"Drive!"
The car started moving.
Chad Jennings’s phone slipped from his grasp and crashed to the ground.
He scrambled to pick it up, wanting to call his lawyer immediately and stop him from showing the news to Yvonne Sherman.
A wheel rolled over it. By the time he retrieved it, the phone was nothing but a pile of fragments!
As Sophia Shaw’s car slowly pulled into the company’s entrance, she saw Chad Jennings in the rearview mirror, clutching the shattered phone and jumping up and down in frustration like a clown.
The moment Sophia Shaw walked into the company, she got a call from Yancy Shaw.
"Did you see the press release from Chad Jennings? I can’t believe that shameless bastard was actually willing to vindicate your mother."
Yancy Shaw had wanted to expose the truth years ago, but a lack of sufficient evidence had allowed his own sister to be wrongly accused for so long.
Sophia Shaw said lightly, "Yvonne Sherman is in jail, Joanna Sherman has fallen from grace, and he himself is drowning in debt."
"If he can’t pay his debts, he’ll go to jail. He couldn’t accept that, so he made a choice between going to jail and clearing my mother’s name."
Realization dawned on Yancy Shaw. "You forced him to clarify?"
"Mhm."
Yancy Shaw let out a deep sigh, his voice choked with emotion. "I never imagined... A problem I struggled with for so long, you solved it so easily. Faye, you’re really something else!"
Whether it was Yvonne Sherman’s imprisonment, Joanna Sherman’s downfall, or Chad Jennings’s debts, Sophia Shaw’s calculations were behind it all.
’This niece of mine seems harmless, but she planned every step, cornering her opponents without them even realizing it!’
’As her uncle, I’m ashamed I couldn’t measure up!’
Yancy Shaw’s heart was a mix of excitement over Sophia’s competence and sorrow that the injustice his sister had suffered for so many years was only now being rectified.
And above all, hatred for Chad Jennings.
"Chad Jennings wants Yvonne Sherman to take all the blame so he can walk away scot-free and live his life with a clean slate? In his dreams!"
"Faye, your uncle won’t let him get away with it!"
Sophia Shaw stopped him. "Uncle, we don’t have to do a thing."
"If I’m not mistaken, Yvonne Sherman’s lawyer has already told her about the news."
If it were just any news, the lawyer wouldn’t have gone to Yvonne Sherman.
But for *her* to send it to Yvonne Sherman personally held a different meaning.
It meant she intended to see this through to the very end.
The lawyer couldn’t bear that responsibility, so naturally, he would consult with Yvonne Sherman.
"It’s better to let them tear each other apart."
"Brilliant!" Yancy Shaw said from the other end of the line. "We could talk until we’re blue in the face and people might not believe us. But if those two expose each other, the public will have no choice but to believe it!"
"Faye, the injustice your mother endured can finally be cleared!"
’Yes, the injustice my mother endured can finally be cleared.’
’It was a knife in her uncle’s heart, but wasn’t it also a thorn in her own?’
Just as Sophia Shaw had predicted, Yvonne Sherman’s lawyer counterattacked within two hours of Chad Jennings’s press release.
He not only pointed out that Chad Jennings was the one who had pursued Yvonne Sherman, but also stated that he was the one who had voluntarily given her money.
On Yvonne Sherman’s behalf, the lawyer displayed the love letters Chad Jennings had written her—word by word, line by line, burning with passion.
Not only that, but he also showed their message history, every bit of which proved that Chad Jennings had been the one to initiate contact, to send money and gifts, and to use the money his wife earned to act like a big shot.
Yvonne Sherman was perfectly packaged as a pitiful woman—divorced, raising a daughter on her own, and with her family business in dire straits.
Chad Jennings wasn’t about to take this lying down. He produced a pile of his own evidence, proving that Yvonne Sherman knew full well he had a wife and had done her utmost to seduce him, even using the daughter they’d had before he was married as leverage...
The once-loving couple had torn each other apart in the ugliest way imaginable.
Amid the chaos, online spectators tirelessly tried to follow the thread, only to realize in the end that the true victim was Chad Jennings’s poor, original wife!
Right then, a large number of photos of Brianna Shaw doing business abroad, heedless of the ravages of war, appeared online.
Along with the messages she had sent to Chad Jennings.
