After Patriarch Jiang retreated into the interior of the villa to rest, the atmosphere at the entrance seemed to undergo an instantaneous transformation. Whatever constraint his presence had imposed dissipated like morning mist, and suddenly certain individuals felt comfortable revealing their true nature—displaying the fangs they'd been keeping carefully concealed.
Lillian Wang began to fan herself with a small sandalwood fan, the kind that spoke of leisured elegance and old money. Her gaze swept across the villa's refined environment with the critical eye of someone assessing whether something was truly superior or merely pretending to be. When she finally spoke, her voice carried an undercurrent of sourness that she made almost no effort to conceal:
"Oh, look at this house. The location. The decorations. Really, it's all first-rate. Hubert, darling, do you think Victoria will actually be able to manage living here alone? Isn't it far too expansive? Wouldn't it feel rather... empty?"
She raised her eyebrows with deliberate innocence, her words carefully crafted to wound:
"Tsk, tsk. It's really quite substantially more beautiful than our own residence."
The subtext was impossible to miss. She was directly challenging the old patriarch's allocation of resources—suggesting that Grandfather Jiang clearly favored these two damaged girls over his own son's family. Why else would he gift such an exceptional property to someone "abnormal"? Why not his second son? Why not the legitimate branch that actually showed promise?
Standing nearby, Hubert appeared to be attempting conciliation, smoothing over his wife's pointed remarks. But his "peacemaking" was nothing of the sort. Instead, he was adding accelerant to the fire, fanning the flames with careful precision. He patted the back of Lillian's hand in a gesture of false comfort, his tone oozing with calculated magnanimity:
"Oh, what would you understand about such matters? Father simply feels compassion for these two children. My eldest brother and sister-in-law passed away far too young, you see, leaving behind these two sisters. One of whom..."
He paused deliberately, allowing his gaze to drift—with calculated indifference—across Elena's wheelchair and Victoria's bewildered expression.
"...Well, let's just say life hasn't been easy for either of them. It's only natural that Father would take greater care of them."
On the surface, these words dripped with understanding and familial sympathy. In reality, each sentence was a surgical strike, poking directly at the rawest wounds: the insinuation that Elena was disabled, that Victoria was mentally unstable, and that these gifts—this beautiful villa, Grandfather's attention, his resources—were merely expressions of pity. Charity given to the broken and pitiful, not love given to valued family members.
Marcus, positioned slightly apart, felt his brows draw together in a tight knot of suppressed anger. His internal monologue became scathing:
These two are performing a masterpiece of duplicity. One plays good cop, one plays bad cop. They speak in riddles and implications, pointing at one thing while denouncing another. Why don't they simply rent a theater and be done with it? At least then they'd be honest about their shameless performance.
Throughout this entire performance, Elena kept her head lowered, her slender fingers moving unconsciously along the armrest of her wheelchair in a rhythmic, self-soothing gesture. To any observer, it appeared as though the poisonous words surrounding her had no effect whatsoever—as though she existed in some mental space separate from the ugly hostility being expressed. But Marcus, watching carefully, noticed the truth: her lips had compressed into a thin line of barely suppressed rage. That subtle tightness spoke volumes about her inner state.
Victoria, by contrast, seemed entirely oblivious to the malice saturating the air. She continued to gaze around the courtyard with innocent curiosity, noticing the decorations, the flowers, the gentle autumn light filtering through the trees—everything except the emotional carnage being orchestrated around her.
The impotent anger building in Marcus's chest had nowhere to discharge. The fury was mounting, becoming difficult to contain. These people were, in his presence, bullying two vulnerable girls with no regard for his position in Elena's life. Did they imagine him to be invisible? Did they think that because he was officially listed as Elena's "husband," he was somehow powerless? That he was dead weight, a non-entity to be ignored?
He had barely taken two forward steps—his intention to intervene crystallizing into motion—when something happened that caught him entirely off guard.
Victoria, who had been standing so peacefully beside him, suddenly moved with the speed and desperation of a small animal startled from sleep. She bolted forward from Marcus's side, extended one slender finger, and pointed it directly at Lillian—who was still engaged in her fan-waving, self-satisfied performance.
