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Dad Became Richest, Made Mom and Me Sleep in Doghouse
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The year I turned eight, my father clawed his way back to the top and became the richest man in the city. But he still made my mother sleep in the doghouse on the balcony. Because he had found out by ...
章節（4）
第1章
The year I turned eight, my father clawed his way back to the top and became the richest man in the city.
And he still made my mother sleep in the doghouse out on the balcony.
Because he had found out, by accident, that my mother was a traveler from another world, sent here to carry out a mission.
He decided she was the host who had been draining his luck dry, so he tormented her in every way he could think of.
What he didn't know was that the system she was bound to was a Death-Substitution System.
All this time, she had been quietly taking the disasters meant for him.
Today was my father's thirtieth birthday, and my mother's death-substitution task was finally complete.
She had bought a new dress. She was going to tell him that
our family could finally live like normal people again.
But before the birthday party even started, my father stood there with his arm around Aunt Marjorie Simmons, pointed at my mother, and screamed at her.
"You bloodsucker, whenever you're around, Nina Abbott gets sick!"
"A curse like you, why don't you just drop dead?"
Aunt Marjorie huddled against him, trembling,
but I saw the smug little smile at the corner of her mouth.
My mother looked down at her own broken, battered body and said nothing in her own defense.
She took my hand and asked me, gently.
"Nina, Mommy will take you home. Will you come with me?"
I was just about to nod.
Then a hard force yanked me from behind, dragging me back behind my father.
My arm burned where it had been wrenched.
I looked up. It was my father's bodyguard.
"Samantha Henson! Who gave you permission to take Nina away?"
My father's furious voice came after me.
Marjorie leaned against his shoulder, holding her nose, and sneered.
"Giles Gilbert, Samantha reeks so bad. You don't think the dog peed on her, do you..."
My mother writhed in the doghouse, ten fingers clawing bloody streaks down the wall.
That was from the nights he came home from business dinners drinking until his stomach bled, his face gone gaunt, his lips without a trace of color, white plaster dust still caught under his nails.
Last night I had watched with my own eyes as she twisted in agony inside that doghouse, taking on the pain that should have been his.
I started forward, but my father heard the movement and threw out an arm to stop me.
"Thinking about that man again?"
He looked down at my mother on the ground in disgust, then turned to give the housekeeper an order.
"Shirley Lambert, throw a basin of cold water on the mistress in her doghouse. Tell her if she really wants to make noise, we'll toss her out for good."
A whole basin of ice water crashed down over my mother.
In the moonlight, her soaked body went still.
Only faint twitches were left, like a fish dying on land.
"Giles..."
My mother's hoarse, trembling voice pulled me back out of last night's nightmare.
"All these years, how you've treated me, you know it in your heart..."
There was a catch in her voice now, and tears shining at the corners of her eyes.
"I'll agree to any condition you want, anything but Nina. Just let me take her with me..."
My father raised an eyebrow and let out a disbelieving, mocking laugh.
"Samantha Henson, what makes you think you're in any position to bargain with me?"
His eyes went cold and hard as he gripped her chin.
"Don't think I don't know what's in your head! Talking about Nina, Nina, but really you just want to run off faster to that man of yours!"
"How did I never see before what a shameless thing you are?"
My father flung her hand away.
My mother hit the floor, her forehead splitting open into a bloody hole.
She lay there frozen, letting the blood run down into her hollow, empty eyes.
I knew then that her heart had died for good.
My nose stung, and I fought with everything I had.
Back when my father was in a car accident, they brought him to the hospital without a single unbroken inch of him left; even the doctors said there was no saving him.
It was my mother who locked herself in a room and endured three days and three nights of her bones breaking apart,
and only then dragged him back from the gates of death!
And that agony, my mother had to go through it again every few months.
I often thought that if my mother's ruined body took one more blow like that,
not even the system would be able to bring her back.
"It wasn't like that!"
I bit down hard on the bodyguard's wrist.
The instant the pain made him loosen his grip, I threw myself toward my mother like something gone wild.
As I passed Marjorie, my hand brushed her clothes by accident.
Just as I spread my arms in front of my mother and opened my mouth to speak,
Marjorie let out a scream and dropped to the floor.
