306: Grandma

Grandma

The Old Madam's sobs softly echoed in the room. The sight of her warm tears was heart-wrenching as she broke down. The only emotions emanating from her tired face were loneliness and grief, thinking of how Zhao Weisheng disappeared from her life and how her children had to suffer under Jiang Zemin's treatment.2

Lihua wanted to console her. But she didn't know how.

She couldn't even imagine how she would have felt living without Zhao Weisheng for all these years. They didn't even know if he was even alive or not…

The Old Madam slowly calmed down and wiped her tears. "I... wanted to be there for my sons. I know that they were suffering. But Weisheng's absence had left a huge hole in my life. I was... devastated. I had already imagined spending my life with him with our kids happily...But days turned into months and months into years. He never came back and I... didn't even what happened. Just like that, my life with Jiang Zemin continued. My hellish life with him...It took a lot of time and resolve for me to accept Weisheng's absence. Life went on and one day, he declared Weizhe to be the Mafia King when he was twenty. One year later, he died due to…due to a rival gang's attack."

"Rival gang?"

She pursed her lips. "I don't know how but... somebody from another gang had set a spy in our house. A-and he killed him...The next day, I found him dead in his study, collapsed on the chair. Weizhe and Weiyuan were taken aback by the incident, but they didn't care about him because he was a terrible father to them. So they didn't bother to investigate it."

There was a long silence.

"I see…"

She softly smiled as she lifted her head and made her face towards her. "Old Madam. After Jiang Zemin's death, things would have become easier for you, right? Even if Zhao Weisheng wasn't there with you, your hellish life had finally ended. So...why were you still cruel to your family?"

Old Madam trembled.

"All those years you trained Wei, then rejected Mom for Dad, not letting Aunt Xiurang divorce or be it being harsh towards Jiang Li and Jiang Lanying, why did you do all that? You love your children, right? I know you love your grandchildren too. I know you would never be so harsh to them. You have suffered as a woman so much that you will never let the same things happen to your kids or grandkids."

Her gaze was blank.

"You fell in love with a butler who was an orphan and had little money when you met him. It makes no sense that you would reject Mom when her background was so similar to him. You wouldn't judge her based on money because you fell in love with a middle-class man yourself."

Silence.

"Jiang Zemin treated and humiliated you so badly that you would never want Aunt Xiurang to stay with a man who disrespected her. Yet, you didn't allow her to divorce Li Tingzhe."

She said nothing.

"Would you really choose Wen Yaoting for Jiang Ruiling who had a playboy reputation? Would you have really rejected Shen Yang for her had they come out with their feelings?"

She said nothing.

"You said you were humiliated for not giving birth to a child for two years. Then why would you try to make Jiang Lanying's life difficult when you have gone through the same pain yourself?"

Old Madam slowly lifted her gaze and met Lihua's questioning one.

Lihua quietly stared back at her, waiting for her answers.

"...I just still…I…" she seemed to take a long pause, "I am tired, Lixue."

Lihua said nothing.

"I want to rest."

She softly bit her lower lip and nodded. She smiled. "En. Take a good rest... Grandma."

She rapidly blinked her eyes and looked at her, dumbfounded.

Lihua chuckled. "Old Madam was always too stiff for me. We are family and we are not supposed to use titles here. So, Grandma."

She got up on her feet and gently patted on her head. "You did a good job, Grandma. You did your absolute best in the situation you were in. You stayed strong in all these years. You did well, Grandma."

Old Madam looked at her in a daze and without her knowing, tears already streamed down her cheeks.

"Now leave the rest to us, okay?" Lihua smiled.

Putting her hands behind her back, she hummed and left.

Old Madam was still left speechless. She touched her head in a daze.

Was I being patted?

But her words had incredibly warmed her heart. She was alone for all these years and bore everything on her own.

You did well.

Now that Lihua said it, she realized how much she really wanted to hear them all along…

She burst into soft sobs, burying her face in her shaking palms.

---

As Lihua stepped out of the room, she took one step ahead and then said, "I know you were all listening. Come out."

There was silence for a moment before she heard a sound of faint rustling.

Four figures promptly stepped out of the shadows. Wei stood beside Lihua while Jiang Weizhe, Jiang Weiyuan and Jiang Xiurang surrounded her.

Lihua smiled. "You listened to everything, right?"

Wei nodded.

Jiang Xiurang pursed her lips. "I couldn't help it. She seemed really odd. Then I heard that you were going to talk to her. Somehow, I had a feeling that it would be very important. I had never seen her like that before."

Silence reigned between them. For the whole time outside the room as they heard the truth from the beginning to the end, they didn't say a word.

They gathered in Wei's study. Lihua was the first one to say. "She is still hiding something. I saw it in her eyes. There was something she missed to say in between. Something has happened in between, but she is refusing to accept it."

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