Chapter 28: You’re My Wife
[Ding!]
[You have successfully completed your quest: Repair the spy cam’s memory card and let Lando see its contents.]
[Reward: $5,000 has been credited to your account.]
My eyes widened a little at the system’s sudden announcement. I had almost forgotten that Henry said the memory card would be ready in two days, which happened to be today.
But what shocked me even more was how quickly he had already shown it to Lando.
"Why are you asking me that?" I whispered, my voice small, pretending I didn’t understand what he was talking about.
The truth was, I never expected Lando to look this furious. I hadn’t even seen the footage myself.
From Helcia’s memories, I knew Addison and Madeline often treated her harshly in that room, but most of it was just throwing things at her head or screaming at her.
[Even that already looks terrible, Host.]
I bit the inside of my cheek. Right, that was already bad enough.
But back in the orphanage, I also used to get things thrown at me whenever I acted lazy. Still, that didn’t mean I believed it was normal or acceptable to treat someone like that.
No child should ever have to go through something so abusive. Yet, since my caretaker had to handle more than a dozen kids at once, maybe they were just ... overwhelmed and stressed.
While Helcia, on the other hand, received all that abuse out of pure hatred.
Addison could have easily called the other housemaids in her home, and yet she still chose to make Helcia do everything by herself. It wasn’t about chores, but it was about control, about reminding her that she was nothing more than a servant in her own family.
Every broken dish, every speck of dust, every tiny mistake became an excuse to scream at her, to throw things, to humiliate her in front of others.
So maybe Lando had seen Addison scream and throw things at Helcia on the recording, but hadn’t he already witnessed Addison slap me before?
"I know your family doesn’t treat you well, but ..." He paused for a moment, gritting his teeth. His eyes burned with such obvious rage it almost frightened me. "... I didn’t know it was this bad."
On a scale of one to ten, just how bad was this bad supposed to be?
"Mr. Brix—husband, I still don’t understand why you’re suddenly bringing up my family," I said softly. "What’s going on?"
Lando didn’t answer me right away. Instead, his gaze dropped to my coffee-stained clothes. Before I could open my mouth, Mr. Silo stepped closer to him and whispered something, probably about me running into Madeline and Isabella at the café earlier.
Not long after, one of the house staff came running toward Lando with a tablet in his hands. As he passed me, he gave me a look filled with sympathy.
What was going on? Did he see the contents of the memory card too?
Or ... could my dramatic act in the café already be spreading on the internet? That fast?!
My doubts slowly turned into certainty as Lando’s eyes burned even hotter with fury, especially when they fell again on the coffee stains on my clothes.
He tightened his jaw and spoke in a low voice. "Henry, tell my secretary to rearrange my schedule for today." Then, after a short pause, he added, "Tell her my wife is sick, so I won’t be leaving the house for a while."
Sick? Who was sick?
I was perfectly fine! I could probably run laps around the mansion five times if I wasn’t so lazy!
Lando finally turned his eyes on me. Even though he still looked angry, his voice wasn’t harsh at all when he spoke. "Helcia, change your clothes and come to my office afterward."
He spoke so gently that I found myself nodding without even realizing it, then moving to do exactly as he asked.
After changing into something more comfortable, I made my way to his office.
The room was surprisingly as big as my bedroom, maybe even a little larger. Tall shelves lined the walls, filled with books and files, and a large desk sat neatly in the center. The faint scent of leather and wood polish lingered in the air, mixing with the faintest trace of Lando’s cologne.
This room honestly looked exactly like the one I had imagined in my head.
"You can sit on the couch," Lando said as he rolled his wheelchair over to the sofa.
On the table in front of me sat a steaming cup of hot coffee and an iced brown sugar latte. Iced brown sugar latte?!
How the hell did he know what I ordered at the café?!
[Host, you told Mr. Silo once that you loved brown sugar lattes.]
Damn it! I really needed to stop sharing too much information about myself to other people!
"You should have called me if something bad happened while you were alone," Lando said.
I tilted my head, feigning innocence. "But ... nothing happened. I just accidentally ran into my sister," I lied.
I knew it was wrong to lie, but the system kept telling me to act pitiful to gain his sympathy and increase his favorability toward me.
Maybe ... a little lie wouldn’t hurt.
"Don’t lie," he suddenly said.
Lando placed a tablet on the table and pressed play. The screen lit up with a clip of Madeline shoving me at the café.
My eyes widened when I saw the video already had over 300,000 views on the Zentra app.
How the hell did it blow up that fast?!
Then I saw the caption, and everything made sense. Apparently, while Madeline was busy bullying me, a streamer had been live at the café. She had only planned to review the food, but instead, she ended up capturing a front-row seat to a real-life family drama.
More than that, she recognized Madeline’s face and told her viewers that Madeline was a rising actress who always acted like an innocent girl in front of cameras.
In no time, thousands of her fans had screen-recorded the live and spread the clip everywhere with the headline: "A rising actress caught bullying her own sister in public."
I pressed my lips into a thin line, struggling to hold back my smile as I watched Madeline’s downfall.
I couldn’t let myself laugh yet. I had to stay calm, because there was no guarantee this would be the end of her.
After all, she still had the card of "Helcia is my father’s illegitimate child" in her hand, and no matter how wrong the abuse was, there would surely be some people who sided with Madeline. Because once again, I was just Gideon Davenport’s illegitimate daughter.
That single fact alone was enough to turn sympathy into scorn. People loved a scandal, but they also loved tearing down someone they saw as lesser, and in their eyes, I would always be the outsider, the unwanted child of a homewrecker whore.
"This is nothing," I said softly, trying to draw out more of his sympathy. "Besides, how could I possibly call you over such a small matter like this?"
"Helcia." Lando took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment before speaking again. "You’re my wife. If you need anything or if you’re in trouble, you should call me right away."
[Lando’s favorability has increased to +6%]
What? Wait, what just happened?!
He was the one who called me his wife ... and he was the one who got happy about it?!