Chapter 753 The Daughter She Couldn’t Face
Parked by the roadside was indeed a Porsche.
“It must be Carl!”
Lily’s eyes reddened with hope. She deliberately let the scars on the back of her hand show, walking carefully toward the car as if timid and fragile. She wanted, in the instant she opened that door, for Carl to see how she had changed through the years, to pity her. After all, wasn’t that the same trick Yunice once used to win Carl’s support?
But when she opened the door, she froze.
“You… you’re not from Carl?”
Sitting in the driver’s seat was Scarface.
She instantly recoiled, springing backward like a startled animal. This was Wyatt’s man–and by extension, Yunice’s.
“Madam Moore, please get in the car. We’ll be taking you back to the Moore estate. You can spend the rest of your years there.”
Back to that barren, distant ancestral home in the middle of nowhere?
Or was this just an excuse to lock her away and torment her?
Her good daughter Yunice would never let her live comfortably.
Prison had ground down Lily’s arrogance. She now wore a mask of meekness, a cloying smile on her lips as she nodded quickly. “Alright, thank you, thank you.” She looked like an ordinary, submissive middle-aged woman resigned to fate.
But the moment she reached the car, her pretense cracked. She snatched up the tissue box on the seat, hurled it at Scarface’s face, and bolted like a slippery eel.
Her run was graceless–gray hair flying, old shoes stumbling on the uneven dirt road. She nearly twisted her ankle more than once but never stopped.
Scarface only sneered. He started the car, rolling along behind her at an unhurried pace while making a call.
“Ms. Yunice, just as you predicted–Lily’s running straight toward the psychiatric hospital.”
Yunice’s voice was calm as she worked. “She only has that one precious daughter. With no rich man to save her, of course she’ll look for someone else to cling to.”
She lifted her lips in a cold half-smile. “Let her go see. She never once came to visit me there. Let her learn firsthand what life inside is really like.”
“Understood.”
The psychiatric hospital was even bleaker than Lily imagined.
High fences topped with barbed wire, walls mottled and peeling, the air heavy with the stink of disinfectant failing to mask the reek of rot and urine.
Holding her breath, Lily followed the dim corridor, asking questions until she found the wing where Elsie was kept.
Before she even reached it, she heard the shrill wailing and harsh curses.
“Filthy slut! You pissed yourself again! Are you an animal? Can’t be taught, is that it?”
A burly female orderly yanked a frail woman up by the hair, dragging her from the wet floor and slamming her into the wall.
The woman wore a filthy, oversized striped hospital uniform, her body covered in filth, hair clumped and greasy. Her face was so dirty her features were unrecognizable.
She cowered like a beaten dog, trembling, whimpering incoherently.
Lily stopped cold, her stomach twisting violently.
She raised a hand to cover her nose and mouth, disgust flashing plainly in her eyes.
Was this the daughter she once pinned all her hopes on?
This foul, broken thing?
Just then, a male orderly sidled close, pretending to help restrain her. His leering eyes and practiced hands groped the woman shamelessly, making her shriek in terror. The female orderly only struck harder, her curses growing louder, while the man’s hands grew filthier.
Lily’s face went pale–not with sorrow, but with a raw sense of shame, as if she herself had been soiled.
Every instinct screamed to turn and flee.
“You! Who are you here for?” the female orderly barked, finally noticing her. Suspicion hardened her eyes as she sized up the well-dressed stranger.
Lily jolted, forcing a strained, nervous smile. “Ah–sorry, I… I must have taken the wrong turn. Just passing through. Just passing through.”
She edged back, desperate to put distance between herself and the filth.
But just as she turned-
The huddled, broken woman suddenly snapped her head up. Her clouded eyes locked onto Lily with startling clarity. With a surge of strength, she tore free from the orderlies and hurled herself against the iron bars, skeletal hands clawing desperately toward Lily.
“Mom! Mom, save me! Get me out! I’m Elsie, Mom!!”
Her scream was raw and piercing, carrying every shred of despair she had left. It tore through the hospital’s heavy air.
Lily’s body froze. For an instant, she stood motionless. Then, like a person chased by ghosts, she bolted. Her footsteps quickened to a frantic run as she fled that suffocating corridor, fled that unbearable cry.