Chapter 57

Charlotte collapsed onto the sofa, her ears ringing. Half her face throbbed with a sharp, numbing pain, and for several seconds she could barely think.

When her vision finally cleared, she looked up at her father in disbelief.

“Dad!”

Charlotte had been spoiled all her life. Even when she made mistakes, the worst she usually got was a lecture. No one had ever hit her before, certainly not like this.

“Dad, why did you—”

She stopped.

Her father’s expression frightened her.

Mr. Whitmore spent most of his time working and rarely had much time for his children, but he was generally easygoing with them. He almost never lost his temper.

Right now, his face was dark with anger.

“Why did you hit me?” Charlotte asked.

“You keep talking about killing people as if it’s nothing.” Mr. Whitmore clenched his jaw. “Since when did you become so powerful?”

“I—”

“What happened at the Sterling family’s gathering?”

Charlotte shook her head quickly. “Nothing. I was just there with some classmates—”

“What did you do?”

He repeated the question slowly.

“I didn’t do anything!” Charlotte protested. “We ate, had some drinks, talked about school… I joked about calling some male models over, but Victoria didn’t agree. I swear, I was only joking!”

“Did you argue with Victoria?”

“No!”

Afraid he might hit her again, Charlotte hurried to explain.

“We were getting along perfectly fine! Besides, Victoria spent the rest of the night with Adrian. We were downstairs and they were upstairs.”

Mr. Whitmore frowned.

“Adrian? A man?”

“Yes! I told you about him before. You forgot. He’s the math student—”

“I don’t care what he studies!”

Mr. Whitmore had no interest in some university student whose name he barely remembered.

“I’m asking what else you did that night. And how did this Adrian meet Victoria? Did you introduce them?”

Richard’s warning had clearly been about Charlotte. Mr. Whitmore just needed to know what she had done.

Unless Richard disliked Adrian and was somehow blaming Charlotte for bringing them together. If she had introduced them, it wasn’t impossible.

“No! I didn’t!”

Charlotte was sweating now.

“I’ve always tried to introduce Victoria to my second and third brothers, just like you told me to! I remember what you said!”

Her words started tumbling over one another.

“But Victoria seems to like those really smart science-and-math types. Adrian wasn’t introduced by me. They took an elective together and ended up in the same group. It had nothing to do with me! Adrian even had a girlfriend before. He brought her that night too, although they’re—”

Mr. Whitmore’s head was beginning to hurt.

“Richard was there that night, wasn’t he? Did you say something stupid in front of him?”

“No! I didn’t even talk to him. I had juice all over my hair. I just wanted to leave!”

Mr. Whitmore stared at her.

“You had juice all over your hair?”

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Charlotte froze.

“What the hell happened? What did you do?”

“It was nothing. I just had a little problem with someone.” She hesitated. “Her family’s poor anyway. Even if she died, it wouldn’t—”

His hand struck her again.

Charlotte cried out as pain exploded across the other side of her face. Her cheekbone burned, and she tasted blood at the corner of her mouth.

“Tell me exactly what happened!” Mr. Whitmore shouted. “Who was she? What did you do?”

Charlotte started trembling.

“I… I could tell Victoria liked Adrian, so I pushed his girlfriend into the pool. That girl doesn’t come from a good family. I just wanted to warn her off.”

Mr. Whitmore stared at her.

Charlotte rushed on.

“I thought if she knew her place and stayed away from Adrian, Victoria would understand what I was doing. She’s smart. She would’ve known I was helping her—”

Mr. Whitmore grabbed the front of Charlotte’s clothes.

“Were you trying to scare her off, or were you trying to kill her?”

Charlotte went pale.

“Did Victoria tell you to do it?” he demanded. “Or were you stupid enough to do her dirty work without her even asking?”

Something in Charlotte snapped.

“You’re the one who told me there were benefits to being useful to someone like Victoria!”

Her voice rose sharply.

“Fine! You want the truth? Victoria obviously doesn’t like her. And yes, I did want her dead. So what? That bitch doesn’t know her place!”

Mr. Whitmore’s face hardened.

Charlotte was too angry to stop.

“If Victoria remembered what I did for her, it would’ve been worth it. What is one nobody’s life compared to that? Our family could handle it. Worst case, we give her parents some money. People like that would probably thank us for it!”

She wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth.

