepped outside nor closed the door.

“Please. The company is about to go under. We built it from the ground up together. You poured years of work into it, and I gave it my youth. Can you really stand there and watch it collapse?”

He kept calling it something we had built together.

Yet not once did he apologize to me.

Instead, he dressed the company up as a symbol of our shared past, as if refusing to save it would make me the one betraying everything we had once had.

I looked at him calmly.

“Then let it fail. I don’t care anymore.”

The words struck him like a knife.

Adrian froze. The pleading expression on his face gave way to disbelief.

“How can you not care? We built that company togeth-”

Tyler stepped out behind me and took hold of my arm.

“Mr. Mercer, my sister genuinely does not care about you, your company, or anything happening in

your family.”

He paused and smiled.

“At this point, she cares more about what we’re having for dinner.”

With that, Tyler pulled me back into the house.

The scandal surrounding Adrian and Maya spread internationally.

Noah had never been a strong student. He had gotten into the overseas university only because

Adrian paid and pulled strings.

Once the scandal drew attention to the Mercer family, the university reopened Noah’s admissions file. After finding serious irregularities in his application, it revoked his enrollment.

He returned home in disgrace without finishing his degree.

A year later, on a beautiful day in early summer, I went shopping downtown with Mom and Dad. We planned to have lunch afterward at a newly opened French bistro.

As we passed the entrance to a shopping mall, I noticed a crowd gathered nearby.

A/scruffy man was crouched beside a large planter, staring at his phone with his brow deeply

furrowed.

He wore a filthy dark jacket with its cuffs worn white at the edges.

It was Adrian.

I almost did not recognize him.

He looked ten years older. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were deeply etched, and his hair was a tangled mess, as though he had not groomed it in ages.

Linda stood beside him in a worn, pilling knit dress. One hand rested on her hip while the other pointed accusingly at him.

“Do you have any money or not? What’s wrong with going out for French food and treating your

own mother to one meal?”

Maya stood on his other side, holding a child who looked a little over a year old.

The toddler was wailing inconsolably, and Maya could not calm the child no matter what she did.

She had gained a great deal of weight, and her face had become puffy and round. None of her former beauty remained.

Noah leaned against a nearby lamppost with a cigarette hanging from his lips, glaring at Adrian.

“This is all your fault. If you hadn’t driven Sienna away, I never would’ve been forced out of school. Now I don’t even have a degree, and I’m back home getting dragged down by you.”

Adrian suddenly surged to his feet.

“Would all of you just shut up?”

His shout was loud enough to make passing shoppers turn and stare.

The moment he finished, he looked up and met my eyes.

I stood only a few yards away, with Mom and Dad beside me and Tyler walking behind us carrying a box of pastries we had just bought.

I gave Adrian one brief glance.

Then I kept walking.