"Ah! My baby!"
My father's face changed. He rushed over and swept her up into his arms.
"Marjorie! Are you all right?"
Marjorie's face crumpled, tears pouring down.
"Giles, it hurts so much. Nina pushed me. Our baby's going to be okay, isn't it?"
My mother turned her face away, and her scalding tears fell onto the back of my hand.
"Samantha Henson!"
My father's fury broke loose in an instant, his eyes going red.
"This is the fine daughter you raised! So young and already this vicious!"
He whipped his head around and roared at the housekeeper.
"Shirley! Lock her in her room and get an etiquette tutor in to teach her."
"The day she learns to respect her elders is the day you let her out of that room, and not a moment sooner!"
I burst into terrified sobs, screaming back at him.
"I won't! I want to leave with Mommy!"
"I don't want to stay here and get bullied by my stupid daddy and that awful aunt!"
Then my mother clutched her forehead and started to laugh like a madwoman.
She laughed until her shoulders shook, until tears spilled from her bloodred eyes.
"I knew it... I knew it!"
第2章
My mother shot to her feet.
"Now that you have her, you won't protect Nina!"
"Today it was one false accusation. What about later? How much more is my daughter supposed to suffer?"
"How am I making her suffer?"
The veins stood out on my father's forehead, and he ground the words out through his teeth.
"If she doesn't stay with me, she stays with you? So you can drain her luck dry too?"
My mother tilted her head, looking at the man she'd loved with her whole life as if she no longer knew him.
"If it weren't for you, I never would have gone bankrupt in the first place!"
"You like being toyed with by men anyway. I should never have thrown the whole company away to save you!"
A crack of thunder split the air.
Outside the window, lightning came without warning.
My mother lowered her head and laughed, but her face was full of pain.
"So it turns out..."
"This whole time, this is what you've thought of me..."
My father's throat bobbed, and he looked away from her, agitated.
The rain outside came down harder and harder, beating against the glass, just like that endless nightmare of a rainy night.
I was only five then.
My father's company had just gone public, and he was flush with pride at the party.
My mother stood beside him in a white dress, and everyone praised what a perfect match they made.
She took me to the restroom to change out of my stained dress, and on the way out we ran straight into a drunk fat man.
Steve Lambert.
He'd been staring at my mother the whole time with those sickening eyes.
Drunk and emboldened, Steve lunged at her, his pig-fat hands gripping her waist.
"Samantha Henson, right? That poor kid Giles Gilbert isn't good enough for you. Come with me. I know how to treat a woman better than he does..."
My mother screamed in terror and shoved at him with everything she had.
I threw myself at Steve, biting and kicking.
"Get off her! You little brat!"
Steve kicked me away, and my head slammed hard against the edge of the sink.
To save her, I gritted my teeth, dragged myself up, and stumbled back to the ballroom to find my father.
By the time he got there, Steve had my mother pinned to the wall, tearing at her clothes.
My father went mad in an instant, grabbing Steve's head and smashing it against the wall, again and again, until Steve ended up in the ICU.
To stay out of prison, my father paid out everything the family had.
In the end, the company went bankrupt.
For a while, we were so poor we could barely put food on the table.
My father went out driving a cab, and my mother stayed up nights doing piecework.
We were poor, but the three of us together were happy.
"Dad! The bathroom light's out! Come fix it!"
"Honey, we're out of salt. When you take out the trash later, remember to buy some."
"Nina! How did you do so badly on this one again? Your old man can't help you this time, so pray for yourself."
...
I always thought that simple, ordinary happiness would go on forever.
Until that night.
My mother spiked a high fever, and my father scooped her up and rushed her into a cab through the pouring rain.
In the car, delirious with fever, my mother murmured to herself.
"Giles, I'm sorry."
"I lied to you..."
My father lost focus for a second and nearly hit the car beside us.
Rain sheeted down the windshield.
The car was very quiet.
The wipers ticked out their steady rhythm.
"The truth is... I don't belong to this world. The system told me that as long as I finish my death-substitution tasks."
"I... can go home..."
In the rearview mirror, I saw the complicated look in my father's eyes, his breathing growing heavier and heavier.
