Natalie nodded. "Yeah. Seeing them like this makes me pretty happy. Mr. Scott and Joanna teamed up to plot against me, so consider this payback."

Hearing Natalie's words, Nathan's eyes darkened with a cold fury. It was all her fault. "Natalie, this is all because of you! If you hadn't come back, how could our family have fallen apart like this? It's your fault I've lost everything!"

He was agitated and consumed by rage. The hatred in his heart swept through him like a violent hurricane, his bloodshot eyes bulging with intensity.

He blamed everything entirely on Natalie.

Ever since Natalie woke up at Joanna's banquet, everything had changed.

She was no longer easy to control.

He had been played by Wendy without even realizing it.

Natalie thought he looked like he was about to pass out from anger.

Natalie smiled. "Mr. Scott, I'm not trying to kick you while you're down, but don't forget that you were the one who brought me back. You threw me away in the countryside and only dragged me back when you needed me. How does that make any of this my fault?"

"Do you even remember your real motives for bringing me back?"

He was just a pathetic clown who spent all his time scheming for other people's wealth, hoping to get something for nothing. How dared he try to shift all the blame onto her?

At that thought, a sudden realization hit Nathan. "No, wait. I brought you back because Mr. and Mrs. Griffith Sr. approached me beforehand. They told me that Joanna wasn't a true Scott, and that the girl Sebastian was supposed to marry had be the legitimate daughter of the Scott family. I have no idea how those two old fools found out the truth. So I had no choice but to bring you back, because they had gotten their hands on a DNA test between Joanna and Wendy, proving they had no biological connection. If it wasn't for that DNA test, why on earth would I have ever bothered tracking you down?"

Hearing this, Natalie suddenly felt glad she had come.

If she hadn't shown up, she would never have known the true sequence of events.

Why did Mr. and Mrs. Griffith Sr. know that Joanna and Wendy weren't related?

Natalie was confused. "How did the two of them know about that?"

How was Nathan supposed to know how those old busybodies found out?

It must have been during all those dinners and drinks with Sebastian that the secret slipped out.

"Wait, I remember now," Nathan

muttered. "One night after a Griffith

family banquet, I got incredibly drunk The very next day. Mr. Griffith Šr came to me with that demand. was backed into a corner, sod had to find you."

fet

"I didn't think much of it at the time, but looking back, it is incredibly strange. After I brought you back and Mr. Griffith Swatched you and Sebastian get your marriage license, he immediately went abroad and hasn't been back since."

Natalie narrowed her eyes. So, what was the dark secret hiding behind all this?

She had always felt like her grandfather was hiding something from her.

But what could it possibly be?

Thinking back on his recent behavior, he had seemed perfectly normal. There hadn't been any red flags.

This year's blizzards were especially fierce. Being stranded abroad and spending the holidays with Mr. Griffith Sr. was a perfectly reasonable excuse.

When her grandfather first found out she was going to marry Sebastian, he had investigated the Griffith family, so it wasn't surprising that the two older men knew each other.

Natalie's head spun. Why did she suddenly feel like she was just another pawn on

someone else's chessboard?