Chapter 361: Stripped Bare

Chapter 361: Chapter 361: Stripped Bare

Arabella Donovan’s expression grew cold, and her frigid gaze was intensely intimidating.

The moment Cassandra Lynch met her gaze, her heart began to pound uncontrollably, feeling even worse than when her illness usually flared up.

"You... let me go. I don’t feel well. I want to go home now. I promise I’ll never appear before you and Eloise again. I won’t bother you anymore, so please, just let me off the hook."

’Still acting, even now? You must have been brewing this little act since birth; it’s seeped into your very bones. I was thinking about letting you off the hook, but at this point, not even the Jade Emperor could stop me. Watch me strip you bare today, you little green tea.’

When Arabella Donovan spoke, all the eavesdropping patrons nearby perked up, giving the scene their undivided attention.

"Let you off the hook? And how are we supposed to do that? Have you forgotten? You’re the one who asked to meet me today. The text message you sent asking to talk is still sitting right in my phone. Is this what you call not bothering us? Not causing trouble?"

As she spoke, Arabella Donovan leaned in close to Cassandra Lynch, her faint smile meeting the other woman’s terrified, dilated pupils. "Since you don’t bother to do your homework before picking your targets—to see who you can and cannot afford to provoke—I’ll be merciful and teach you a lesson today. Before my parents found me, I was a Daoist in a Sacred Temple. The kind of Daoist who can see into the past and know the future. Which means..."

Arabella Donovan extended her index finger, gesturing toward Cassandra Lynch’s heart. "Every single shameful thing you’ve ever done, from the time you were a child until now... I know all of them."

Cassandra Lynch shuddered, her voice trembling involuntarily. "I... I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Don’t know? You just kept saying the baby swap had nothing to do with you, that it was all your birth mother’s doing. You said you were just a helpless baby at the time and couldn’t change anything. I’ll grant you that."

Arabella’s tone shifted. "But what about scheming to have kidnappers abduct your cousin, Melody? Or hiring people to constantly monitor my sister, plotting a car crash to eliminate the problem for good? After you were kicked out of the Lynch Family, you secretly searched for your cousin Zane’s long-lost child, even hiring thugs in advance to kidnap his son. You planned to threaten Zane into transferring all his company assets to you. You did all of that, didn’t you?"

"What? A car crash? What car crash?" Sitting nearby, Mr. and Mrs. Donovan’s faces turned pale, and they barely managed to stifle a gasp of shock.

The Lynch family members at the next table were also startled. "Eloise, you were in a car crash? When did this happen? Was it serious?"

Eloise Donovan herself was still dazed. "I... I haven’t been in a car crash."

But she quickly composed herself. "But Serena wouldn’t say something like that for no reason. The most likely explanation is that she really did plan a car crash, and I just avoided it by some twist of fate."

Upon hearing this, the expressions of the Lynch family members all darkened. "How did we never realize it before? That woman is so vicious she’d even plot a car crash."

Zane Lynch was still fuming and feeling a lingering fear over the fact that she had already hired people to kidnap his wife and child to force his hand. Hearing the exchange, he curled his lip and made a sharp retort, "If she weren’t so venomous, she wouldn’t have led those kidnappers to Melody back then."

The Lynch family: "..." They were rendered speechless.

Cassandra Lynch had never expected Arabella Donovan to know these things. After her initial panic, she quickly composed herself. After all, most of the things Arabella just mentioned had failed, and she hadn’t left any evidence.

Realizing this, Cassandra Lynch calmed down considerably. Her gaze toward Arabella Donovan now held a touch of offended sorrow and disbelief.

"Arabella, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. I know you resent me for what happened all those years ago, but you can’t just accuse me of things I haven’t done."

"You really won’t shed a tear until you see the coffin. I knew you’d say that, so I prepared something else for you."

"Wh... what?"

Arabella Donovan watched her steadily for a moment, then a gentle smile spread across her face as she launched her attack.

"Your name is Cassandra Lynch, or perhaps I should call you Maddie Wagner. Your mother dropped out of junior high to find work and met your father, a man who trafficked women and children for a living. Initially, your father had just deceived your mother to sell her off like property. But, as it turned out, he couldn’t find a suitable buyer, so he just kept her for himself."

The patrons in the coffee shop, all ears for the gossip: "???" Is this some new kind of sick joke? A trafficker couldn’t sell his victim, so he just kept her? That sounds completely absurd.

But they would soon discover that the joke could get even darker.

"Because she wasn’t sold, your mother was touched. She thought your father must be desperately in love with her. She became completely love-addled and willingly followed him to the ends of the earth."

The onlookers: "???" Shouldn’t she have been trying to escape? How could she become so devoted to the trafficker who was just about to sell her? Was there something wrong with that woman’s head?

"For the next several years, the two of them worked together, using your mom as bait to help kidnap over a hundred women and children, right up until your birth father was finally caught."

The crowd: "..." Talk about the dragon slayer becoming the dragon. This plot twist is demonic. We’re at a loss for words.

"In May of Year XX, when your mother was four months pregnant with you, your birth father was arrested after being reported. Before he was caught, he sent a message to your mother, allowing her to escape with you in advance and go into hiding."

"That’s enough! Stop talking!" Cassandra Lynch screamed, unable to stop herself as she listened to Arabella Donovan expose her entire history from the very beginning.

Unfortunately, the situation in the shop was already far beyond her control.

"What do you mean, ’enough’? It’s not enough! Human traffickers deserve to be cut into a thousand pieces! A trafficker’s child can’t be any good, either. We want to hear the rest!"

"That’s right! Young lady, don’t be afraid. Tell us everything you know. I want to see what kind of end this family of traffickers met."

"This is just evil! So many women and children... that’s so many families. When I was a kid, a neighbor in my hometown... their child wasn’t being watched closely and was snatched by a trafficker who snuck into the village. The grandmother who was watching the child blamed herself so much she drank pesticide and died. The child’s mother couldn’t handle the blow and went insane. A perfectly fine person, just went mad. She waits at the village entrance all day, asking everyone she sees if they’ve seen her child."

"Isn’t that the truth? And what about those young girls who get abducted? I heard many are sold into the mountains to be wives and have children. They’re imprisoned, beaten, and abused. The ’lucky’ ones are just tortured until they go insane but get to keep their lives. The unlucky ones might even have their kidneys harvested and end up dead."

"Utterly depraved! A moment ago, when she said she was seriously ill, I actually felt sorry for her and her parents. Now I find out her parents were traffickers of women and children... I feel like I completely wasted my sympathy! Thank God I kept my mouth shut earlier, or I’d be kicking myself right now."