And then Victoria shouted, her voice clear and carrying across the entire entrance courtyard:
"Wild hen!"
The two words fell like thunder in summer—sudden, shocking, impossible to ignore. Immediately, the small area around them fell into stunned silence. Everyone within earshot displayed expressions of absolute shock.
But Victoria apparently decided she hadn't adequately expressed herself. She giggled with the unselfconscious delight of a small child, and repeated her assessment with the earnest tone of someone performing a carefully rehearsed lesson:
"Big wild hen! Cluck-cluck!"
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The false smile that had been affixed to Lillian's face froze in place as though she'd been struck by a paralysis curse. Her entire body seemed to stiffen, the blood draining from her face in visible waves—from crimson to ashen white, then fading into a sickly greenish pallor.
The wound had been torn open. Publicly. Brutally. In front of dozens of witnesses.
The secret of how Lillian had ascended through the family hierarchy had always been precisely that—a secret whispered about behind closed doors, a scandal murmured in the circles of the City's elite. The story was sordid and damning: how she had maneuvered herself into becoming pregnant with Jason, how she had orchestrated the removal of Hubert's first wife from her position of authority, how she had executed a calculated power play that had ultimately succeeded. These details circulated through their social sphere as a running joke—the kind of thing that made people smile knowingly when they encountered her at parties, the kind of shameful history that could never be directly mentioned without crossing boundaries of civility.
But now—now it had been spoken aloud. The accusation had been shouted into the open. Victoria had taken that carefully concealed scar and ripped it wide open for public consumption, and Lillian was experiencing the full, unfiltered sensation of being utterly exposed.
Her shame crystallized into pure fury. Her composure shattered completely. She flew into a rage so consuming that coherent speech seemed almost beyond her capability.
"You... you absolute madwoman! What kind of nonsense are you spouting?!"
Lillian's entire frame trembled with the violence of her anger. Her well-manicured fingers—the ones she'd paid excellent money to maintain—pointed accusingly at Victoria, and her voice emerged sharp and shrill:
"How dare you! How DARE you speak to me like that!"
Hubert and Jason quickly moved to intercept, reaching out to physically restrain their family matriarch before the situation escalated further.
"Don't be impulsive!" Hubert hissed, his voice low and urgent. "Look around. So many people are watching. Control yourself."
Jason's voice carried notes of embarrassment and desperate mediation:
"Mom! Mom, please, just calm down! My sister—she has... she has difficulties with her thinking. She didn't mean to say anything hurtful. She doesn't understand. Please don't let her get under your skin."
But Lillian was too far gone. In a fit of uncontrollable rage, she violently shoved her son away from her, casting aside any pretense of dignified behavior. Her true nature—the calculating, vicious nature usually concealed beneath layers of social performance—erupted into full view:
"I killed myself giving birth to you! I sacrificed everything to bring you into this world, only to have you betray me? To help strangers bully your own mother?!"
She then turned her full attention back to Victoria, adopting the posture of an elder delivering stern judgment, her voice dripping with menace:
"Victoria Nightshade! You come here right now! Today I'm going to teach you the meaning of manners. Today I'm going to teach you what propriety actually means!"
Victoria's small face drained of color. It was clear that Lillian's fierce, enraged appearance had genuinely frightened her. She performed a quick retreat, moving in rapid little steps until she positioned herself directly behind Marcus's tall frame.
Her small hand seized his clothing with desperate force, clearly seeking the protection and safety his physical presence promised. But she also peeked out from behind his shoulder, her eyes wide and glistening, and addressed him in a voice trembling with manufactured tears and dependence:
"Big Doggy... bite her! She's being fierce! She scares me!"
Victoria's calculated "victim" performance only inflamed Lillian further. Her eyes seemed to emit actual smoke, her fury reaching temperatures that threatened to burn everything in its vicinity:
"You!"
