Free Web NovelChapter 127: Chapter 129: Her Biological Parents Don’t Want Her
Hannah Sutton: "Ms. Quincy, do you need legal aid?"
"Well..."
Hannah had been joking, so Sonia Quincy joked back, "If I sought legal aid, wouldn’t a long line of people end up in prison? They might have to convert all the cells in Aethelburg to eight-person rooms."
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
Everyone in the office burst out laughing.
Sonia Quincy smiled too, her eyes crinkling into a pair of crescent moons.
"Huh?" Hannah Sutton stared at her, her eyes suddenly widening in amazement. "Honey, look at the way Ms. Quincy smiles. Doesn’t she look just like Dad?"
"Hm?" Hearing this, Julia Dawson and Mina Jennings were both startled. They tilted their heads simultaneously, casting curious glances at Jackson Shaw before turning back to look at Sonia Quincy.
"She... she really does look like him," Julia Dawson said, looking pleasantly surprised.
Mina Jennings nodded in agreement. "She really does. When she’s not smiling, there’s already a fifty-percent resemblance. When she smiles, it jumps to seventy percent."
"Really?" Sonia Quincy put down her paintbrush and raised her hands to touch her face, treating the whole thing as a mere coincidence and a joke.
"It’s true," Brianna Bell affirmed with a smile, then patted Jackson Shaw’s arm. "Jackson, Ms. Quincy really does look like you when she smiles. If you were thirty years younger, I bet the resemblance would be even stronger."
Hearing this, Jackson Shaw’s expression turned serious, and he didn’t respond.
He stared intently at Sonia Quincy’s face, his thoughts unreadable. After a moment, he suddenly asked out of the blue, "Ms. Quincy, would it be alright if I asked you a rather personal question?"
"Of course," Sonia Quincy agreed readily, figuring that whatever Jackson Shaw asked couldn’t be *that* personal.
Jackson Shaw thought for a moment before speaking tactfully, "I heard from the Quincy Family before that your birth parents’ home is in a small county in Veridia?"
’A small county in Veridia...’
Sonia Quincy furrowed her brow, thinking hard. It took her a full minute to reply, "Yes. Xembria, in Veridia. There’s a famous temple in the township called Stillwater Temple."
"Yes, yes!" Jackson Shaw quickly agreed. "There is a Stillwater Temple. My family and I went there to offer incense over twenty years ago."
"Ah..." Sonia Quincy nodded with a smile but said nothing more. She had no idea why Jackson Shaw was suddenly asking about this.
Jackson Shaw paused, then asked another question. "Ms. Quincy, since you know where your birth parents live, have you ever gone back to find them?"
"...No." Sonia Quincy searched through the original owner’s memories and gave a decisive answer.
"Why not?" Jackson Shaw’s expression was a mixture of curiosity and an unreadable tension.
Sonia Quincy found his reaction strange, and his questions were getting more and more intrusive. But for the sake of this seven-figure commission, she answered cooperatively.
"Because they didn’t want me."
"...What?" The softly spoken words made Brianna Bell’s face fall. "What do you mean, they didn’t want you?"
"..." Sonia Quincy lowered her eyes and began to recount the story—a story never mentioned in the original novel, known only to the body’s previous owner—in a flat, sorrowful voice.
It was about a year and a half ago, during the third month after Cecilia Quincy returned to the Quincy Family.
At that time, instigated by Cecilia, the Quincy Family had grown completely cold toward the original Sonia. And the original Sonia, pushed to her limit, was becoming mentally unstable, occasionally causing major scenes in the Quincy household.
The Quincy Family, afraid she might snap one day and hurt Cecilia, had someone contact the original Sonia’s birth parents, who lived far away in Xembria, Veridia. They told them plainly that they wanted to send her back.
The original Sonia’s birth parents readily agreed at the time, even saying that she should have returned to her real home long ago.
So, the very next day, the Quincy Family sent the original Sonia, along with all her luggage, to Veridia.
But when she arrived in Veridia, no one was there to meet her. She was in a completely unfamiliar place, with no idea what to do or where to go next.
Where was Xembria? Where was Copperton? Where could she catch the high-speed train to Xembria? She knew nothing.
In her desperation, she could only call her birth parents, but the couple never picked up the phone.
Mr. and Mrs. Quincy had already blocked all her contact methods as soon as they sent her out of Aethelburg. With nowhere else to turn, she had to swallow her pride and make a voice call to the only Quincy left in her WeChat contacts.
Willow Quincy subjected her to a torrent of mockery and scorn over the call. Finally, as if he’d finished venting all his anger, he magnanimously found someone to guide her.
After many twists and turns, the original Sonia finally made it to her birth parents’ house before dark.
Inside a simple, unadorned, self-built bungalow, a family of four was sitting around a table, eating dinner and chatting happily.
When they saw the original Sonia return, their reactions were all lukewarm. No one even asked if she had eaten or offered her any food.
She stood awkwardly in the living room for a moment before dragging her suitcase to her room.
The room was a converted storage closet. It had no window and no wardrobe, only a tiny, narrow bed and a cheap, assembled closet.
The original Sonia sat on the hard bedframe, staring blankly at the dim concrete wall, her expression numb.
Half an hour later, her birth mother entered the room without knocking.
"Um, Sonia, are you... are you okay?" The middle-aged woman stood awkwardly at the door, her words to her own daughter sounding strange and distant.
Sonia stared at her with empty eyes, not answering.
"Ahem..." She cleared her throat and asked again, "Did you see Cecilia before you left? How is she? Is she getting used to living in Aethelburg? Are Mom and Dad treating her well?"
"..." Sonia’s gaze shifted from empty to shocked, then from shocked to understanding, and finally, to utter despair.
She still didn’t answer the woman. Instead, she let out a self-deprecating laugh, grabbed her suitcase, and resolutely walked out of the house that wouldn’t even prepare a room for her. She left Veridia once again, disappearing into the cold night.
When the original Sonia returned to Aethelburg, she had truly become an unhinged and venomous madwoman.
Back when Sonia had been reading the novel, she had strongly suspected that the original Sonia developed serious mental and psychological problems later on. Perhaps she was no longer a normal, healthy person.
Because even though she had two sets of parents, in this vast world, she had no home. Cecilia, on the other hand, not only had a home, but two pairs of doting parents who loved and cared for her.
"How could they do that?" After hearing Sonia’s story, Brianna Bell’s eyes reddened without her realizing it.
"You’re their biological daughter! Even if they felt nothing for you, they shouldn’t have treated you with that kind of attitude!"
"That’s just outrageous." Mason Shaw’s brows furrowed deeply as he listened, his handsome, sunny face filled with indignant anger.
"Sigh..." Jackson Shaw let out a heavy sigh. After a few seconds of silence, he asked an even more intrusive question. "Ms. Quincy, are you certain... that you are truly their biological daughter?"
