Free Web NovelChapter 517: Chapter 517
For a moment, Melody Summers thought she was hearing things.
’I must have misheard... Why else would I be hearing Silas Lancaster’s voice?’
However, the next second, as if to confirm Melody’s suspicion, a familiar shout came from outside the door again. "Sis! Sis! Open the door! Help me! It’s me, Silas! Open up, Sis!"
Melody Summers: "..."
’It really is Silas Lancaster!’
’How strange... What is he doing here?’
Meanwhile, Silas Lancaster was frantically ringing the villa’s doorbell, glancing over his shoulder from time to time as if worried some terrifying beast was about to pounce.
But no matter how many times he rang, there was no response from inside.
Just as he was about to despair, a cold voice suddenly came from inside the villa. "Silas Lancaster, what are you doing here?"
Recognizing it as Melody Summers’s voice, Silas Lancaster was instantly overjoyed and hurriedly replied, "Sis! There are people outside trying to grab me! Hurry up and open the door! Let me in!"
Hearing this, Melody Summers grew a little curious. She asked doubtfully, "Someone’s trying to grab you?... What happened? Explain yourself first."
Silas Lancaster, outside the door, seemed extremely anxious. The moment Melody finished speaking, he said urgently, "Sis, this isn’t the time to talk! The situation is critical, they could find me any second! Please just let me in first, okay? I’ll explain everything slowly once I’m inside!"
Melody Summers frowned at his words and refused him outright. "What exactly is going on? Explain it clearly. If you don’t, I am absolutely not opening this door!"
—Actually, Melody wouldn’t open the door even if Silas explained everything, but she still wanted to know what had happened. As the saying goes, "curiosity killed the cat," and there’s a reason for it.
Seeing Melody Summers’s resolute tone, Silas Lancaster could only grit his teeth and explain the whole story.
A couple of days ago, the Lancasters had been kicked out of their low-income apartment by their landlord because they couldn’t pay the rent. All four of them.
After being thrown out, they had nowhere to go. They couldn’t get in touch with Sylvia Lancaster, who had been missing for days, so they had no choice but to drag their luggage to The Metropolis Residences.
Unfortunately, they arrived too late. The designated spots in The Metropolis Residences’ apartment buildings were already full—there wasn’t even room in the hallways. So, they could only be settled in the underground garage.
The underground garage was dark, damp, and leaking in several places. Crowded with disaster victims, the air was filled with a foul smell. At night, snores rose and fell, echoing all around like thunder.
Last night, Silas Lancaster was so bothered by the noise he couldn’t sleep. He threw on some clothes and went for a walk alone on the back hill.
He wandered all the way to a construction site on the hill and found a group of workers playing cards and gambling.
As if possessed, Silas Lancaster quietly sidled over. He saw that the makeshift gambling table was surrounded by a lot of food: instant noodles, chocolate, sausages, and even cigarettes and alcohol.
Seeing all these supplies, Silas’s eyes nearly popped out of his head with greed. He rolled up his sleeves and joined the game.
He snuck back to the underground garage and dug out a bag of rice hidden at the bottom of a suitcase—it was something Sylvia Lancaster had brought home back when she was dating Winston Sheffield.
There was only about a kilogram of rice left, which the Lancasters had never brought themselves to eat.
Using that kilogram of rice as his stake, Silas Lancaster began his journey of risking a little to win big.
He won a few rounds at first and got a taste of victory, but then he just kept losing. Not only did he lose the entire kilogram of rice, but he also signed a pile of IOUs and even a contract to sell himself.
He gambled until three or four in the morning. When the game broke up, Silas finally snapped out of it, as if waking from a dream, and realized he was now drowning in debt.
The worst part was that the dealer he’d signed the IOUs with was a pervert. The man actually took out the contract Silas had signed and told Silas to sleep with him.
Silas Lancaster was scared stupid—when he signed that contract, he thought the dealer meant for him to sell his labor, to do manual work like hauling bricks. He never thought it literally meant "selling his body"!
The dealer’s buddies were all jeering and whistling. They stared at Silas with lewd, sleazy eyes, looking at him like a lamb to the slaughter.
Silas Lancaster had never been looked at like that before. He hastily tried to explain, rambling incoherently, and kept telling them—he was a man!
Unexpectedly, the dealer just chuckled sleazily and said that Silas’s type was exactly what he liked!
Everything that happened after that was a complete nightmare for Silas Lancaster. Several times he wanted to bite his tongue off and kill himself, but he never dared to actually do it, so he could only endure.
He finally made it to daybreak. Some of the workers went to sleep, others went to work. When the group wasn’t paying attention, Silas Lancaster put on his clothes and limped away, sneaking off.
But to Silas’s surprise, the dealer refused to let him go!
The dealer was looking for him everywhere with the contract and tracked him straight to the underground garage.
Recalling the nightmare he’d endured last night, Silas Lancaster couldn’t take it anymore and fled in a blind panic.
As he was passing the villa district, he suddenly remembered that Melody Summers lived here. A sudden idea struck him, and he managed to shake off his pursuers and escape to the gate of the Summers Villa.
After hearing Silas Lancaster’s story, Melody Summers’s silence was deafening.
Silence was no longer enough to describe how she felt.
It wasn’t just Melody Summers; even Nina Summers, standing beside her, was stunned.
The two of them, in unspoken agreement, took another look at Silas Lancaster through the peephole. Although Silas was a complete good-for-nothing, both stupid and malicious, he had indeed inherited Elaine Hughes and Robert Lancaster’s good looks. No wonder that gambler wouldn’t let him go...
While Melody Summers was silent, Silas Lancaster began to wail again from outside the door. "Sis, hurry and open the door! I can’t let them drag me back! They’ll torture me to death! Please, I’m begging you, please save me!"
Silas Lancaster felt that he had already shown his most pathetic side to Melody Summers. Even with their unpleasant history, they were still siblings by blood. Surely Melody wouldn’t just abandon him.
But to his surprise, Melody Summers’s response was a merciless rejection. "Shut up, Silas Lancaster. Who are you calling Sis? Your sister is Sylvia Lancaster, not me. Go find her!"
After speaking, Melody silently added in her mind, ’If you can even find her, that is... Your sister has already left the Milky Way Galaxy. She’s on her way to an Ore Star to begin her 200-year-long mining sentence.’
Hearing Melody say this, Silas Lancaster was so shocked that even his crying stopped.
He asked with a look of disbelief, "...How can you say that? I’m your brother! After what’s happened to me, are you really just going to leave me here?!"
’How could there be such a heartless sister in the world?!’