I didn't understand any of it back then. I just bowed my head and held my mother's cold hand.
But some part of me felt, faintly, that something had changed.
Later he brought a blind fortune-teller to the house.
The man pointed at my mother and said,
"Mr. Gilbert, your wife's birth chart is drinking your blood. If you want to get rich, you'll have to send her out to the balcony to live with the animals, walk the animals' path!"
第3章
Mom was silent for a long time.
And then, so that Dad could pull himself back together, she actually nodded and agreed.
The next day she moved into the doghouse on the balcony.
In less than a year, Dad's company miraculously went public again, and he became the richest man in the city.
But he still made Mom sleep in the doghouse on the balcony.
Even though we had a housekeeper, he made Mom wash his shirts by hand,
and those shirts turned up with other women's lipstick on them, other women's earrings in the pockets.
When Mom finally meant to hold up an earring and confront him, she saw him stagger through the door dead drunk,
and she swallowed every last bit of it back down, turned around, and went to make him a hangover soup.
But whenever Mom lay in that doghouse writhing in pain, Dad just stood in the living room and watched, cold-eyed.
“Every time you get sick, my stock goes up.”
“You really have been draining my luck all along!”
He had no idea that was Mom taking the hits for him, the sabotage at the company, the car crashes, the terminal illnesses.
It was only later that I understood: that rainy night,
the two words Dad was supposed to hear, “death substitution,” had been blocked out by the system,
and only on the day Mom's mission was complete would Dad be allowed to know the truth——
One time, Mom had just finished a death-substitution mission and lay in the doghouse barely breathing,
and I sat beside her, my eyes red, and asked,
“Do you hate Dad?”
Her face was ghost-white. Her trembling hand brushed the stray hair off my forehead, and she smiled, softly.
“Nina, you're still little, you don't understand……”
“When you love someone, you'd give up your own life for them……”
Silly Mom——
The rain came down in sheets, and a crack of thunder seemed to snap Dad out of it.
He looked at Mom coldly:
“Weren't you worried Nina would suffer? Fine. Then you stay tonight and wait on Marjorie.”
“As long as Marjorie's happy, I won't lock Nina up.”
Dad glanced at his watch:
“The party starts in five hours. You'd better do exactly as you're told!”
Mom didn't argue. She said only two words:
“That's fine.”
Before the party started, Mom and I were shut in the room next to theirs.
For five whole hours, through the wall came Marjorie's exaggerated moaning and Dad's teasing laughter.
Mom covered my ears and stared blankly out the window.
At eight o'clock, the party began.
Marjorie wore a lavish couture gown, like the real lady of the house.
And Mom was forced into a waiter's uniform, a mask over her face, weaving a tray through the crowd.
“Oh my, Mr. Gilbert and Miss Simmons really are a match made in heaven!”
The guests flattered them.
Marjorie smiled, pleased with herself, then suddenly pointed at Mom in the corner:
“Frank Finch, I'm pregnant, I can't drink. Let my personal maid here drink for me.”
Frank was a lecherous old man, and his eyes crawled up and down over Mom.
“Sure! Let's see how well this maid knows her place.”
Mom's face gave nothing away as she drank down one glass of hard liquor after another.
In the old days, at drinking events, Dad would rather drink until his stomach bled than let Mom touch a single drop.
But now Dad sat with his arm around Marjorie, watching coldly as a ring of men crowded Mom for toasts.
One glass. Two. Three.
The hard liquor went down her throat, and Mom's face turned deathly pale, cold sweat rolling off her in big drops.
“Can she drink! Another one!”
Frank egged them on.
Dad's face went dark all at once. He crossed the room in long strides and snatched the glass out of Mom's hand.
“Enough! If she drinks herself dead here, who's going to wait on Marjorie?”
Mom shoved his hand away and let out a cold huff.
“You……”
Seeing this, Marjorie hurried over and slipped her arm through Dad's:
“Giles, don't be angry. Samantha must just be tired. Let me have someone help her up to a guest room to rest.”
Dad pinched Marjorie's cheek:
“You're the one who understands me.”
Mom took my hand and walked us out, unsteady on her feet.
At the corner, I looked back.
I saw Dad murmuring something to one of his bodyguards.
