Chapter 9: The Unpresentable Son-in-Law

Robert's face turned a bruised shade of ashen blue. Rage simmered beneath his skin. His late father had always been like that—stubbornly biased toward this wretched daughter, even from the grave. The old man refused to acknowledge that Keystone Pharmaceuticals only reached its current heights because of his painstaking management and calculated sacrifices.

Ariella remained composed in the face of his silence. She knew these people would never surrender the fortune willingly.

"I only came here to give you notice," she said, her voice thin but steady. "I am giving you one month to hand over the shares. If you don't, I'll take it to court."

Robert suddenly erupted into a fit of jarring laughter.

Ariella frowned, watching him warily. She wondered if the stress of her return had finally snapped her father's sanity.

"Ariella, oh Ariella," Robert said, his laughter dying down into a sneer. "I knew long ago that you were an ungrateful wolf. Three years ago, among the stack of documents I forced you to sign, one of them was a deed of transfer. Your shares are already legally registered under Esther's name!"

He tilted his head, looking like a man who had won the final move in a game of chess. "You want twenty percent of Keystone Pharmaceuticals? You wish."

Ariella knew her father was cold, but the depth of his malice stunned her. He had been plotting to rob her even before she was sent away. This was a bitter lesson in betrayal. When one's own family turned to conspiracy, they were far more vicious than any stranger.

"Am I even your daughter?" she asked, the words sounding hollow and frail.

"If you aren't my daughter, whose would you be?" Robert replied righteously. "We provided your food, your clothes, and your education. And how do you repay me? You have no one to blame but yourself for being greedy. You were always trying to escape our control!"

The sound of rushing water cut him off.

Katrina had slipped into the kitchen unnoticed. She emerged with a large basin and threw the contents directly at Ariella. The cold water drenched Ariella's hair and soaked through her clothes, clinging to her fragile frame.

"Trying to take money from this house?" Katrina snapped, planting a hand on her hip with a triumphant smirk. "With your wretched, lowly fate, do you think you deserve that much wealth? Hmph!"

The icy water seeped into Ariella's skin, sending a bone-deep chill through her.

Kingston had intended to stay back and see if they would mention the Carswell family. Instead, he found himself once again witnessing the ugly theater of the Ellerker family's domestic abuse. He truly didn't want to get involved, but Ariella was, by law, his wife. Bullying her was the same as slapping his own face.

He raised his phone, recording as he strolled nonchalantly into the living room.

"I never would have imagined that Mrs. Ellerker, who performs so much charity in public, holds the disposition of a common shrew behind closed doors."

Kingston's lips curled into a smirk. His handsome, refined features took on an air of reckless arrogance. "I wonder what the media would report if they saw this footage. I imagine the headlines wouldn't be very kind."

Robert's expression shifted instantly. He turned to the domestic staff, shouting, "Are you all dead? What are you standing there for? Get him out of here!"

As the servants moved to intervene, Kingston pointed the camera directly at their faces. "Go ahead. I'll give you all a chance to be famous. Let the world see how the Ellerker family treats an 'unpresentable' son-in-law—refusing to even let him through the front door."

"You? A son-in-law?" Katrina shrieked. "We never recognize you as our son-in-law!"

In her mind, the only man fit to be her son-in-law was someone like Patrick Davis—a man of noble birth and immense power, not a man of unknown origins. She factored that since he was willing to marry an ex-convict like Ariella, he must be dirt poor.