Chapter 180: Resurfaced Memories
[Would you like to read Eleanor Gabriel’s Fortune?]
[Number of Insights Left today: 2/5]
Yes.
Instantly, the translucent blue interface flared brightly directly over Eleanor’s pale, trembling face, expanding into cold, detailed blocks of text that stripped away twenty-six years of hidden malice.
[Target Profile: Eleanor Gabriel]
[Orchestrated Theft & Infant Exchange]: Twenty-six years ago, upon learning that Beatrice Gabriel was giving birth to twin daughters while target was pregnant with Clara, target bribed an obstetrics nurse. Target orchestrated the abduction of infant ’April’, replacing her with a stillborn infant to prevent Beatrice from having dual heirs and greater leverage over her own child.
[Abandonment]: Ordered the nurse to dispose of the infant. The nurse abandoned baby April in a cardboard box near a slum orphanage, where she was discovered and raised by a compassionate, impoverished old woman.
[Memory Erasure & Slavery Plot]: Tracked April’s existence for years to ensure she remained destitute. When the old woman passed away during April’s sixteenth year, April sought out the Gabriel family name. Target intercepted April before she could reach Beatrice, forcibly administered illegal underground neuro-sterilizers to permanently shatter her memory, and handed her over to her acquaintance, Madam Morgan—knowing Madam Morgan’s sadistic, abusive nature toward pretty young girls would keep April silenced and enslaved indefinitely.
[Systematic Murder]: Has been secretly lacing Beatrice Gabriel’s cardiac medication with slow-acting neurotoxins for the past five years to secure complete ownership of the primary estate deeds.
...
April stared at the floating words, her dark, brown eyes unblinking, her chest remaining eerily still as the full, sickening scope of the woman’s crimes settled into her mind.
What was she even looking at right now?
Before she could even process the rage, a violent, deafening chime echoed inside her skull. The blue system interface glitched rapidly, turning a vivid, luminescent gold as new text materialized right before her eyes.
[System Notice: Biological & Historical Resonance Threshold Achieved.]
[Suppressed Neural Data Discovered — Unlocking Locked Memories: Age 0 to 16...]
"Ah—!"
A sudden, agonizing pain exploded behind April’s temples, like a million needles piercing her brain at once. She staggered backward, her knee buckling slightly as the silver gun in her hand trembled.
"April!" Nat moved in an instant. Dropping his lazy posture, his hands shot out of his pockets to catch her by the shoulders, pulling her rigid frame against his chest. "April, what’s wrong? What happened?"
April couldn’t answer. Her eyes rolled back slightly as a torrential flood of suppressed memories broke through the shattered dam in her mind, drowning her consciousness in vivid, unblocked flashes:
She saw a small, drafty room smelling of old tea and worn blankets... an elderly woman with deep, gentle wrinkles and tired eyes, wrapping a thin blanket around young April’s shoulders... feeding her soup, working late nights mending clothes just to pay for April’s school supplies... the same old woman falling sick, and April holding her cold, withered hand by a rusted bed, taking care of her with quiet devotion until her last breath...
She remembered the old woman’s dying whisper: "Find the Gabriel family, my little April... you belong to that family. I’m sure of it..."
She saw herself at sixteen, standing outside a grand estate holding a small scrap of paper, her eyes full of hope... and then cold, manicured hands grabbing her from behind... a damp cloth pressed over her face... dark basements... a heavy syringe injecting a stinging, freezing chemical straight into her neck while Eleanor’s cruel face sneered above her...
"Send her to my good old friend Madam Morgan. Let her rot as a servant for the rest of her life. That’s all she will ever amount to."
The visions vanished as fast as they had come, leaving April gasping for air, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped beast.
Her missing childhood. The old woman she had cared for—the reason she carried an instinctive, unexplainable soft spot for compassionate elders like Robert Greels. The stolen years. The shattered identity.
The ten years of horrific abuse under the Morgans. The lies.
It wasn’t a random twist of bad luck. It was all her. Eleanor Gabriel had systematically built every single brick of April’s personal hell.
A dark, terrifying rage—a blinding, suffocating inferno far beyond anything she had felt when she was faced with Cai who had betrayed her—ignited deep within April’s soul. Her entire body began to shake violently, her breath coming in ragged, furious gasps as she violently gripped Nat’s coat with her free hand.
"April? Hey, look at me," Nat whispered urgently, his arms wrapping tightly around her, his eyes filled with a rare trace of genuine alarm as he felt her trembling. "What did you see? Talk to me!"
April didn’t speak. She pushed herself out of Nat’s hold with terrifying strength as if she was trying to break out of old chains.
Without a single word of warning, April raised her silver gun, aimed downward, and pulled the trigger.
BANG!
A deafening shot shattered the foyer.
"AHHHH! MY LEG! MY LEG!" Eleanor shrieked hysterically, unable to move since her hands were tied right to the chair. Blood burst through the silk of her dress on her right thigh, her body thrashing violently against the zip-ties holding her to the chair. "I’M SHOT! VICTOR, I’M SHOT! CALL A DOCTOR! I’M BLEEDING TO DEATH!"
Victor, Clara, and Johan screamed in sheer horror, cowering as far back into their chairs as their bonds allowed, their faces completely drained of color.
"Shut up!" Nat barked, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp, lethal register as he stepped in front of Eleanor. His dark eyes flashed with raw fury. "You’re not dying! You got shot in the leg, you pathetic piece of trash, not the brain!"
"I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding!" Eleanor sobbed frantically, her heavy makeup ruined by tears and sweat. "You crazy psychopaths! I didn’t do anything! I’m innocent!"
Nat looked back at April, seeing her hands shaking uncontrollably as she stared at Eleanor with a pair of pitch-black, demonic eyes. He had known April to be cold, clinical, and detached—a woman who viewed the world with no warmth because it had never given her anything.
He had never seen her body shake with this level of visceral, murderous rage.
"Sweetheart..." Nat stepped closer, gently wrapping his hand over her wrist, feeling the cold sweat on her skin. "What did this monster do to you?"
"She..." April’s voice cracked, a ragged, suffocating whisper escaping her throat as she fought for air. "She is the reason I suffered for ten years of my life... She stole me from my mother... She wiped my mind... She gave me to the Morgans..."
Nat went completely rigid.
The air in the room instantly plummeted below freezing. Nat slowly turned his head back toward Eleanor, his handsome face twisting into a dark, terrifying mask of absolute malice. The lazy smirk was gone, replaced by the lethal aura of the black-market ruler.
"I am going to kill her," April whispered, her finger tightening back against the trigger, her aim drifting toward Eleanor’s head. "I am going to blow her brains across this floor. The zombies won’t get her before I do. I will end her right here and now." She hissed.