But Marcus moved with perfect timing, stepping forward to position himself as a complete barrier between Lillian and the cowering Victoria. His expression, while maintaining the appearance of gentleness, carried an undertone of absolute remoteness—the polite smile of someone establishing an unmissable boundary. He blocked Lillian's path entirely:
"Aunt Lillian, what exactly are you doing? Why would you quarrel with a child? A child whose mental development froze at approximately five years of age? Surely a woman of your standing and sophistication wouldn't feel compelled to argue with a small child. That would be far beneath your dignity."
Lillian's voice rose to a shriek:
"Five-year-old child?! She's thirty years old!"
Marcus's smile never wavered, but his tone shifted—developing an edge of subtle, cutting sarcasm:
"Ah, yes. Chronologically, she may be thirty. However, mentally—here," he tapped his own chest significantly, "her age is probably not even eight years old. Perhaps significantly younger. Now that I think about it, Aunt Lillian, weren't you the one standing at someone's doorway initially? Talking continuously? Chattering endlessly without pause? She likely simply misunderstood what was happening. In her mind, she probably thought that perhaps a wild fowl had somehow wandered onto the property—a creature without any sense of manners or propriety, making noise without understanding what it was doing."
His "explanation" was perfectly reasonable on the surface, yet laced with hidden barbs. Several of the guests who had begun to gather around them—drawn by the spectacle of family drama—couldn't suppress their reaction. Soft laughter began to circulate through the crowd.
Lillian appeared to choke on this response. Her face purpled, and she pointed at Marcus with a trembling finger, her mouth opening and closing repeatedly, emitting only fragments of incoherent sound: "You... you..."
But the complete sentence never came. Her rage had apparently exceeded her ability to articulate.
Marcus, however, had already dismissed her from his attention. He turned away with deliberate casualness, extending one hand in an elegant gesture of courteous dismissal. His tone remained polished and respectful, yet it carried an unmistakable subtext—the tone of someone firmly but graciously ejecting an unwanted guest:
"Aunt Lillian, the Patriarch is resting in the interior of the villa. If you would genuinely like to view the property—if you truly wish to tour this residence—you're welcome to enter now and examine it to your satisfaction. However, creating a disturbance at the entrance is unbecoming. It demonstrates a lack of proper deportment."
Hubert, noticing that the crowd of observers was expanding by the second and that these observers were precisely the kind of influential figures whose opinions mattered in their social circle, reached the inevitable conclusion: continuing this scene would result in catastrophic loss of face for his entire family. He reached out and seized Lillian with considerable force, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper:
"Enough! Haven't you embarrassed yourself sufficiently? We're leaving. Now."
Lillian's chest heaved with convulsive violence. She was literally choking on the bile of impotent rage—anger with nowhere to direct itself, no acceptable outlet for its expression. Her clenched fists drove her fingernails nearly into her palms, drawing blood.
She cast one final, murderous glare in Victoria's direction—specifically at the girl who was now peeking out from behind Marcus, her expression carrying just a trace of smugness beneath the mask of innocent fear. Lillian's lips pulled back in a snarl, and she released a sound that was somewhere between a grunt and a word: "Hmph."
As she passed by Elena's wheelchair—Elena, who had remained entirely silent throughout the entire confrontation, whose silence had been absolute and eloquent—Lillian deliberately stopped. She subjected Elena to a thorough, contemptuous visual assessment, examining her from head to toe with the kind of gaze usually reserved for viewing something distasteful. Her eyes were like poisoned blades, cutting and wounding with every moment of contact.
Then, with a deliberate twist of her hips, she turned and walked indignantly through the villa's main entrance, her departure carrying all the dignity she could still manage to summon.
The storm had been temporarily averted. Marcus felt a slight, tugging sensation at his clothing—a small hand grasping the fabric of his shirt. He lowered his gaze and encountered Victoria's eyes: eyes that held dependence, yes, but also something else. Something that might have been described as a small, satisfied smirk.
He found himself smiling helplessly to himself, a realization settling into his awareness: this task of "protecting one's own"—of defending the vulnerable members of this household—appeared to be unavoidable. It was a role he'd apparently accepted, whether consciously or not.
The day's banquet was only beginning. And the dangers, Marcus suspected, had only just started to circle.