Chapter 4

Sophie Reed POV

“Nina Young’s car hood was completely scratched up. The surveillance footage caught Grandma Reed at the scene!”

Brandon Foster roared, grabbed my collar, and shoved my whole body hard into the shelf beside us. “It’s bad enough that you’re targeting Nina. Now you’re even using an old woman who just had heart surgery? You actually incited her to run out in the pouring rain and smash a car for you?!”

My back crashed against the metal rack with an ear-splitting metallic shriek.

My mind went blank in an instant.

Grandma’s illness had flared up... Wearing her hospital gown, she had walked all the way from the nursing home in the outskirts back to the old shop in the heavy rain.

The instant I was shoved, I instinctively used my left hand to brace myself. A crisp crack came from my wrist joint, and a wave of searing, dislocated pain crashed over my whole frame

Cold sweat broke out all at once. My face turned deathly pale, and my fingertips trembled violently, but I did not make a sound.

Brandon Foster glanced at my slightly shaking wrist, his brows tightening, but his tone was still perfectly self-righteous. “Stop pretending in front of me. I’m sick of your little martyr act. For what happened today, you must give Nina and me an explanation!”

I pressed down hard on my trembling wrist, the pain so intense even my breathing shook.

It was at that very second that the phone in my palm vibrated sharply. It was an urgent text from a caregiver at the nursing home: [Ms. Reed! This is bad! A group of people just forcibly took Grandma Reed from her ward. They said the old lady is suspected of deliberately damaging someone else’s property and that they’re taking her away for confrontation!]

I didn’t even have time to rub my throbbing wrist. I shoved Brandon Foster away and rushed out of the shop.

Outside, rain poured down in sheets.

When I arrived at the private car wash Nina Young had mentioned, I could hear the sound of a high-pressure water gun from far away, along with Nina Young’s delicate laughter. “Spray more cold water on her. Wake the old lady up a little. She scratched someone else’s car and can’t even say sorry. How disgraceful at her age.”

Inside the empty, damp car wash, Grandma was wearing a thin hospital gown, pinned tightly to a cold metal chair by two bodyguards.

The high-pressure cold water gun was aimed straight at the old woman, the icy water blasting against her pale, withered face.

The old woman’s entire body shook violently. She could barely breathe, her lips had turned purple, and all she could make were faint moans.

“Stop!”

I rushed over like I had lost my mind. But before I could get close, an arm appeared out of nowhere and blocked me hard.

Brandon Foster stood firmly in front of Nina Young, his face tense as he said to me helplessly, “Calm down. Nina was just too anxious. Mrs. Reed really was at the scene. It’s perfectly reasonable for Nina to want an explanation. Once this is cleared up, I’ll naturally send the old lady back.”

Rain hit my face. I had no time to wipe it away. My gaze went straight past Brandon Foster and landed on the old woman shrinking back on the metal chair behind him.

“Mrs. Reed?”

My voice was so hoarse I could barely speak.

I looked at Brandon Foster, my eyes full of grief. “Brandon Foster, back when you didn’t have the money to buy your first machine tool and cried in her arms, what did you call her? Do you still remember? And now you call her Mrs. Reed?”

Brandon Foster’s expression froze, and a deep flash of shame crossed his eyes.

Nina hid behind Brandon, shoulders trembling, her eyes red as she cried pitifully. “Brandon… I wasn’t trying to hurt the old lady. She was the one who scratched my car with her cane first… I just wanted to ask her what was going on.”

Under everyone’s stunned gazes, I walked forward calmly, snatched the water gun from the bodyguard’s hands, and hurled it hard onto the ground.

I held Grandma, who was nearly unconscious, tightly in my arms. The old woman’s body was as cold as a block of ice. I wrapped her in my coat, carried her on my back, and step by step, walked out into the pouring rain.

In the late-night storm, not a single taxi passed by.

The old woman’s body temperature was draining away rapidly in my arms. The dislocated bones in my left wrist ground violently against each other, the pain so sharp that every step felt like I was treading on blades.

I had no idea how many times I fell. My knees were scraped bloody, but I still clung desperately to the unconscious old woman in my arms.

When I finally stumbled through the doors of the public hospital emergency department, my whole body crashed heavily to its knees on the cold marble floor.

With my uninjured right hand, I clutched a nurse’s coat and begged, “Doctor, please save my grandma… Please…”

The stark fluorescent hospital lights blurred everything in front of my eyes while my left wrist hung limply against the floor, a horrific dark bruise was spreading all up my wrist.