Suddenly, a ringtone came from the living room, and Jiang Xue put her hand down in response.
"Mom, I'm going to take a call first."
Zhou Aifeng, furious, followed into the living room and scolded, "If it's that dog bastard of the Xiao family, dare to answer it in my house, and get out!"
Jiang Xue frowned, took out her phone from her bag, and saw that the call was from her aunt, instantly feeling relieved.
"Hello, Auntie, did you need to talk to me about something?"
Hearing this, Zhou Aifeng's ears pricked up. Why is Ruifeng calling Xue?
Zhou Ruifeng's voice was filled with trepidation, "Xu... Xue, where are you now?"
"I'm at my mom's place."
"Have you had.....dinner?"
"Yes. My mom's cooking is still so delicious." Jiang Xue turned and smiled at her mother.
Zhou Ruifeng's vision was already starting to blur darkly, and with the last bit of hope, she asked, "Did she prepare anything.....to drink for you?"
Jiang Xue's sense of unease grew stronger. Why were her mother and aunt acting so strangely today?
Suddenly, she remembered Xiao Ming's warning; her eyes fell on the juice in her hand, and a wave of inexplicable fear swept over her, her heart pounding wildly.
"My mom poured me peach juice. How did you know, Auntie?"
"Don't worry about how I knew, have you drunk... drunk it?"
"Not yet..."
Before she could finish, she heard Zhou Ruifeng exhale heavily on the other end, even with a groaning sound, as if in pain.
"Auntie, are you alright? Are you feeling unwell?"
"No, on the contrary, I've never felt as comfortable as I do today," Zhou Ruifeng said, with a cry of joy in her voice, "Xue, listen to me, please, please don't drink the juice your mom gave you!"
"Why?"
"Give me the phone!"
Zhou Aifeng suddenly rushed over to snatch the phone. Jiang Xue, now on alert, stepped back and dodged, looking gravely at her.
"What's in this juice?"
"What do you mean?" Zhou Aifeng immediately began to counterattack, "I poured it for you with my own hands, what could possibly be wrong?
You ungrateful wretch, is this how a daughter should speak to her mother?"
However, Jiang Xue's call was still connected, so the question wasn't just for her.
Zhou Ruifeng knew she couldn't hide the truth any longer, hesitated a moment, then said, "This is partly my fault, I was blinded by greed and didn't refuse your mother's request.
She... asked me to get abortion pills from a hospital friend to terminate the child in your womb..."
Crack!
Jiang Xue's phone fell to the floor, the screen shattered, flickered twice and turned black.
She was oblivious, staring blankly at her mother, her eyes filled with an intense mix of disbelief, suspicion, anger, sadness, and despair.
She had a belly full of words she wanted to say, to harshly question her mother why, but in the end, she just offered a melancholic smile.
She understood everything; she just stubbornly refused to believe it.
She thought her mother simply favored sons over daughters, that even if there wasn't much love, she would at least consider her as her own daughter.
But at this moment, she finally accepted that the symbol "daughter," for some mothers, was synonymous with slaves and livestock.
Not even regarded as a person!
"What are you looking at? Want to rebel?"
Zhou Aifeng felt uncomfortable under Jiang Xue's glare and once again started cursing loudly, "You wretch, ever since you got involved with that dog bastard Xiao, you've learned to be disobedient, now you even dare to glare at me, do you still have your mother in your heart?"
Jiang Xue took another deep breath, struggling to hold back tears that threatened to spill, and said coldly, "A real mother wouldn't heartlessly want to kill her own unborn grandchild!"
Zhou Aifeng's pupils contracted, guessing that Zhou Ruifeng had betrayed her. While inwardly cursing her sister, she simply let go as well.
"Bullshit! That's not my grandchild, it's a bastard of a mongrel! Keeping him would be a curse, better dead than alive!
Jiang Xue, I'm warning you, if you still think this is your home, if you still see me as your mother, then obediently drink the juice.
Otherwise, I'll disown you as my daughter, let you be bullied to death outside and not give a damn!"
"When I was bullied in the past, did you ever care?" Jiang Xue sneered, "Not only did you not care, but even when my dad wanted to, you'd stop him.
'It's better if that loss-making good-for-nothing dies outside'—you've said that to my face countless times.
And you dare to mention 'mother-daughter relationship'?"
With that, she loosened her grip, and the cup fell and shattered, spilling the juice all over the floor.
"You..."
Zhou Aifeng's eyes were about to burst, her body trembling.
That was expensive juice she had bought!
"Alright! You little bitch! If you won't take the medicine, I'll personally abort that bastard child!"
She swung her fists, charging at Jiang Xue as if possessed.
Jiang Xue was already ashen-faced, not fighting back, merely stepping aside to dodge.
Zhou Aifeng couldn't stop herself in time and, due to inertia, crashed into a chair with a cry, pain immobilizing her momentarily; she simply sat on the floor and began to scream,
"Murder! Help! I've raised an ingrate, she wants to kill her own mother..."
Just then, the door was pushed open, and Jiang Yonghan walked in with a frown.
"What's going on here? I could hear your crazy shouting from outside, can't you ever be quiet for a moment?"
"I can't be quiet? Mr. Jiang, your precious daughter has started hitting her mother, and you expect me to be quiet?"
Zhou Aifeng was even more agitated, and as she spoke, she even began to play the victim, looking as though she was on the verge of tears.
"Oh Lord, why is my life so miserable? My own daughter strikes me, my husband's heartless, what's the point of me living?
Don't try to stop me, just let me die..."
She got up and flung herself at Jiang Yonghan's legs, angering him enough to seriously consider stepping aside and letting her hit the wall behind him.
"Xue, what exactly happened? Did you hit your mother?" he asked, trying to keep his temper.
Jiang Xue could smell the alcohol on her father's breath and realized that her mother's claims about him being ill were just lies to trick her into coming home to drink the juice. This made her even more upset.
"Dad, do you really think I'd lay a hand on you two? In more than twenty years, mom... this woman has hit me countless times, broken who-knows-how-many feather dusters over me, have I ever talked back?"
"Nonsense! If you didn't hit your mother, where did all this pain come from?"
Zhou Aifeng turned and leaned on Jiang Yonghan's leg, "Mr. Jiang, listen to what your precious daughter just called me - 'this woman'!
I'm her mother, I carried her for ten months and raised her with great difficulty, and she calls me 'this woman'!
Have you gone deaf or dumb, letting her treat me this way?"
Jiang Yonghan naturally knew his daughter's temperament and was well aware of what his wife was capable of, so he didn't believe a punctuation mark of Zhou Aifeng's words.
But unfortunately, he was too soft-hearted, always muddling through all these years, just wanting to quickly defuse the situation, so he said to Jiang Xue, "Xue, you've gone too far!
No matter what, she is your mother, how can you be disrespectful to your mother? Don't you know what filial piety is?"
Hearing her father's reproach, Jiang Xue could no longer hold back her tears. Her lips turned deathly pale as she bit them, her fingers pointing toward the broken glass and spilled juice on the floor.
"Dad, do you know why I came home today?
It's because this woman called me, saying you were sick. Then, when I rushed back, she kept insisting I drink this cup of juice.
Luckily, she didn't know how much I detest peaches, she bought the peach juice that would make me vomit at one sip; otherwise, the one dying wouldn't be her but me.
Because that juice had abortion pills in it!
She wanted to kill your unborn grandchild!"