Chapter 114: 59,500 Yuan
"Seriously! You people are absolutely shameless!"
Sheila Hughes couldn’t stand it anymore. She stormed over and slammed her hand on the table. "You spent money on Leah? Have you ever spent a single cent on her? For Leah’s four years of college, her first year’s tuition was covered by a student loan. All the tuition after that, she earned herself from part-time jobs! Did you ever give her any money? Huh? Have you no shame at all?"
Sheila’s face was flushed with anger. "In college, to pay back her student loan and save for tuition, she was always working part-time when she wasn’t in class! Waitress, cashier, tutor, paid sports partner, selling alcohol, selling magazines, game boosting, handing out flyers—what *hasn’t* she done?"
"We could all go out and have fun on the weekends, but she had to run to her part-time jobs right after class. One job after another! She never took a day off. Not a single one! You spent money on her? Where?"
"I still remember when she first came to college as a freshman, her clothes didn’t fit her at all! She had so little money back then. Even with the cheap food in our cafeteria, she never dared to order a proper dish. She always just ate her rice with a bowl of the free soup!"
"In her sophomore year, she finally paid off her student loan and saved up a few hundred yuan. She was so happy, she insisted on treating us to a meal to thank us for looking after her. We didn’t want her to spend a lot, so we just had her treat us to KFC. She generously ordered everything for us, but all she got for herself was a single piece of chicken!"
Thinking of Leah back then, Sheila choked up, her voice trembling. "How can you have the audacity to say you spent money on her? She had to give you half of what she earned from her jobs, just so you’d treat Grandma Sinclair a little better! How much could she possibly have made in a month back then? Do you people have any conscience? How can you say that with such a straight face?!"
Sheila was crying too hard to continue. Leah pulled her down into a seat and rubbed her back, comforting her in return. "It’s over, Sheila. It’s all in the past."
A woman in her sixties beside the village chief, who appeared to be his wife, also wiped her eyes. "Lifang, that’s enough. Leah’s had it so tough since she was a child. When did you people ever spend money on her?"
"I remember it clearly. How old was she then? Five or six, I believe. Your husband won some money gambling and brought home a chicken. You were all inside, cooking and eating it, and when I came out to take out the trash, I saw her standing on her tiptoes at your door, just watching."
"Your two sons saw her, and they each came out holding a chicken drumstick to taunt her. She asked her cousins if she could just have one bite, and they beat her up for it. If I hadn’t stepped in... Honestly, that’s enough. She’s a grown woman now, not some little girl you can easily deceive."
"Hey, hey, ma’am, don’t make things up. I... When did we ever hit her? Wasn’t it always her hitting us?" Jeff Sinclair said guiltily, shrinking under a cold glance from Asher Keating.
"Heh? Never hit me?"
Leah Sinclair stood up and rolled up her sleeve. "This scar? Jack Sinclair bit me. I think I was only six. But I bit him right back. Jack Sinclair, you still have the scar on your hand, don’t you?"
She then pulled up her pant leg. "And this one. I was eight years old. You were beating me, and when I refused to cry, you set a dog on me. If Grandma and our neighbor hadn’t rushed over, I might have been mauled to death, don’t you think?"
"I started fighting you two when I was ten. You’re grown men, but the only way you could beat me was by ganging up on me with others. When did you ever fight me one-on-one and not get your asses kicked? And now you have the nerve to stand there and lie?"
Asher Keating’s lips tightened, but he remained silent. He’d felt both of those scars before. When he’d asked about them, she had always been vague, saying she was just a clumsy, mischievous kid.
And it wasn’t just those two. He knew she had several other small scars. ’So,’ he thought, ’they weren’t from falling down. They were from being beaten up since she was a kid.’
"I haven’t even settled my accounts with you, and now you want to settle accounts with me? Fine. Let’s go over everything, one by one. Since you’re all so shameless, I can play that game too. We’ll see who comes out on top. Sheila, do you have a pen and paper?" Leah Sinclair turned to ask Sheila Hughes. She’d left in such a rush, she’d only brought her phone, not even her purse.
"I do! I’ll get them."
Sheila Hughes ran into Grandma Sinclair’s room, grabbed her backpack, and pulled out a notebook and pen to hand to Leah.
"Growing up, you never gave me a single cent. I started working part-time in college. Once I paid off my student loan, starting from the second semester of my sophomore year, the first sum of money I transferred to you was five hundred yuan. From then on, I sent you a fixed fifteen hundred every month. Let’s just calculate that for two years—that’s 24 months at fifteen hundred a month. Then, from my college graduation until now, at the very beginning I..."
Leah trailed off, unable to continue. After she graduated, most of her money had come from working as a hostess at Azure Bay. Grandma Sinclair was in the hospital at the time, and Leah didn’t have the energy for multiple jobs, so she’d just stuck to that one.
She blinked back tears. "My part-time earnings and salary combined... that first month, I gave you ten thousand. Later, it was a fixed two thousand a month, which then went up to thirty-five hundred. I’m not even going to count the red envelopes I gave you for New Year’s. All together, that’s fifty-nine thousand, five hundred. Correct?" After writing it all down, Leah tore the page out of the notebook and threw it at them.
"That money was for Grandma’s living expenses. But did you even spend forty-five hundred of it on her? You know full well you didn’t. The color TV at my elder cousin’s house, the watch on my younger cousin’s wrist, the washing machine right here, that gold necklace and those gold earrings my elder aunt is wearing... you bought all of it with my money, didn’t you?"
Leah crossed her arms, smirking at them. "Are the numbers clear enough for you? I was a science major, you know. My math is pretty good."
The group behind her remained silent. Fifty-nine thousand, five hundred. For them, a single night out at Azure Bay or The Dynasty Club could cost more than that. Yet, this was the money Leah had painstakingly saved, starting from her sophomore year of college.
"And as has been said, you all signed an agreement when Grandma insisted on raising me. It stated that I have no financial relationship with any of you. That agreement was signed in the presence of the village chief. You wouldn’t dare deny that, would you?"
"So, give me the household register. Today, in front of the village chief, we are going to sign a new agreement. An agreement stating that I, Leah Sinclair, will have absolutely no relationship with any of you from this day forward!"
"What? What agreement? Who can prove it even exists? The village chief is an old man. How could he possibly remember something clearly from more than twenty years ago?" the elder aunt said, rolling her eyes.
"My memory is perfectly fine!" the village chief snapped back. "I remember that agreement crystal clear! It was three days after your mother found Leah, and the two of you... you dragged your own mother to my office to sign it!"
"We tried to talk you out of it then. ’She’s just a little baby,’ we said, ’how much can she possibly eat?’ But you two wouldn’t hear of it, you insisted on signing it. Your mother pressed her thumbprint on that paper with tears in her eyes! Don’t think you can deny it just because she’s gone now." The village chief could finally listen no more and slammed his hand hard on the table.