Only you in my love

Bryant had no intention of being merciful today. "What about Mike? Do you remember him?"

Valerie became even more flustered at sound of the other man's name. She opened her mouth to say something but Bryant continued to talk.

"In order to get rid of Baker's rival, you used Leon to deal with Mike. You claimed that Mike molested you but..." Bryant paused. He felt that it was not appropriate for him to say something like that because he himself was a man so he changed his tone. "Was that true?" The truth was that Valerie loved Baker back then, but she was not loyal to him.

Bryant knew her very well. Why?

Because, out of all the members of the Feng family, only Valerie treated him with kindness. She talked to him and helped him. She probably didn't think much of it back then, but to him, she had given him the rare gift of familial warmth affection. So he paid special attention to her.

Aside from being smart and hardworking, Bryant was also good at observing people.

Valerie might have been good at pretending, but she was only scheming on the surface.

Without an inclination for conspiracy, how could one bear to live with a big family? It was a necessary skill in order to survive.

So Bryant thought there was nothing wrong if Valerie was a little scheming. At least she hadn't killed anyone. She didn't have the courage to do that.

He just hadn't expected his cousin to be the unfaithful type.

Bryant turned his gaze back to Valerie. It was not a look of anger or disgust but one of disappointment.

Just the mere idea of disappointment made people tremble with fear.

Everyone was afraid of disappointing the people they cared about.

When someone calmly expressed their disappointment toward another, they easily destroyed the fortress that the other person had built around their heart. That person's spirit would crumble like sand and float away with the wind.

At the moment, the person that Valerie trusted the most was Bryant.

So when she saw the disappointment in his eyes, she became even more devastated. She covered her ears.

"Stop it! Please."

Bryant looked wordlessly at her for a second longer before going downstairs. When he returned, he had a glass of warm water in his hand.

"Drink some water first."

"Okay." Valerie's voice sounded nasally. She accepted the glass with lowered eyes.

After drinking two mouthfuls of water, she felt a little better.

She wished that Bryant would not continue this discussion.

But that seemed unlikely.

He pressed on.

"And the time that you pretended to commit suicide? That was very gutsy of you." Bryant sounded so calm that Valerie couldn't tell whether he was praising her or scolding her.

"You're good at swimming and capable of holding your breath for up to three minutes underwater. You thought that jumping into the sea was your only way out. Others thought that you wanted to die back then, but you didn't." A smile appeared on Bryant's face. This time, she could tell that he was praising her. "You made it."

Valerie remained silent.

"You went down this road out of your own volition. You should also be responsible for the consequences of your choices. It's a pity that you aren't. It was your decision to leave with Baker. But without his family's support, he was unable to give you the extravagant life that you were used to, and you openly disliked him for it. I can guess the reason why he beat you."

Valerie's face paled once more. She hadn't expected him to know this.

Baker must have slandered her.

'He failed to give me the life I deserved, and he wanted to stop me from pursuing it.'

Feeling her irritation rise, Valerie clenched her fists and gnashed her teeth.

She lifted her head to meet Bryant's gaze, but her voice was weak was she asked, "Was that what he told you?"

"Why did you automatically assume that he said anything? The only thing Baker told me was that he would wait for you to come back to him. He even bought your favorite dancing shoes." Bryant scowled at her.

He couldn't understand why Valerie still continued to blame everyone except herself.

Valerie said nothing.

"After everything I've said, do you still not see that everything that's happened to you is because of you?" For the first time ever, Bryant felt his patience running out. He has never lost his patience before, not even with naughty or ignorant children.

With a straight face, he said, "You fell out of love with Baker and left with another man. Then, we brought you back. When you realized that Leon had feelings for Michelle, you became jealous all over again. It's a good thing that you haven't done anything to destroy their relationship." Actually, she had begun to destroy their relationship years ago.

They wouldn't have been separated for three years otherwise.

And in those three years, Valerie still failed to make Leon fall for her.

It was her first time failing in anything. She was so convinced that she and Leon belonged together that she started to hold a deep grudge against Michelle. Today, she saw the bracelet on Michelle's wrist and was so jealous that she had pushed her down the stairs. Her body started trembling when she remembered how much blood there was as Michelle was carried away on a stretcher to the ambulance.

In a small voice, she asked, "Or else what?"

"Leon would not let you get away with it." Bryant gave her an example. "Princess Nina used to be home-schooled. Leon thought she needed to learn how to get along with people her age, so she went to a junior high school. She was pretty but she didn't talk or smile. On her third day, she was bullied by her classmates.

They stuck chewing gum to her chair, frightened her with chicken blood, tore her books, scrawled all over her homework and scolded her. When Princess Nina couldn't take it anymore, she hit them and they had to be sent to the hospital. The students' parents came to the school to make trouble."

Bryant remembered how Leon looked like when he was sharing this story. The man's eyelids were lowered halfway but his eyes glittered eerily.

He continued, "At that time, no one knew Princess Nina's real identity. The students' parents were unreasonable. They demanded the school to give them an explanation, pay for medical fees and allow their children to hit her back.

When Leon learned about this incident, he got very angry. He thought that it was all his fault for insisting on sending his sister to that school. And then that happened. In the end..." Bryant faltered. Even now, he felt bothered by Leon's solution to the problem. "He had the students' parents locked up separately in bare and windowless cells. In those cells, there was nothing to do and they would lose all sense of time. Unable to escape, they went crazy.

Princess Nina still doesn't know about it. And Leon was only sixteen years old then."

After hearing that story, Valerie shuddered.

She felt as if a demon was lingering behind her.

It was a horrible feeling.

Scared out of her wits, she knelt before Bryant and grabbed at his clothes. She cried out, "Please help me, Bryant. I did something terrible. I know what I did was wrong and I'll never do it again."

Bryant was surprised by her reaction. He merely wanted to warn her by telling her about the time Nina got bullied, but he hadn't expected her to be so scared. It was as if she had committed murder.

"Did that scare you?" Bryant reached down to support her. "You can still redeem yourself. Didn't he give you a chance? You just need to attach yourself to someone else. Rumors of your relationship with Leon will disappear in an instant. Problem solved. What do you think?"

"No, no, no." Tears welled up in her eyes as Valerie shook her head. She crumpled even further to the floor. The more she cried, the louder she became.

Bryant frowned. "You don't like my idea? But this is the easiest and quickest way."

"No, it's not like that," Valerie cried. "It was careless of me, Bryant, but it was an accident. Please trust me. I never meant to push Michelle down the stairs. Help me, Bryant."

Bryant couldn't believe what he just heard.

It was as if he had been hit over the head or as if someone had poured a basin of icy cold water down his back in the middle of winter.

His whole body went numb in shock.000