CHAPTER 293: FELLOW SINNERS

How couldn’t she be more disappointed by this family? She was already disappointed by it long ago but now seeing how this family’s foundation had always been built with lies and deceit... she really felt no more attachment to it. Even now being given such huge reward that she should have took and paraded to the Jiang family, it didn’t feel all that useful in her hands. It felt worthless...

What she had wanted was love and care, a family bond.

But this family, it would never offer such thing. Naive was her to expect they would be different, that they would change, how foolish was she to kill her own youth.

"AiLin, I didn’t do this because I want to buy your forgiveness," Grandmother LinLin spoke up. "I knew I was late and I knew that you won’t want to have anything to do with this family. We have long crossed you, long disappointed you, and I who was the elder had played a part to your suffering. I wanted to punish your mother in a way that I could but by being cold to you, all I did was make you suffer, not her."

So there was finally someone. Someone who understood the weight of their own action, who knew what they had done was wrong and who could plead for forgiveness from the depth of their heart. Someone who... was a bit too late but had stepped up.

"You don’t have to forgive me," she said before shaking her head, the jade pendant on her neck that AiLin had always seen her hold to so dearly now wet with tears, "I only want you to receive something in form of apology for all the things you have to go through— although I know for certain that this is not going to take away the pain that you have gone through..."

Seeing how much grandmother LinLin beg for forgiveness made AiLin to frown. A sense of something that was out of place filled her heart and she stared at the woman, more curious than moved.

"I don’t know what you have heard. I did went through a lot of things but it wasn’t because of you."

"No, I play a part. I am an elder," grandmother LinLin whispered, "They starved you, they hit you, they make you suffer pneumonia and malnutrition throughout your youth and force you to enter prison for things they have done!"

AiLin’s heart stirred. Eyes wide, her lips gape as she try to progress the words that Grandmother LinLin had said and with a rush she moved forward, holding the older lady by her shoulder for a moment of startle, "What did you say?"

Her voice was almost broke as her heart had skipped upon grandmother LinLin’s last words.

Grandmother LinLin appeared as startled, "You didn’t know?"

"Know about what?" AiLin pushed her to speak, "Things they have done? Then that night I didn’t kill her... I wasn’t the one who burnt the house!"

She knew it. She knew she wouldn’t be able to kill innocent people but the guilt had eat her alive and she had stayed for such a long time inside that prison to pay for her sins.

But she wasn’t the one who had burnt the house... she wasn’t the killer of that poor maid. She isn’t. She isn’t!

"Of course you were not. I thought you knew. Isn’t that the reason why you had came back? For revenge against this family?" Grandmother LinLin held her prayer beads and muttered, "At first, I thought about asking you for forgiveness so you wouldn’t lead this family to ruin— that maybe you can find a place in your heart to let the legacy of Jiang family to continue. It’s not that I’m against your revenge, I just hope that perhaps you wouldn’t touch the company... but when I knew that you went to prison because of them, I couldn’t have the face to ask it anymore. Now with my son in the comatose state, there’s nothing that I hold dear in this household. That’s why I offer this all to you. You deserve this so it wouldn’t fall to those sinner’s hands."

"Madam LinLin," AiLin raised her hand to tell her to stop talking as her head was reeling. Each conversation engraved in her heart but its as if her brain was toasted as she couldn’t register the words properly.

"I didn’t know," AiLin answered her, still at loss and her eyes round and dark was pleading for grandmother LinLin to answer her question and it touched the old woman’s guilty heart. "I... I was pregnant. At eighteen. Pregnant because of someone else’s misdoing... not the father’s fault but those who had made both of us to do it."

She gulped. Her words were as heavy as digging an old wound back to its fresh state but she continued, "When they knew about it, Mr and Mrs Jiang forcefully aborted the baby and I— I didn’t have anyone I could rely on— the police wouldn’t hear me... my baby is already gone. I— I didn’t want to have a baby so early when I’m so young, I was anxious and nervous, I cannot become a mother when my mother figure is someone so hateful towards me but when I heard it... when I heard the heartbeat I decided to have the baby. Yet they took her away from me. They are the reason for my revenge..."

Grandmother LinLin was shaken by what she heard almost instantly and it was clear by how her face turn pale and blue in almost a second. She raised her hands toward AiLin and it trembled with the heavy guilt that she finally realized she had to carry for the rest of her life for disappointing such a young girl.

"What have we done... oh what have we done..." Grandmother LinLin whispered and enchanted the four words over and over again like a prayer that was far too belated.

"Grandmother LinLin," AiLin frowned tightening her eyebrows. "Will you tell me what happened that night?"

As the two exchanged their conversation, a camera was watching everything in full view and the person who had heard grandmother LinLin’s confession and AiLin’s realization of her innocence began to grip their hands tight until it bleed. A certain dark intention swirls in their head as they looked over their shoulder, staring at the bottle of wine that was prepared fresh.