The bodyguard nodded again and again, then turned and left.
Then Dad's gaze crossed the crowd and found us,
and I don't know if it was just my eyes playing tricks,
but I really did think I saw, on Dad's face,
a trace of…… worry?
A roll of thunder——
The huge crack came down again,
and I shook my head.
I must have been seeing things.
Outside, the rain fell harder and harder, with no sign of stopping.
第4章
A waiter led us to a guest room on the ground floor.
The lights were off inside, and the air hung hot and thick, like a steamer.
"This one. Get in!"
The waiter shoved us in and slammed the door behind us.
Mom was burning up. She fell onto the bed and curled into herself in pain.
I fanned her with one hand and wiped the sweat off her face with my sleeve.
Sobbing, I said,
"Mom, let's run away."
"Somewhere far, far away, where Dad can never find us again."
A flash of ghostly lightning fell across the room, and I saw a complicated look on her face.
"Nina, soon. Mom's going to take you away from here very soon—"
Just then, the lock turned.
A heavy reek of cigar smoke and rank body odor drifted in.
"Long time no see, Samantha."
Wheezing hard, a man as fat as a pig squeezed through the door.
It was Steve Lambert!
The same Steve who years ago had almost raped Mom, and whom Dad had beaten into the ICU!
Every drop of blood in me ran cold.
Steve had two bodyguards with him, and he reached back and locked the door.
"Get out!"
I grabbed the ashtray off the table and hurled it at him.
He tilted his head and dodged it, his eyes fixed on Mom on the bed with sick intent.
"Dodging what? Your husband handed you to me for a night to keep me happy. What's with the act?"
My head exploded.
I remembered how Dad had leaned in to speak with the bodyguards just now.
It was Dad!
The taste of blood spread through my mouth.
"You animal!"
Mom struggled up, snatched a hairpin, and pressed it to her own throat.
"Don't come near me!"
Steve wasn't scared at all. He gave a twisted grin and waved a hand.
The two bodyguards rushed forward and pinned me down.
"Let go of my daughter!"
Mom's scream tore out of her.
"Samantha, show me those skills you use to please Giles!"
"Or you can stay and collect your daughter's body!"
At that, one of the bodyguards clamped his hand hard around my throat.
I couldn't breathe. A choked, rasping sound scraped out of my throat.
Mom set down the hairpin like someone accepting her fate.
Steve roared with laughter and lunged at her like a starving tiger onto prey.
Mom shut her eyes in despair, two lines of tears running from the corners.
"Death-substitution task at one hundred percent. Host's vital signs are fading."
"Final ten-second countdown. Preparing to leave this world."
"Ten, nine, eight…"
I heard the system's voice—
Strength left me and I sank to the floor, tears running into my mouth,
salty, but my heart was sweet—
Mom would never again endure this hell for anyone's sake,
Mom was finally,
free—
Steve suddenly stopped, wiped his face with disgust:
"The hell, why is she so cold?"
He slapped Mom's cheek:
"Bitch, quit playing dead!"
Mom didn't respond.
Her body had gone icy, her chest still.
Steve reached out and warily checked her nose and mouth for breath.
"She's dead!"
Steve and the two bodyguards scrambled out of the room over each other—
In the banquet hall, Giles's hand jerked, and the glass shattered on the floor.
"You're telling me Steve Lambert slipped in through the back door with two bodyguards?"
"Giles, what's wrong?"
Giles's other hand shot out and clamped down on Marjorie's wrist.
"Where is Samantha?"
Marjorie forced herself to stay calm, but her face only stiffened more.
"Samantha's in 306, of course…"
Giles didn't move.
If he couldn't see through acting this clumsy from Marjorie,
then his decades in business had been for nothing.
An instant later, Giles seized Marjorie's face hard.
"I'll ask you one last time! Where is Samantha?"
Marjorie went completely blank, her voice dropping.
"Samantha… she's, she's in the room at the very back of the ground floor."
The next second, Giles bolted for the ground floor without hesitation—
By the time Dad got there,
I was pulling clothes back over Mom's bare upper body—
Dad's eyes were bloodshot, his whole body shaking with rage, as if he'd swallow Steve alive the next second.
"Who did this! Was it that animal Steve!"