Chapter 24
To show that she didn’t favor either of them, Beatrice, with a loving smile on her face, took an antique emerald bracelet from another box and solemnly put it on Rhea’s wrist.
Acting like any other loving mother, she said to Rhea seriously, “Rhea, hear me when I say this. The reason why Dale and I didn’t throw you a homecoming party isn’t that we are embarrassed by you. We do everything for your own good. You’re our daughter, and I hope you can understand this.”
“This emerald bracelet belongs to your great–great–great–grandmother. It’s almost 200 years old, the only heirloom in our family. I’m giving it to you today as your welcome gift. Take good care of it, will you?”
Rhea pulled a fake smile. “Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.”
Mabel almost burst out laughing at the sight of the dark green emerald bracelet.
Although many things had changed, certain things were meant to be. Today wasn’t about welcoming Rhea back, but Beatrice gave her the bracelet anyway just like she had done in Mabel’s previous life.
The bracelet reminded Mabel of the first time she was framed by Rhea in public in her previous life.
For Beatrice, the bracelet was a significant heirloom of the Harper family, but in Rhea’s eyes, it was nothing but an old bracelet that had been worn by a dead woman.
Rhea acted so moved by the precious bracelet given by Beatrice. In fact, since it wasn’t quite valuable, far from the price of the gift she had wanted, she disdained it a lot.
So, she came up with a vicious scheme. She slipped the bracelet into Mabel’s bag and then panicked at the party that she had lost it.
Everyone looked around but found nothing. She cried pitifully in front of everyone, saying that the bracelet was a precious gift Dale and Beatrice had given her, and now that she had lost it, she didn’t deserve to be a Harper. She ought to leave the Harper family and go back to where she belonged.
To appease her, Dale and Beatrice held her in their arms, saying the bracelet was nothing important at all, and they’d buy her another gift.
Still crying, Rhea said the bracelet was so precious that no other gift could be a match.
To cheer her up, they ordered her a gift online worth hundreds of thousands of dollars right away. Only then did she stop crying her eyes.
After receiving the expensive gift, she bribed a waiter to knock over Mabel’s bag. The heirloom bracelet fell out of Mabel’s bag in plain sight.
What happened after that seemed only natural. No matter how hard Mabel tried to defend herself, it was in vain.
Rhea got a valuable gift worth hundreds of thousands of dollars as she wished while ruining Mabel’s reputation and image at the same time. It was killing two birds with one stone.
But today, Mabel wouldn’t let history repeat itself.
Rhea received the bracelet after Mabel had the precious earrings As Rhea looked at the old bracelet on her wrist, the disdainful look on her face was more than obvious.
In Beatrice’s mind, she treated both daughters equally; now Mabel had the valuable gift, and Rhea’s had significant meaning. Little did she know Rhea was already full of discontent and anger
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In truth, Dale and Beatrice had bought her clothes and jewelry worth millions of dollars during this period of time, which was way more valuable than Mabel’s earrings.
But Rhea had always been greedy. She was pissed off at the thought that Beatrice had given Mabel a gift worth over 6 million dollars in front of so many people, and all she had was a crappy bracelet, and her expression practically gave her
away.
Beatrice couldn’t help but notice the look on Rhea’s face and frowned slightly. “What’s wrong, Rhea? Don’t you like it?”
The same idea shot into Rhea’s mind; she planned on accusing Mabel of stealing again.
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She immediately smiled gently, “I love it, Mom. Anything from you and Dad is a treasure to me. The bracelet means a lot to our family, and I absolutely love it. I’ll cherish it so much.”
བ ཅ ཇཎྜ་འཇཆ་ཆ་ཇ་ཞོན་བོ་༐་ཕོ་བོ་ž་ཏྲྰཾ༽སྐྲུ
Hearing this, Mabel couldn’t help but sneer, thinking, ‘Yeah, Rhea. This is exactly what you said in my previous life.’
After the incident died down, the party continued.
Dale went to a group of old men to talk about national affairs. He spoke eloquently about the situation of the war in various countries and expressed his “profound” views on the war situation.
Meanwhile, Beatrice chatted with several rich ladies. Tonight’s party impressed everyone, and they began to ask Beatrice if the Harper family had recently found some new way to make money. After all, she spent millions of dollars without any hesitation at all, which made them more or less jealous.
Beatrice got gradually carried away among the praises. “I don’t know about that. After all, Dale is the breadwinner. I never
need to worry about money…”
On the other side, Rhea wanted to hit on Matthew again. She figured that now that she had got Aileen’s support, the hateful bitch Mabel wouldn’t have the guts to give her a hard time.
However, Matthew no longer gave a damn about her. At the sight of several talented young men around Mabel, he was almost like a cat on hot bricks.
Tonight, Mabel was simply dazzling. Attracted by her, they were almost obsessed, each wanting to chat her up.
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Matthew found them cheeky and annoying. Having the feeling that something that belonged to him was being coveted, he walked over indignantly, wanting to keep Mabel from them.
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He reached out, trying to grab Mabel’s hand. “Mabel, my mom’s here today to celebrate your birthday. Why don’t you come over and say hi to her?”
Mabel had always been respectful of Aileen. She accepted being bossed around by Aileen, for fear of leaving a bad impression on her future mother–in–law.
Yet today, to Matthew’s surprise, she shook off his hand resolutely. “Stay away from me.”
He was stunned for a few seconds, thinking, ‘I’m Mabel’s fiancé–to–be. I can let go that she threw a tantrum at me privately a few days ago, but how could she embarrass me in front of so many people?‘
After collecting himself, he said, “What are you talking about, Mabel? Even though you’re throwing a tantrum, enough is enough. We’re about to get engaged, OK? Don’t you want to marry into my family anymore?”
Mabel sneered, saying nothing.
The men around her voluntarily spoke up for her.
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“Matthew, it was you who swaggered around with Rhea in your arms, right? You’re cheeky enough to show up in front of Mabel.”
“Indeed. If I hadn’t known, I might have thought Rhea is your fiancée.”
“You want to be a two–timer? Get a mirror and look at yourself, OK?”
“We’re here the whole time, Mrs. Preston wanted to set you up with Rhea, and it seemed you wanted the same thing. And now, you want Mabel again? Gee! You’ve got no shame.”
Hearing their words, Mabel was secretly satisfied.
She knew exactly that they took her side because of her pretty face, but at least compared to Matthew, they had much higher moral standards.
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