Chapter 72
Sebastian didn't know how significant the pendant was to Daphne.
"I still have to thank you, Sebastian," she said, her head slightly lowered, her long lashes fluttering. "The one million dollars you spent at the auction—I'll repay you."
She paused before speaking softly, "This pendant was a gift from my grandmother when I was accepted into university. It holds immense sentimental value for me. If it had fallen into someone else's hands, I'd regret it for the rest of my life. Wilson knew how important it was to me, yet he still used it to teach me a lesson for Yvonne's sake." Sebastian froze for a moment, as though he was truly grasping the depth of Daphne's sorrow for the first time.
Reaching out, he gently ruffled her hair. "Helping you recover something so precious is my way of doing good deeds. Don't you think, Ms. Yeager? Besides, seeing Wilson suffer is"
Daphne's sadness evaporated instantly. She looked up at Sebastian with bright, clear eyes.
Sebastian gazed back at her softly, and for a moment, it felt as though time had stopped. How gentle. How beautiful.
On her way back, Daphne ran into Yvonne clinging to Wilson as they walked toward the parking lot. The humiliation and anger from earlier came flooding back the moment she saw them. Without hesitation, she quickened her pace and caught up.
"Wilson Farrell! Stop right there!"
She grabbed Wilson's arm and, the moment he turned around in confusion, delivered a resounding slap across his face. The sharp crack of the slap drew the attention of nearby passersby.
Yvonne gasped in shock. "Daphne, what are you doing?"
Daphne's chest heaved with anger as she glared at Wilson. "Wilson, the dead deserve respect. How would you feel if someone auctioned off keepsakes left by your parents after they passed? Are you a beast? Were you raised without a shred of decency?"
When Daphne's grandmother passed away, she and Wilson were already dating. Her grandmother had often praised Wilson as a good man, even entrusting him with the task of taking care of Daphne after her death. If her grandmother knew that Wilson had used her keepsake to humiliate Daphne in such a public setting, she would regret every word she had spoken. Daphne's voice was wrathful as she shouted, her gaze toward Wilson filled with a hatred so intense it seemed she could peel the flesh from his bones. "If you pull something like this again, I'll take you down with me!"
With that, she stormed back to her room, exhausted, to remove her makeup and rest. But before she could catch her breath, her phone rang.
Before Daphne could say anything, Zoey's anxious, tearful voice came through. "Daphne, have you seen it? They're dragging us through the mud." Frowning, Daphne opened her social media account.
Trending at the top were negative topics like "Daphne Instructed Her Stylist Sister to Sabotage Yvonne," and "Yvonne's Counterfeit Gown." All the positive buzz about Daphne from earlier in the day had mysteriously vanished. Clicking on one of the topics, Daphne saw a video of Yvonne being interviewed.
"Zoey's Studio Faces Bankruptcy."
A reporter asked, "Ms. Smith, why did you wear a knockoff gown? Don't you think it'll set a bad example and is a show of disrespect to copyrighted works?" Tearfully, Yvonne replied, "The gown was provided by Zoey's styling studio. I didn't know it was fake. If I had known, I wouldn't have worn it, even if it meant skipping the red" (The sentence cuts off abruptly).
Numerous spelling and grammatical errors have been corrected. Sentence structure has been improved for clarity and flow. Paragraphing has been adjusted. Some ambiguous phrasing has been clarified. The final sentence is incomplete in the original text and remains so here, as the original provides no resolution.