“How dare you barge into here?” Charles asked, looking up at Abigail, who was now taking gentle steps towards them. He had forbidden the woman to enter his room without permission and she dared barge into the room and was even screaming on top of her voice as well.
“You can never do that; I forbid you from doing that.” Abigail did not mind anything that would happen at that moment. She had suffered enough for the Vale family to be treated as trash and discarded when they no longer saw use for her.
“I am the one who can forbid anything in this house, and I am asking you nicely to leave,” Charles said, staring at her. She had walked to Valerie and was now standing before her. She was holding her body as if she were wrapped in a hug herself.
“How dare you show up here after all this time? Was destroying my home twenty-three years ago not okay for you? Was taking away my husband from me not your life goal? Do you also want to somehow destroy the life of my son? Do you also want to throw me out of here? After all, I have done? After everything I have done?” Abigail was ranting, but the tears in her eyes would not stop. She sniffled as she felt the hot tears stream down from her eyes. She had not even known that she was crying until she felt the hot liquid on her face.
“Abigail,” Charles said in a loud voice, slamming his fist onto the table in annoyance. “You came in here without permission, and you are going on and on about nonsense. What do you think this is? Your birdhouse, where you can do whatever you want?”
Abihail turned to him and shook her head, trying her best not to let the tears blur her vision. “Have I not done enough? I did everything you wanted me to do, and yet somehow you want to replace me?”
“Replace you?” Charles said, letting out loud laughter. “You think I worry myself about little things like you?” he asked, plopping his hand onto his chin as he stroked his beard. “If I wanted to get rid of you, I would have done it twenty-three years ago and replaced you with this wonderful young lady here.”
Abihail stood there with her mouth ajar. One thing she had not been able to understand for so long was why Charles hated her. She was born into a moderately rich family, so in every way, she was better than this strange woman, but yet his pick was still Valerie. “After all I did, all you can still think of is how to discourage me,” she said with a scoff.
“Oh, please get the hell out of my room and stop writing a telenovela in your head,” Charles said, rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to Csde. “You do know that I can never refuse your request, so if it is what you want to do, then you can most definitely do it,” Charles said.
“Really?”
“Yes, bring your mom back to the family; I approve,” he said the last part with a bit of spite as he looked to Abigail, who stood there crying. Even when her husband, whom she called her love, died, she did not cry as much as she did at that moment. “What a hypocrite!” Charles murmured.
“Hypocrite?” Abigail said, blinking rapidly. “I have always served under you, been subservient because I thought that you would hand over the company to my son once I just accepted to do your bidding, but here you are standing in front of me and telling me that you would bring a strange woman into this house to…”
“That is a good idea; let Valerie move into this house!” Charles said in a bright voice.
Abigail pressed her lips together and turned to Cade, who was standing there confused. He had not expected that this was how this was going to go. He did not come with the intention of making his mother move back home; all he wanted to do was stand up for his mother and himself; he just wanted his grandfather to know that no matter how he tried to keep them away, he was still going to meet up with his mother.
“I allowed you to live as peacefully in this house as I could. I allowed your grandfather to give you preferential treatment over my son, but all I have to say now is that this is the end of that,” she said with a smile and the tears still streaming down her face. She looked like a creepy Halloween doll that was meant to scare children.
“Oh, please, you act like you own the place,” Charles said, rolling his eyes.
Cade had never seen his grandfather act like a teenage girl in a fight with another. He was acting so recklessly, and this was unlike him. Cade took a double take to ensure that it was really his grandfather sitting there and not an impostor sitting there and acting as he pleased.
Abigail took each step to close the gap between herself and Cade. She knew that the only thing she could do for now was to threaten this man. Each step she took somehow resounded in the room as if she were on some kind of large heel. “This is war,” she whispered in his face before turning and storming out of the room faster than her leg could carry her.
“Don’t mind her; she must have gotten a lot of loose screws,” Charles said as the door shut.
Cade wanted to ask his grandfather why he was so calm about it. It did not seem like nothing; they had successfully been able to push her to the wall and beyond, and it looked like she was ready to fight back. Knowing how cunning she was, Charles was not supposed to take her words so lightly.
“Don’t worry about it!”