819: Cruel Past

Cruel Past

What Florence said made Lucas feel some sympathy for her, and he quietly listened to her continue.1

"After giving Cheyenne away to someone else to raise, I had no choice but to return to the Howards in DC.

"But my father was furious at me for leaving my family for that man, so I knelt in front of his door for two days and two nights, begging him to forgive me. Only when my knees were bleeding did he finally agree to see me.

"However, he told me that if I wanted the family to accept me again, I had to contribute to the family by marrying a man from the Lambert family, a top family in DC.

"At the time, I had been betrayed by the man I loved, and my heart was practically dead. I no longer had any hope for all men in the world, so it didn't make any difference to me who I married.

"So I agreed to the marriage alliance and married into the Lamberts without hesitation.

"But after doing so, I found out that things weren't as simple as I thought. The man I married had violent tendencies. He was a domestic abuser and an alcoholic, and he would hit me and insult me at every turn. My life was a living hell!

"I tried my best to endure it, and I did everything I could to help that man take control of the Lambert family. But the night he did, I killed him! And then I took over everything!"

Florence sniffled. While she recalled the past, her face seemed to be full of misery.

Lucas's eyebrows twitched. Florence had actually killed her husband with her own hands. She was indeed ruthless.

"Back then, I seemed to have reached the peak of my life. I had all the power and wealth of the Lamberts. No one would hit me, verbally abuse me, and bully me again. I thought my life would remain this way forever. But when the truth came out, everything was so cruel and bloody!

"You probably can't believe that my life was completely controlled by my father!

"Everything from my marriage to controlling the Lambert family was within my father's plan.

"And you know what? My father was the reason my husband treated me so terribly and abused me every other day. My father told my husband everything about my relationship with the man I loved and even showed him some intimate photos! That's why he couldn't tolerate me!

"And all the people I trusted around me were sent to my side by my father. Their purpose was to confuse me and persuade me to gain control of everything of the Lamberts before turning their wealth and assets into the Howards' property!

"E-everything I did was within my father's plan. I was just his pawn!

"That's how my father treated me and made use of me, his biological daughter. Scary, isn't it?"

The expression on Florence's face twisted into a grimace of contempt and extreme pain.

She was mocking those years of her life.

"And the sad thing is that this isn't the end and the entire truth.

"Later, because of my control over the Lamberts, my father symbolically gave me some power to make it up to me.

"But I never imagined that I would inadvertently discover something extremely terrifying!

"It turned out that the man I loved, Drew Cruise, didn't actually abandon me when I was pregnant!

"After learning that I was pregnant, he didn't want me to continue living in the small and messy rental room and give birth to our child there. Moreover, we eloped without taking our ID, so we couldn't get a marriage certificate, and our child would be born out of wedlock.

"So he quietly went to the Howards alone, hoping to convince my father to let us be together openly, but my father killed him!

"No wonder Drew left without returning. I waited for him in the rental room for a long time, thinking that he had abandoned me and the baby in my womb. I hated him for so long! But I was wrong!

"He didn't abandon me and our baby. He went to beg my father for our sake, but my father killed him!"

"When I learned about this, the sky collapsed on me! I've never felt so hopeless and regretful!"

Seemingly unable to bear that pain any longer, Florence broke down and burst into tears.

Lucas was stunned and unable to speak.

He could sense that Florence wasn't faking her breakdown and that she wasn't lying about what she just said.

The truth was actually so cruel that even though Lucas was just an outsider, he could sense her suffocating despair and agony.

The Howards, one of the eight most powerful families in DC, actually had such a filthy and dark past.

But at the same time, Lucas couldn't help thinking about himself and his mother.

Back then, when he and his mother were driven out of the Huttons and left to fend for themselves on the streets, didn't he also experience this filth and darkness? His mother had been seriously ill, but when he went to the Huttons for help, they had mercilessly rejected him.

After crying for a long while, Florence finally calmed down and stared at Lucas with her red and swollen eyes full of tears.

"Lucas, the reason I'm telling you this is that I want you to sympathize with me and pity me. To be honest with you, I need your help now. Only with your help can I take control of the Howard family and completely free myself from my father's control!" Florence looked at Lucas expectantly.

Lucas saw her determination, hatred, and ambition in her eyes.

The fact that her life had always been in her father's hands and that her father had killed her lover was why she pursued greater power. She wanted to overthrow the person controlling her fate.

It was indeed an undeniable goal.

Lucas could indeed give her a lot of help in attaining this goal.

But he didn't want to help her.

"I can see your hatred for your father in your eyes, but I don't see any guilt and love for Cheyenne," Lucas said with disappointment.

"What happened to you is indeed tragic, but Cheyenne didn't do anything wrong. I thought you'd feel a little guilty and sorry toward your daughter, whom you had wrongfully hated for years, almost killed, and even gave up for adoption after learning the truth.

"But I can't see anything from your eyes."

"Maybe Cheyenne is just a pawn to you too. You want to use her as a tool to rope in people so that they can take revenge for you. You must have tried to make Cheyenne marry the Master of California because of this!"

"But Cheyenne somehow married me, and I happened to be the one you were looking for.

"You actually don't love Cheyenne at all. And you still hate her, don't you?"

Lucas kept his sharp eyes fixed on Florence. What he said made her heart skip a beat.

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