"Send Master after them?" Penny repeated, turning slowly toward her mother and mother-in-law with a gentle smile.
"But my husband was only protecting me from harm," she added sweetly, her voice soft and innocent like a child's. But behind that softness... was steel.
"Is it now a crime to defend yourself?" The lawyers all shook their heads in disagreement.
They had played her for too long. It was time to return the favor.
"You ungrateful brat!" Maybelline snapped. "How can you say that to your own mother?"
"I carried you for ten months after you ruined my life! I fed you until you got fat, and this is how you repay me? Disrespect? Disobedience?"
She spat the words like venom. "This is why I will always choose your sister over you. I will never love you. No matter what you do."
Penny didn't flinch. Not anymore. There was a time when her mother's cruel words left her crying in the dark, hiding in her room, wondering what she did wrong.
But that girl was gone.
