Chapter 216: Samuel, You Animal!

​The sheer force of April’s palm slammed Sebastian’s head to the side, sending his designer glasses flying through the air as he stumbled back against the curb, clutching his bleeding lip in complete, stunned shock.

​"I find... I’m very much into handling things violently these days," April stated flatly, her voice terrifyingly calm. "So don’t you dare insult Samuel,"

​Mei shrieked, her voice reaching a shrill, hysterical pitch. "You bitch! How dare you touch my Seb?!"

​Mei blindly charged forward, her long nails outstretched for April’s face. Without even flinching, April leaned slightly to the side, dodged the clumsy swing, and delivered a brutal, sweeping slap directly across Mei’s face.

​SLAP!

​Before Mei could even register the burning pain, April’s hand shot out, catching her by the roots of her hair and yanking her back with ruthless, unyielding force.

​Mei gasped, her head forced back as tears of shock and agony welled in her eyes.

​"Today isn’t a happy day for me," April whispered, leaning close to Mei’s ear, her tone devoid of any human warmth. "I just buried a mother I never got to know. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let a parasite like you slide."

​Mei squirmed, trying to claw at April’s wrist, but April’s grip was like an iron vise.

​"In the beginning, I thought just leaving you to the fate of the zombies was punishment enough," April murmured softly, her dark eyes flashing with a haunting, prophetic malice. "But now... I’m no longer satisfied with just that. I have to at least hit you to my satisfaction."

​SLAP!

​Another sharp, merciless slap landed cleanly across Mei’s cheek. April released her hair mid-swing, letting Mei collapse onto the hard pavement at her feet, sobbing and clutching her bruised face.

​"Samuel, you animal!" Mei shrieked from the ground, her face red and swollen as she glared up at him. "How could you let your woman hit me?!"

​Samuel’s breath hitched in his chest. A complex, suffocating knot tightened in his heart. At the end of the day, Mei was still someone he had loved for years. Seeing her sprawled on the ground, beaten and weeping, made his legs move instinctively. He took a single step forward, wanting to plead with April to show mercy, but a broad hand clamped down firmly onto his shoulder, pinning him in place.

​Samuel turned his head to find Nat standing right beside him. The Mafia lord wasn’t looking at Mei or Sebastian. His eyes were fixed entirely on April’s back.

​"Look at her eyes," Nat said, his deep voice dropping into an unusually low, serious register.

​Samuel, Xavier, and Alexander all looked toward April as she slowly turned back around.

​The subtle brown hue in her eyes was completely gone. Her pupils had dilated into an abyss of pitch-black, void-like darkness, cold and utterly merciless.

​Samuel gulped, a chill crawling straight up his spine. He recognized that look. He had seen it once before—during the Gabriel family incident.

​"This is my third time seeing that look in her eyes," Nat drawled softly, his dark lenses glinting in the afternoon sun. "It’s the look of pure, unadulterated revenge. And trust me... there is nothing on this earth that can stop her until she’s completely satisfied."

​Samuel’s jaw worked silently before he whispered back, "What do you mean? Why would she want revenge on Mei? Because... because of me?"

​Nat scoffed softly, shaking his head. "Don’t give yourself that much credit. I don’t know what she thinks of you, but trust me, this isn’t about you."

​Nat’s eyes narrowed slightly as he recalled the night in the garage when April had beat up Cai with a baseball bat over and over again. Healed him, beat him to the brink of death, broke his Jones, healed him and continued the process like she had no soul or an punch of human sympathy.

Even then, it was clear that Cai had clearly never met April in his entire life, yet the sheer, terrifying depth of her hatred for him had been a deep, ancient vendetta—frightening enough to make even an underworld king take a step back.

​Whatever Mei had done to April... it hadn’t happened in this timeline—maybe it was a future event that April had foreseen and felt with her entire being, he thought. Regardless, April was collecting the debt all the same because she had no tolerance for traitors. Just like him.

Sebastian saw what was happening and he was scared out of his pants. He couldn’t stay there and face that crazy woman.

So, instead of helping Mei—who was currently taking a brutal beating to every angle of her face—he dropped to all fours, scrambling frantically across the pavement like a dog, and fled toward his car.

​"Where are you going?! Seb?! Sebastian, help me!" Mei shrieked, extending a desperate, trembling hand toward his retreating back. "You can’t leave me! Save me!!" But he didn’t turn around even once.

​"You see?" April whispered, stepping over Mei’s trembling form. "This is the oh-so-perfect man you cheated on Samuel with. The one who took you to ten different countries to show his love. Foolish Mei."

​April gave Mei a final, disdainful push with the toe of her shoe, sending her sprawling back into the dirt. Mei had no strength left to even stand. Her face was swollen, her eyes were spinning. In a second, she had fainted.

April comfirmed this before calmly standing up and dusting off her palms.

​Suddenly, she flinched.

​A sharp spike of panic shot through her chest as her mind whipped toward Emily. She turned around abruptly, worried that watching such raw, explosive violence would trigger her traumatized sister’s lingering fragile state. But she wasn’t there.

​Her dark eyes scanned the lot. "Where’s Emily?"

​"I asked someone to take her to the car," Dr. Oliver Baxter said, stepping forward and casually tilting his glasses up by the bridge with a single finger. "She shouldn’t be exposed to this kind of hostile environment while she is still recovering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder."

​April let out a long, quiet breath of relief. She had been so completely consumed by her past-life hatred for Mei that she had nearly neglected her own sister.

​"Thank you, Dr. Oliver," April said softly, her tone laced with rare, genuine gratitude.

​Seeing her reaction, Oliver immediately pulled out his tablet and tapped across the screen: Subject’s goodwill/likeability toward me has increased by approximately 10%.