Between the lines, every word was filled with her care and concern for him.
She never mentioned a single word about her own hardships!
"What the hell is this? The wife goes abroad and risks her life in a warzone to support her husband and child, and the husband takes her hard-earned money to have an affair?"
"It wasn’t enough for him to spend it on himself, he had to play the big shot and fund his mistress’s business?"
"And this mistress is no saint, either. She knew it was money earned by another woman’s suffering, yet she took it as if it were her right? What a bunch of freaks!"
"This scumbag couple deserves to die a thousand deaths! They should be taken out and shot!"
"My heart breaks for that poor, foolish woman. It hurts so much."
"So much hate! I want to chop up that bastard Jennings and that bitch Sherman!"
"..."
Soon, someone discovered that the "foolish woman" they pitied, Brianna Shaw, had been accused by countless people more than a decade ago.
They said she used her wealth to forcefully separate a pair of lovers and steal someone else’s husband.
The story had spread far and wide back then, and many people still remembered it today.
And the ones crying foul at the time were Chad Jennings and Yvonne Sherman.
So, it was a case of the thieves crying "Stop, thief!"?
Not only did they leech off her, but they also turned around and slandered her?
The internet erupted in a unanimous outcry against the pair, with everyone cursing the scum to die an early death!
On the day Brianna Shaw’s name was finally cleared, Yancy Shaw and Sophia Shaw took the whole family to the cemetery.
For the first time in over a decade, Yancy Shaw had the courage to set foot in this place.
The moment he entered the cemetery, his eyes turned bloodshot.
When he reached the grave, he hugged the headstone and wept uncontrollably.
After more than a decade of hatred, resentment, and struggle, he finally had the courage to tell his sister, "We won!"
"Sis... Sis..." Yancy Shaw called out Brianna’s name again and again, his sorrowful voice piercing everyone’s hearts.
Leah Evans and June Evans were already sobbing, and their grandmother wiped away an endless stream of tears, muttering, "Brianna, oh, Brianna..."
For all the years since Brianna Shaw’s death, she had refused to accept it, becoming confused whenever her daughter was mentioned.
It wasn’t confusion; it was an unwillingness to face the pain her daughter had endured.
Sophia Shaw bent down and carefully cleaned the litter from her mother’s grave.
Over the years, because of her mother’s tarnished reputation, some resentful people would come and throw trash on her grave.
Her mother had loved cleanliness so much, yet she had been forced to endure such filth. Sophia picked up the trash, her head bowed, as tears fell like beads onto the blades of grass.
Biting her lip, she gently patted the rounded grave, just as her mother used to pat her when she was little. "Mom, no one will ever dirty your resting place again. You... you can rest in peace now."
With the shame that had weighed on their hearts finally washed away, the group felt a sense of release as they left the cemetery, their steps becoming lighter.
A figure dressed in black stood at the cemetery gate.
Everyone stopped, their expressions turning cold when they saw who it was.
Vincent Grant’s posture was as erect as ever, but perhaps because of his black attire, he seemed weighed down by a heavy solemnity.
He greeted them in a low voice, "Grandma, Uncle, Aunt..."
"Don’t call us that. We don’t deserve it," June Evans said coldly. "You and Faye are divorced. You have nothing to do with us anymore."
"I’m sorry," he said in a low voice.
He bowed his head, bending forty-five degrees.
"My, it’s not easy to make the great President Grant bow his noble head!" Leah Evans sneered. "But then again, you didn’t really do anything wrong when it comes to Sister Brianna."
"You love that unforgettable flame of yours, so what’s wrong with giving her parents money to bolster their position? It’s only human nature, after all."
"If anyone’s to blame, it’s Faye for her bad luck. She married a scumbag whose unforgettable flame just so happened to be her family’s enemy. So she had no choice but to watch helplessly as the scumbag threw their marital assets at his old love, then let that old love use the scumbag’s power to do whatever she wanted to Faye and her family!"
Leah Evans’s words were as harsh as they could be, but Vincent Grant didn’t offer a single rebuttal.
He silently bore the full brunt of the Shaw family’s anger.
Sophia Shaw’s long, delicate lashes fluttered. She gently tugged on Leah Evans’s arm, silencing her.
She took a step forward. "Vincent Grant, let’s talk."