THE DISABLED HEIRESS, MY EX-HUSBAND WOULD PAY DEARLY.-Chapter 320
Upon hearing what Victoria just said, and still she doesn't look like someone who understands what was going on, made her father's jaw clenched. His hands trembled slightly as he lifted his tear-stained face toward her. The frustration and desperation in his eyes were enough to silence even the air around them. Then, in a voice louder and more desperate than before, he shouted, "Victoria! Go down on your knees immediately! Please, listen to me for once in your life!"
Victoria's legs trembled as if the floor itself had betrayed her; the tremor started low in her knees and climbed until it threatened to spill out of her spine. For a dizzy moment she was split into two contradictory selves: one small, sensible part whispering that she should obey her father that she should drop to her knees and swallow whatever pride she had left, and another louder, hotter part that hissed don't humiliate yourself in front of Benedict, don't let him see you bowed and broken. The air in the room had tightened into a cord around her throat; she could hear the rustle of fabric, the silence of maids frozen at the edges of the doorway, the faint labored tick of a grandfather clock in the hall. She opened her mouth and no sound came out.
However before she could decide which version of herself to feed, Benedict stepped forward like a line drawn through the room. His voice cracked the hush; it was low, dangerous with a gentleman's irritation that had teeth. " I'm sorry but I will be distancing myself from all of this, because I'm not going to allow it," he said, and the firmness in his tone pulled the scattered threads of attention in the room straight toward him. He had watched—he had seen the way the servants flinched, the way Oliver's hand had steadied, the way Lisa moved like a coiled thing ready to spring.
"This is bullying, a very clear bull," he spat, pinpointing Oliver and Lisa with the quiet accuracy of someone who doesn't waste breath on theatrics. "Thugs. That's what they are. How dare they come into your home, into your family's living room, and force you into some cheap display?"
Immediately Benedict's jaw worked; beneath the cultivated calm there was something corrosive, protectiveness that could be civil or volcanic. He straightened, his palms clenched at his sides, and his next words landed like a challenge thrown down on polished wood. "Now that I'm here, you have nothing to worry about, you will stand up," he said, and every syllable was a command dressed as courtesy. "We will settle this properly. I will not watch my in-law—to-be be humiliated in her own house." He turned, briefly, to Victoria, and the worry that had been furrowing his brow softened into fierce resolve. The room seemed to exhale together.
Those watching uncle, father, servants felt the climate shift. The small, performative power of the intruders wilted under Benedict's steady, uncompromising air; even the men who had stormed in earlier looked suddenly smaller, as if presence and posture mattered more than numbers. Benedict's voice gathered steam. "They've caused enough shame. They will answer for this."
Without wasting another moment he took a single step forward, closing distance with the elegant certainty of a man who had never mistaken intimidation for authority. "They are not going to walk away from this unpunished. This embarrassment, this disrespect that they just showed, they are going to pay severely for it."
At that moment the air in the room changed — thickened with tension when Benedict finally spoke. His words landed like a dare, and the look on his face was calm enough to be more terrifying than any shout. Victoria's father the man who had until now held himself like granite actually visibly shook his head, the disappointment etched so deep it made the room feel smaller. Mr. Jackson's composure snapped like a brittle branch.
He didn't pause to choose his next words; he ripped them out. "Benedict," he barked, voice raw with fury and something like fear, "keep your mouth shut." The sentence was an order sharpened into a blade. He stepped forward, anger coiling in him, and the threat tumbled out hot and blunt: if Jackson dared to rise from that posture and pounce, he would be torn apart devoured, shredded the kind of violent image meant not just to warn but to terrify. "Get out of my house," Mr. Jackson thundered. "Now." The old man's face was flushed; every vein stood out in his neck as though he might explode from the intensity of it.
Hearing what Victoria father just said, Benedict, unruffled, didn't even let the words land. He drank in the moment, small smile playing at the corner of his mouth like a gambler calling someone's bluff. The defiance in his tone had no heat but carried a cold confidence. "It seems," he said, slow and deliberate as if lecturing a child, "you must have been threatened with something truly formidable for you to be kneeling like this, and you're still defending them. But don't worry. Don't worry at all." He folded his arms with casual arrogance, eyes bright, lips barely moving.
And then Benedict dropped the name that made the room tilt: "My uncle is a assistant chief persecutor. My brother is also a persecutor," he offered, letting each title settle into the silence like a hammer. He didn't bother to explain what.
The implication hung there heavy: power, reach, men who moved behind the scenes. "And they're not just an ordinary persecutor," he added, almost amused, "they are very, very high-ranking officers." His voice was flat but absolutely certain, the kind of certainty that couldn't be bargained with.
Without wasting another moment he leaned in as if confiding something small and personal, though everyone in the room felt the weight of the words like a challenge. "And yeah," Benedict finished, the corner of his mouth lifting, "this is going to be handled amicably.
Just trust me on this."
