Free Web NovelChapter 93: Chapter 93: Who is Scheming Against Whom?
The moment Miss Jennings heard her youngest son was going to jail, the resentment that had just begun to bubble up inside her vanished. "Kimberly, look, Seraphina is fine now anyway, and your brother hasn’t done anything irreversible. Let’s just let this go! No matter what, he’s still your brother. You can’t just stand by and watch him go to jail, can you? Just consider the fifty thousand dollars a loan to his family. He’ll pay you back once he’s out!"
"If it’s a loan, of course it has to be repaid! Or was my aunt hoping we’d just give the money away for free?" Seraphina, who had been quiet all this time, finally spoke up. ’I’ve never seen Mom get this furious before! It’s true what they say—even a cornered rabbit will bite.’
"Seraphina, we’ll definitely pay it back! We absolutely will!" Hearing this, Eleanor Young assumed they were agreeing to the loan and immediately burst into tears of joy. ’First, I just need to get my hands on the money,’ she thought. ’As for when we pay it back, that’ll be for us to decide!’
"Unfortunately, you’re a little too late! We’ve already spent most of the compensation money on renovating the apartment and buying furniture. You’ve seen it for yourselves—our place is gorgeous, and the price tag was just as stunning! This flooring is all solid wood, all the furniture is imported, and this leather sofa you’re sitting on right now cost seventy or eighty thousand alone!"
Seraphina Sterling was telling a bare-faced lie, yet her expression was so dead serious that she seemed more convincing than if she were telling the truth. She didn’t even blush or skip a breath.
The sofa was *that* expensive? The three women almost shot up from their seats, stunned. To think they had been sitting on something so pricey!
Seeing their shocked expressions, Seraphina continued, "The sofa alone was that expensive, to say nothing of the other furniture. Add in the home appliances, my computer, and everything else... the compensation money was pretty much all spent!"
"But there’s no way you spent it all! That was a million dollars!" Eleanor Young’s voice suddenly shot up. If she hadn’t been sure that Kimberly Jennings had that kind of money, she never would have gone to Miss Jennings’s house to stir everyone up to come over!
"So what if it was a million dollars? There are plenty of ways to spend money! Of course, we didn’t use all of it just on renovations. There was a bit left over. But my mom doesn’t have a job and she’s getting older, so I used the remaining money to buy her a pension plan and some other private insurance policies. That ate up pretty much all of it!"
Seraphina started counting on her long, slender fingers.
"This is outrageous! Even if you have money, you can’t be so wasteful! Even with the renovations and the insurance, there’s no way you spent every last cent of a million dollars! And now you can’t even spare forty or fifty thousand!" Miss Jennings’s face was flushed with anger. ’It’s obvious now,’ she thought. ’They just don’t want to give us the money!’ frёewebnoѵēl.com
"Mom, isn’t it obvious? Kimberly just doesn’t want to help him!" Aria Cheney said, her heart filling with envy, jealousy, and resentment as she took in the luxurious life Kimberly was leading. ’Why does *she* get to live in this gorgeously decorated apartment, while I’m stuck in a bungalow?’
"Mom, after all that, isn’t Seraphina just trying to say they don’t have any money?" Eleanor Young cried out. "If you don’t want to lend us the money, just say so! There’s no need to beat around the bush! It looks like my Zeke is going to jail for sure!" With that, she started wailing again.
"Seraphina! Have all those years of schooling gone to the dogs? Don’t you know how to respect your elders? Don’t try to fool me! A million dollars is no small sum; how could you possibly have spent every last cent? Hand over whatever you have left! We’ll scrape together the rest!" Miss Jennings’s face was crimson with rage, though part of it was surely from desperation.
"Grandma, everything I’ve said is the truth. Of course, just renovating the apartment and buying insurance for Mom wouldn’t cost that much. But I didn’t just buy a policy for my mother—I bought them for you and Grandpa, too! From now on, you and Grandpa will receive a monthly pension from the government. Plus, if you ever get sick and have to be hospitalized, a portion of the expenses will be reimbursed."
As she spoke, Seraphina took out a bank card and a passbook and handed them to her grandmother.
The room fell silent.
Kimberly Jennings was also stunned. ’When did Seraphina buy insurance for all three of them? How did I not know? And doesn’t she dislike my mother?’
Miss Jennings stared at the passbook, her wrinkled fingers trembling slightly. ’A pension...’ she thought. She had never dared to even dream of it. She’d heard you had to pay a huge lump sum to get one! Whenever she saw her old friends collecting their monthly payments, she could only watch with envy, telling herself that with sons and daughters-in-law to support her, she didn’t need a pension. But she knew she was only trying to make herself feel better.
She never imagined she would have a pension of her own! "How much did all this cost?"
"Not too much. Including the other private policies, it came out to about one hundred and fifty thousand per person. So, Grandma, we really don’t have any money left!" Seraphina said with utter sincerity. This time, Miss Jennings believed her. In all her years, no one had ever spent so much money on her.
Aria Cheney was the most delighted of all. ’The old man and woman will have a monthly income now!’ she thought. ’Not only will that ease our burden, but I might even be able to skim a little off the top for myself!’
Eleanor Young’s face, however, turned deathly pale. "Mom, what about Zeke? Are we really going to let him go to jail?"
Seraphina shot a look at Aria Cheney, reading her thoughts instantly. "Aunt Aria, didn’t you just get a bonus? Why don’t you use that to help Uncle Zeke?"
