Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11 Lisa looked genuinely surprised, whereas Veronica was controlling herself from bursting into laughter because Elizabeth looked like a thousand pound bird crap had crashed upon her and completely ruined her makeup, thereby making her look as ugly as ever. “Who the fuck did you just call an Aunt?” Elizabeth howled in rage and came running at him like an enraged beast.

“W-Wait, I can explain this!” Benjamin ran and stood behind the large dining table. When she came from his left, he ran to his right. When she tried to come from his right, he ran to his left.

“What’s there to explain? I’m only forty years old, and you dare call me an aunt!” She looked for something to hit him with. She picked the nearest objects, the flower vases, and began throwing those things at him. “I’m not even thirty, and your children call me uncle, don’t they?” Benjamin asked. “Shut up,” Elizabeth didn’t care to even comprehend what he just said. She only wanted to beat the shit out of him in any way possible. “Stop right there if you have guts!” However, Benjamin kept running. “He’s got a point though,” Veronica opined. “He’s not even thirty, so I’m sure he doesn’t like it when someone calls him uncle. If someone calls me an aunt even by mistake, I’d go to the ends of the earth to slap the living crap out of him, but that’s because I’m just 25, not forty like you.” “Veronica,” Elizabeth glared at her, “did you lose your mind after eating the breakfast he made?” “You ate the same food as I did, so why would I be only losing my mind?” Veronica spoke back Why was this little fool suddenly speaking on behalf of Benjamin all of a sudden? Elizabeth didn’t understand, but as the eldest daughter-in-law, she just couldn’t let Benjamin go after what he said. She looked at the maids and said, “Catch him, or you’ll lose your jobs!”

That was all she needed to say. The maids were forced into action, and they surrounded Benjamin in no time and caught him.

Elizabeth made her way in quick strides and grabbed Benjamin by the hair before pushing the maids aside and slapping all the handsomeness out of Benjamin’s face. A total of sixteen slaps, and she stopped only after her wrist began hurting. Her eyes, however, still boiled with rage as she felt like she hadn’t done enough.(What’s with this guy? He doesn’t even flinch after taking so many slaps straight to his face?) What stunned Elizabeth, Veronica, and Lisa was that Benjamin stood like a rock, and he wasn’t taking his eyes off Elizabeth. “What’s with that look? You think I’ll be afraid of you?” Elizabeth was almost the same height as him, as she didn’t put her high-heel shoes on yet. Even though her hands were hurting, she slapped him a few times again.

Just then, Kathy brought a stick from the garden. It was one of those sticks used to keep the dogs in check, and so they wouldn’t break easily.

“This is what I’ve been looking for,” Elizabeth grabbed the stick and beat him left and right at the shoulders, triceps, elbows, thighs, knees, and without any hesitation.

Lisa couldn’t watch it, but Veronica looked amused. Kathy was covering her mouth in shock, as though she didn’t expect Elizabeth would be so cruel.

While Elizabeth kept beating him, he briefly glanced toward the first floor’s balcony from where his wife was looking down at him.

He didn’t care how others felt at the moment, but what bothered him was that Rebecca just watched from a distance and didn’t interfere even though Elizabeth was putting all her strength into every swing. That was harder to swallow than the pain his eldest sister-in-law inflicted upon him. “That’s enough,” Jacob’s voice broke out, startling Elizabeth. He walked down the stairs, with a smoking pipe in his mouth. “You are beating your brother in-law with a stick used to beat dogs?” he glared at Elizabeth. “Is this what your parents taught you back home?” “’T-That’s not it, Father-in-law,” she tried to explain herself. “He called me an aunt.”

“So what?” Jacob casually swatted her words away. “You think you’re still thirty years old or what? You’re five-fucking-years older than Kathy, the oldest maid in our house. What’s so wrong with a young man calling you an aunt?” Tears welled up in Elizabeth’s eyes. She ran upstairs and went into her room to cry to her husband.

Selena was secretly watching everything from behind a pillar on the first floor and put on a sly smile.

“Maybe you were too harsh on her, Dad,” Veronica opined. She had never seen Elizabeth cry before, so even she felt bad because Lisa was watching everything.

“I was too harsh?” Jacob raised his voice as he looked at Lisa. “Actually, I went easy, real easy, on your mom as I’ve been doing since she and her useless parents stepped into my house. All she has been doing is leeching off of our hard-earned money. It’s about time she picks herself up and shows me she deserves to use my family name in her invitation card, or I’ll make new invitation cards for her titled ‘Aunt Elizabeth.’” Even though Jacob walked outside after his speech, his words left everyone in shock for a little while.

Lisa ran upstairs to see how her mother was doing. Veronica came up to Benjamin who was still standing and covered in bloody bruises. “Ooow, she really went all out, didn’t she?” she bit on an apple as she spoke. “Don’t think I spoke in your favor. I helped you because you said something I wanted to say out loud for a while now.” She walked away, crunching on the apple. Kathy reached Benjamin and said, “Are you alright? I think you should sit.”

She tried to help, but he cast a cold glance at her, and she backed away. His eyes showed clear angst for what Kathy did. “So you are the kind who spits venom because I refused your advances?” “N-No,” Kathy’s face was drained of color. “I...” she briefly glanced in Selena’s direction. It was because Selena told her to give the stick, she ended up doing so. But how could she tell all that to Benjamin? She could only feel crappy inside and watch as Benjamin walked past her with a cold expression on his face.

He didn’t even look back to see his wife anymore. His heart grew so heavy at the moment, he didn’t want to show his face to anyone. He just walked out of the villa and went under a tree to hide his face from others. And he painfully wept and silently wiped his tears, under a willow tree with golden curls. Rebecca was watching through the glass window on the first floor while her fingers fiddled with her diamond locket. Seeing him cry lightly and shed tears for the first time, even though it was from a distance, she felt somewhat guilty. Only one question ran through her mind: Am I doing the right thing? Meanwhile, in the nearest ATM from the villa. Devon kissed the card once and prayed a little before putting it in the machine. It asked to enter the amount.

“Wow, there’s no password?” he quickly entered the value 100 and received the amount. After touching the 100 dollar bill, he started smiling. “It’s working! It’s really working! Oliver, you are one unlucky bastard!” He couldn’t help but check it once again.

No password was asked for. This time he entered 1000, and when the machine began to count the bills, his eyes widened. Ten hundred dollar bills soon came out. He quickly snatched them and checked them to see if they were real, and they seemed to be real. His smile turned into laughter. “Hahaha! I’ve really hit the jackpot!” He took the card and hurriedly walked out of the ATM center. Before he could take ten steps, a motorcycle came and hit him at a moderate speed. Devon crashed on the ground and didn’t move an inch. The bike stopped. Two masked men wearing pizza-delivery uniforms took the money and the card and left.

Devon was lying unconscious on the road, with blood leaking from multiple spots.

At the same time, Benjamin’s phone just rang twice. However, he wasn’t in the mood to check it out. He noticed that his wife was looking at him from the villa, so he turned around so she couldn’t see the pathetic expression he was making. “Did he notice me?” Rebecca wondered and moved away from the window. With her back against the wall, she frowned, “He didn’t cry when Elizabeth kept hitting him. Is it because he didn’t want to cry in front of others, or is there some other reason?”