CHAPTER 175: CHAPTER 175: BETTY’S RAGE

Slap!

Betty’s ears rang sharply the moment a brutal slap cracked across her face.

The sting burst like fire beneath her skin, spreading from her cheek to her jaw, and for one disorienting heartbeat, she wondered if she had imagined it.

But the throbbing heat told her the truth.

She had been struck. Again.

Her fingers curled so tightly around her palm that her nails bit into flesh.

’Endure... endure for now. Once I reach Celestial Rank, all of these bastards will kneel. I’ll make him regret every bruise he ever gave me.’

Another wave of humiliation burned through her chest, but she forced her head lower and forced herself to swallow her rage like acid.

Across from her, her father’s cold voice slid through the heavy silence of the manor.

"So you’ve even learned to resist now, Betty. Impressive."

She kept her head down, forcing her voice to remain steady.

"I cannot consume herbs simply because you want me to do so..."

Before she could complete the sentence, another slap landed, harder than the first.

Betty’s teeth rattled, and a metallic taste seeped across her tongue.

She trembled with the urge to retaliate... even knowing the man before her stood at Celestial Rank, a mountain she couldn’t touch even at her peak.

Her father, Sebastian, watched her clenched fists with detached amusement. Thin rivulets of blood dripped between her knuckles, but to him, it was nothing more than theatrics.

Was she resentful? So what? She didn’t have power, so how could she dare to feel an emotion as luxurious as resentment?

"Overdramatic girl," he murmured under his breath, lips barely curving.

From his perspective, Betty wasn’t even worth the irritation she displayed. She was an ant hissing at a dragon.

A soft voice chimed from behind him.

"Sebastian, darling... Does your hand hurt?"

Sebastian turned toward his second wife, Harper, whose delicate features were arranged in a gentle, almost saintly smile.

But her eyes held that familiar glint... the same one that always sliced straight into Betty’s bones.

Harper stepped closer, her perfume drifting faintly through the air... sweet jasmine with a sharp undercurrent of venom.

"You shouldn’t lower yourself to Betty’s level," she said sweetly, brushing her fingers against Sebastian’s arm as if soothing him.

Betty’s heart filled with ice.

’One day, I will rip that forked tongue out of your mouth with my own hands... and you’ll finally know what pain truly feels like.’

Sebastian’s expression softened at Harper’s touch.

"How is Sophia?"

Harper’s smile faltered instantly, replaced by a trembling mask of worry.

"Not well... Her fever isn’t going down at all."

Then she sniffled dramatically.

"I truly don’t understand what kind of hatred Betty has for her younger sister. How could she suggest that Sophia directly consume breakthrough herbs at seventeen?"

Betty’s jaw dropped. She almost shouted.

Almost broke the façade of obedience she forced herself to wear.

Because that was a lie.

A well-crafted lie that Sophia... golden child, apple of her father’s eye, ever the venom-coated viper, had spun with ease.

Sophia had taken the herbs on her own, just to frame. Heck, she can bet all the assets under the name that Sophia might not have even consumed a single herb!

But here? In this house?

Betty’s voice was a ghost... unheard and unwanted.

Every accusation she’d ever made against Sophia had been dismissed without a second glance.

The evidence she gathered was torn apart, ignored, or twisted.

At first, Betty believed her father was simply blind.

But after years of trying...

After years of watching every truth she brought forth be crushed beneath his heel...

She realized there were only two explanations:

One: His trust in Sophia was so blindingly absolute that no truth could pierce it.

Or two: He knew exactly who Sophia was and still chose her.

Because Sophia... was his beloved child. His mistress’s daughter. The daughter he actually wanted.

And Betty... Betty was nothing more than the mistake he couldn’t erase.

Betty knew her mother’s death was tied to this man.

At first, her mother was thrust into a loveless business marriage, and later on, her mother conceived her out of love, even though she was against having children.

Her mother feared that her father would be distracted when she would become pregnant, and her father proved it true.

She knew he had a mistress even before she was born.

When she was five, she watched her mother crumble under depression, her spirit dimming each day.

At seven, she watched her mother rise again, whispering to Betty:

"Never make a man your heaven. Stand on your own. Only then will you survive."

Betty clung to those words like a lifeline, shaping her life around them.

But when she turned twelve, she watched her mother’s wings get torn off.

Her father discovered her mother had found comfort and love in another woman.

Mary.

A simple gardener with gentle hands, soft laughter, and eyes full of warmth.

At first, her mother resisted Mary with thorns born from years of resentment, but slowly, those walls broke. Betty watched her mother smile again, truly smile.

But when did Sebastian discover the affair?

A man who cheated first, a man who fathered a child with another woman, a man who expected blind forgiveness... could not tolerate being the one betrayed.

His pride was worth more than his wife’s sanity.

Mary died soon after being slain in the shadows of their estate.

Betty’s mother was shattered.

She spiraled into a deep, irreversible despair. Not because she lacked the will to fight, but because she realized the horrifying truth:

No matter how she resisted, the chains wrapped around her would always tighten.

Her life was not her own. Her choices weren’t her own.

Her family pressured her endlessly, using Betty as a bargaining chip... threatening Betty’s life to force her obedience.

She couldn’t even express her resentment openly, because doing so meant endangering the daughter she loved with her entire being.

But after Mary’s death, something broke between mother and daughter.

Her mother blamed Betty... just a little, just enough to change the air around her... because when Sebastian discovered the affair, he gave her mother an ultimatum:

Choose Betty, and Mary dies. Choose Mary, and Betty dies.

And her mother, trembling and terrified, had chosen Betty.