Ruby yelped out a string of, “Ah … ah … ah.” Then, he pleaded, “You’re going to strangle me to death, to death! I’ll go up with you, alright?!” He quickly got out of the car, locked it, and went up.
Even as he did so, he kept muttering, “Sister, ever since you started your relationship with Ian Axton, you’ve gotten a lot fiercer.” He even poked her in the arm a few times. “I keep feeling that the sister I brought back is a fake.”
His “fake sister” didn’t even bother giving him a supercilious look.
Only then did Ruby really start to feel a little afraid. When he recalled that she had come from the Axton family’s house, he … really wanted to run.
Amber exited the elevator and saw that her brother wasn’t following behind her anymore. However, without turning around, she placidly said, “Run away if you dare.”
And Ruby … didn’t dare. Even though he was the older brother and Amber’s temper was generally gentle, when she truly became angry, he couldn’t do anything but comply.
Ruby bitterly entered Amber’s apartment with her. Because he was still preoccupied with his own thoughts, he didn’t even notice that Amber had brought them into the apartment next door.
The two of them sat down on the sofa, with Amber in the middle and Ruby on the side. He was so nervous that his butt was slightly smushed against the side of the sofa, giving him a pitiful appearance.
Amber glanced at him. “It looks like you also know what you’ve done.”
Ruby stubbornly replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But given your expression, you’re angry at me … right? Are you angry that I picked you up late? Or are you angry that I didn’t show up for the dinner between the Axton family and our family? Or are you angry ….”
The rest of his words trailed off as he automatically swallowed them as Amber’s quiet gaze only deepened. His head drooped. “Alright, what did I do? Tell me, my sister.”
He still refused to admit to it.
But Ruby could understand him a little. After all, it was the nature of man to indulge in wishful thinking, for them to not admit to guilt even when the evidence was right before their face.
She unlocked her phone, opened up the screenshots that she’d grabbed from Daren’s phone, and then put her phone in front of him. “Explain yourself.”
Just like Amber a few hours ago, Ruby’s face instantly contorted uncontrollably as soon as he saw the ID in the chat logs. He silently cursed in his mind. Crap, there’s so much evidence here that I can’t even lie.
Amber knew that he was very good at lying and deception, and she didn’t want to hear any of it. So, she preemptively shot down his final excuse. “Don’t try to tell me that you gave my account to someone else. Ruby, you shouldn’t be so cowardly.”
Ruby was speechless. “….”
“Who said that I was cowardly?” Ruby slapped his palm on the table a bit too forcefully, hurting his own hand. As he grimaced and rubbed his hand, he said in annoyance, “Yes, I was the one using your account. I used it to pretend to be you to play a joke on Daren Axton. Are you satisfied?”
“Just a joke?” Amber stared at him, enunciating every word clearly. “Or has my brother always liked men?”
Ka-blum! Ruby’s lower jaw dropped so far that it almost hit the ground.
“Don’t joke around like this,” Ruby said, with a tinge of traumatized shock. “Your brother’s a straight male, a steely type.’
He thought that his words were witty, but Amber didn’t even crack a smile. She looked coldly at him. “You know, brother, I wish that the truth was that you were truly attracted to him. Otherwise, you would be intentionally manipulating his attraction towards me.”
Ruby muttered, “Mom would kill me.”
“If she didn’t beat you to death, then would you really like him?”
Ruby glared at his sister, but then deflated in the next moment. “No!”
“Then why did you do all that?”
“….”
The reason was honestly too embarrassing to say out loud, and he braced himself as he spoke his next words. “Can you not interrogate me like a criminal? It’s really quite scary.”
“Brother!!” Amber was about to slap the table herself.
Ruby could only surrender. “Alright, alright, I’ll say it. It was just a joke ….” He squinted and glanced at Amber. When he saw that her face was still frosty, he changed his story again. “Alright, I was trying to do some business with Axton Corporation through him.”
“You can’t do business with Axton Corporation in broad daylight?”
“See, this is why I didn’t want to tell you the truth.” He even sounded justified as he explained, “Do you know how hard it is to do business? Do you know how hard it is to do business with Axton Corporation in particular?
Your brother doesn’t have any connections or a big company, so even if I praise myself as a lovely flower in my bid document, no one would even glance at it.”
“So you … made use of Daren Axton?”
“Isn’t that just because Ian Axton’s too hard to get close to?”
“RUBY!”
Ruby trembled. Amber only ever yelled at him like this once in a blue moon. Throughout the span of his entire memory, she had only ever done so once before, when they were both in middle school. Their grandmother had been sick, and nobody at home had enough spare time to pay any attention to him.
He became a bad student, hanging out with other hoodlums and skipping class, either by going to an Internet cafe or by going to a cinema and secretly watching age-restricted movies. Then, they would run around with some other delinquents and peek on girls in the area.
Then one day, as he was sneaking out from someone else’s house, he saw his sister standing outside with an ashen face and a big stick in her hands, as broad as his arm. As he fell to the ground in fear, she had swung it at his leg.
Ruby had become extremely scared of her ever since the beating, and even though his school life didn’t improve by much, it also didn’t degrade further.
This time, however, Amber didn’t beat him up. Instead, she started crying, huge tears steadily rolling down her face. In truth, this was even more scary than a beating.
Ruby jumped up in shock. “Why are you crying? I’m wrong, alright? I made a mistake!” He couldn’t find any tissues, so he leaned over and used his clothes to wipe her tears away. “I really didn’t have any malicious intent behind those actions. I thought that it was all just a joke.”