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!"
outside devoured any trace of light, leaving their car in the darkness, save for the occasional flash of headlights that flickered before Vivienne's eyes. Percival, with lips pressed together and eyes
to crawl
she said, "Mr. Wolf, trust me, I will heal your aunt." Percival's grim expression softened slightly.
bubbling up inside him toward Gavin and the entire
for her status as the Ellington heiress, she would be placed in an unknown
even he couldn't suppress the rising bile in
that foul stench lingering
was Holly's withered body, wounds festering
moment, Percival felt a murderous
agony he felt for Holly and the hatred
deeper into Vivienne's stomach, his
chill flashed in her eyes. "Mr. Wolf,
couldn't recall the last time he had seen such
was formidable, but was
just hand their life over to the Grim Reaper without her
and he glanced at the caller
"Hand it over."
passed the phone to
tinged with
Vivienne didn't need to guess;
ashes and are threatening that if we don't hand over the secret recipe within three days, they'll scatter her parents' ashes to the
as she inhaled deeply. "How is
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