Leopold and Matthew had just finished loading the Abernathy family into the van, including Cormac, when the stench inside hit them like a wave, almost driving them back out the door. But seeing Vivienne and the others frozen by the bedside, Leopold steeled himself and stepped inside.
The woman on the bed was a shadow of her former self, her hair tangled and matted like weeds upon the pillow. Her face was streaked with dirt, and it looked like the Abernathys hadn't bothered to clean her in ages. If it weren't for the faint rise and fall of her chest, Leopold might have mistaken her for a corpse.
Wait a minute!
Those features...
How come she looked a bit like Percival?
Realizing this, Leopold's pupils dilated, his finger pointing shakily at the woman on the bed.
Then he glanced at Percival, whose stony face was unreadable, and noticed the air around him growing colder and heavier. Leopold took a step back, feeling as if his throat had been seized. He couldn't manage to utter a complete sentence.
Finally, it was Vivienne who broke the silence. "Mr. Wolf, let's get her out of here first."
She was genuinely shocked. They had only come to fetch a witness back to Rivenwood, and here they were, stumbling upon the very person Percival had spent years searching for.
Mr. Wolf's aunt, the Ellington heiress-Holly Ellington!
"Gavin Abernathy!"
the occasional flash of headlights that flickered
to crawl
in the pitch-black setting, yet Vivienne heaved a sigh of relief as she said, "Mr. Wolf, trust me, I will heal your aunt." Percival's grim expression softened slightly. He shifted, leaning his head against Vivienne's shoulder.
couldn't control the hatred bubbling up inside
the Ellington heiress, she would be placed in an unknown hospital with professional care to at
even he couldn't suppress the rising bile in his
where that foul stench
stained blanket was Holly's withered body, wounds festering and crawling
that moment, Percival felt a
still useful. But the agony he felt for Holly and the hatred for
into Vivienne's stomach, his clenched eyes
warmth through the thin fabric, Vivienne swallowed hard, her hand gently caressing his hair as a chill flashed in her eyes. "Mr. Wolf, the dead do
the last time he had seen such a chilling expression on
ancient warrior lineage was formidable, but was Vivienne
cared about, they couldn't just hand their life over to
at the caller ID
"Hand it over."
the phone to
Draven's voice, cool yet tinged with anger, came through,
has the Abernathy family done now?" Vivienne didn't need to guess; she knew
and are threatening that if we don't hand over
as she
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