CHAPTER 129: OUTSMARTED BY THE COUNTRY BUMPKIN

Alice stood in the center of the room, shoulders heaving, hair disheveled, eyes wild. For a moment, the silence was unbearable.

Priscilla stared at her like she’d lost her mind. And maybe she had. Maybe Alice was teetering on the edge, but she didn’t care anymore.

Alice’s voice dropped, slicing through the heavy silence.

"You think you scare me, Priscilla? You think your money, your name, your threats mean anything to me? I’ve walked through worse than you. I’ve bled for less than this. So don’t you dare stand there and pretend you own me."

Priscilla’s lips parted, but the sharp retort she wanted to fling at Alice stuck in her throat. The silence stretched. For the first time, the mighty Priscilla looked... rattled.

But Priscilla was a master at composure. She tilted her head, her voice cold, mocking.

"You want war? Fine. But remember this—you started it. And when it ends, I’ll still be standing. You?" She leaned closer, whispering the last word like venom. "You’ll be nothing."

Alice’s jaw tightened, but her words flowed like poison finally loosed from a bottle.

"You know your mistake, Priscilla?" she spat, her tone raw. "It wasn’t bringing me here. It wasn’t even forcing me into this twisted charade of pretending to be Aurora. Your mistake was thinking I would stay quiet about it. Thinking I would let you strip me of a life I never even had, and just... endure. Because of your selfishness. Your greed. Your wickedness."

Priscilla blinked, the sharp edge of control in her demeanor faltering. "What the hell are you rambling about?" she demanded, though her voice cracked at the edges.

Alice laughed. A low, bitter laugh that filled the room and made the walls themselves feel tight.

"Rambling?" she said. "No, Priscilla. Not rambling. Informing you." She leaned back, arms folding across her chest as though she’d finally claimed the ground beneath her feet. "Do you want to know who else knows the truth? Dawin Wildfire. He knows. He knows I’m not Aurora."

The words landed like stones in a still pond. Priscilla’s entire face stiffened, horror flashing in her eyes.

Alice smirked, the sound of her laugh echoing once more, louder this time, unhinged in its defiance.

"And not just him. Hardy Cresswell too. He’s aware. He’s helped me file a kidnapping report against you. As we speak, Priscilla, you should be expecting the worse within the next thirty minutes, unless Paula is handed back to me."

Priscilla staggered back a step, clutching the armrest of the velvet chair behind her as if her body refused to hold her weight.

"What... what have you done?" she whispered, her voice so small Alice almost pitied her. Almost. "You... told Dawin Wildfire and... Hardy Cresswell?" She looked like she desperately wanted to believe Alice was joking.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO!?"

Alice advanced, her words like daggers.

"What have I done? No, Priscilla... what have YOU done?" Alice snapped back at her.

"Hiding your sickly son while parading as the perfect matriarch. Marrying the late Malay Chairman just to solidify your standing. Adopting Aurora, not for love, not for family, but because you needed her blood. Needed her to keep your bastard son alive and when. You used her like a cow you could milk at will. And when that wasn’t enough, you let that son of yours abuse her."

Priscilla’s eyes widened, panic breaking across her features like cracks in porcelain.

Alice’s voice trembled now, not from fear but from fury. "You let him touch her. You let him ruin her! And when she broke under the weight of it, when she got pregnant, you forced her into a clinic and ripped the child out of her body. And then... then you still had the audacity to drag me into this madness. Kidnapping me. Kidnapping Paula. Forcing me into Aurora’s place, dangling me like bait in front of Hades."

Priscilla’s lips moved, fumbling for denial, but nothing came.

Alice’s eyes glittered with rage. Undiluted rage that almost made hot tears spill from her eyes. "So, tell me, Priscilla. Since you know the law so much. Do you want to guess whether you’ll survive this or not? Do you want to bet on your influence?" Alice asked her.

"Because even the best lawyers at your firm won’t be able to scrub your hands clean. And that’s if Hades doesn’t kill you first for lying to him. For tricking him into marrying a country bumpkin like me."

Priscilla straightened her shoulders, trying to summon her usual hauteur, but her eyes betrayed her. They darted. Restless, frantic, terrified.

Alice took another step, standing so close now that Priscilla had to look up into her eyes.

"You want to threaten me? You want to strip me of friends, of money, of a future? I already told you... I have nothing to lose. Nothing. But you? You have everything. And you’ve already set fire to it with your own hands."

Priscilla swallowed hard, her throat bobbing. "You... you think you can destroy me?" she hissed, forcing venom into her tone though her voice wavered.

Alice’s eyes darkened, her words sharp as a blade.

"I don’t have to destroy you. You’ve destroyed yourself. I just need to push, and everything will come crumbling down."

The older woman’s mask was failing. Her painted lips trembled, her breathing grew uneven, and the imperious tilt of her chin seemed brittle now. She looked like she was going to break. Like she had not expected a country bumpkin like her to try and outsmart her. Something her smart twin wouldn’t have been able to conceive.

Alice didn’t let her breathe.

"Now, give me Paula. Now. And if you dare touch Vivian, if you so much as think of using her in this twisted game of yours..." She leaned in, her whisper deadly. "Things will get nasty."

Priscilla blinked, wide-eyed, her silence almost deafening.

Alice straightened, her shoulders squared like a soldier bracing for war. "Choose, Priscilla. Right now. Because your clock is already ticking."