“And if I didn’t do it, someone else would. Do you know how many people want to get on Victoria’s good side?”

Mr. Whitmore stared at his daughter.

Then he laughed.

There was no humor in it.

“Wonderful. Just wonderful.”

Charlotte flinched.

“You were planning to get someone killed at a Sterling property?” he said. “Do you have any idea what kind of mess that would create for the host? It doesn’t even matter who the victim was!”

Now it made sense.

No wonder Richard had been unhappy.

People were more fragile than Charlotte seemed capable of understanding. Someone could drown far faster than she thought. If the girl had cramped, panicked, or inhaled water, things could have gone wrong in minutes.

And with a crowd standing around laughing, they might not even have realized she was in genuine danger until it was too late.

“And Richard saw it!”

Mr. Whitmore shoved Charlotte away.

“You keep talking about killing people like it’s a game. You think that makes you impressive?”

His anger finally boiled over.

“I’ve never hit a woman in my life, and somehow the first one ends up being my own daughter!”

He struck her several more times.

“You’ve caused trouble before and I cleaned it up. Now you want to start playing with people’s lives? What’s next? Are you going to kill me too?”

Charlotte raised her arms to protect herself.

“And don’t give me that ‘someone else would’ve done it’ bullshit. Were you really trying to please Victoria, or were you using her as an excuse because you wanted to see how far you could go?”

Charlotte suddenly stopped trying to argue.

The guilty look that crossed her face told him enough.

“Dad,” she said through clenched teeth, “people in our circle have done worse. They—”

“So that’s it.”

Mr. Whitmore’s expression turned cold.

“You’ve seen other people get away with it, and you wanted to try it yourself.”

Charlotte said nothing.

“They’re fine today. That doesn’t mean they’ll be fine forever. The moment they cross the wrong person, everything they’ve done can come back on them. Prison. Their businesses destroyed. Their families dragged down with them.”

He was shaking with anger now.

“You’ve spent all these years in school and still can’t understand something that simple? And if this family wants to move higher, we can’t afford this kind of stupidity. Especially now.”

Mr. Whitmore pointed toward the door as if the entire business world were waiting outside it.

“Do you know how many people I’ve had to meet? How many introductions I’ve begged for? How many favors I’ve called in just to get Richard Sterling to give us a chance at a few contracts from Sterling Consortium?”

His voice grew louder with every sentence.

“If we could land that deal, we—”

He stopped, furious enough that he could barely get the next words out.

“And now it could all be gone.”

Charlotte stared at him.

“I’m out there doing everything I can to expand this family’s business, and you’re causing trouble right under Richard Sterling’s nose!”

He jabbed a finger toward her.

“And you still have the nerve to say, ‘So what if she dies?’ Is that why I make money? So my daughter can become a murderer and expect me to pay for the cleanup?”

The girl hadn’t died. She hadn’t even been injured.

But perhaps Richard had already been in a bad mood that evening, and seeing Charlotte behave like that had been enough to disgust him.

Richard had barely said anything tonight, but Mr. Whitmore had been turning those few words over in his head ever since he left the gathering. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that Charlotte was the reason.

“A deal we may never get another chance at, and you might have ruined it!”

A door upstairs flew open.

Mrs. Whitmore hurried down the stairs in a long silk robe and slippers.

The moment she saw Charlotte on the floor, her face covered in blood, she screamed and rushed toward her.

“Have you lost your mind?!”

She dropped beside Charlotte.

“She’s your daughter! Are you trying to beat her to death?”

Mrs. Whitmore hurriedly wiped the blood from Charlotte’s face while glaring at her husband.

Charlotte sobbed out a few broken sentences.

“You’ve completely lost your head!” Mrs. Whitmore snapped at her husband. “You know what Richard Sterling is like. He’s cold and impossible to read. He barely shows warmth to his own family, much less anyone else!”

Mr. Whitmore stared at her.

“So he doesn’t want to work with us. Fine! We don’t work with him. We have businesses, properties, investments. Are you telling me the Whitmore family can’t survive without Sterling Consortium?”

She pulled Charlotte closer.

“You beat your own daughter like this over him?”

Her voice sharpened.

“And all because of some gold-digging nobody? If a girl like that gets herself killed, who cares? If she doesn’t know how to show respect to people above her—”

Smack!

Mr. Whitmore slapped his wife across the face.