It Should Have Been Like This (The Revised Version)

Chapter 71: A Promise to Keep

ELEVEN YEARS AGO

I walked into the living room, and my mother's gaze immediately shifted from her laptop to me. Her lips curved downward into a deep frown, and her eyes narrowed with a palpable sense of displeasure upon seeing me. This had been her typical reaction to my presence for weeks, ever since I had proposed to Lavender. Mother had always been adamantly against my decision to reclaim what my maternal great-grandmother, her own grandmother, had lost to the greedy Wester D. McCabe, but she had never actively tried to stop me. That is, until I had introduced her to the granddaughter of the very man who had taken everything from her family.

My mother, just like the rest of her family, firmly believed that it was a waste of time to pursue what Granny Lily had cherished the most. My great-grandmother had been the favored one among our relatives—old, yet remarkably agile, and undoubtedly the kindest person I had ever known, even more so than my own mother.

Granny Lily had originally been an orphan who had grown up on the streets, but through her own sweat and blood, she had created a legacy for herself, a small company that had been the life's work she had poured her heart and soul into. That legacy, however, had been cruelly snatched away by the man she had once trusted the most, the man she had loved the most—Wester D. McCabe.

He had taken everything from her, leaving her with nothing. It was only a few years later that she met and married her husband, but even then, she had never made any attempt to reclaim what had rightfully been hers, a decision that had become her biggest regret. Granny Lily had confessed that the reason she had never tried was because, regardless of the family she had married into, they had been no match for the man who had taken everything away from her—until my own parents had wed. However, my mother had steadfastly retained her decision to never get involved in the matters of the past, believing that we were better off without dredging up those unrelated memories.

Granny Lily had agreed to that notion, but she had held onto that lingering regret and had made me promise to free her from it. I couldn't simply destroy the company, as that would have been the easier path. Instead, the promise she had asked me to make was to get back everything from that family and reduce them to nothing. The company would then be a gift to my second or third child, she had said—a fitting legacy for my second child with Peyton, once we had concluded this charade and I could finally have her as my wife.

"Good evening, Mom," I greeted, offering her a warm smile, hoping to ease the palpable tension in the room. However, her gaze remained firmly fixed on the laptop screen, completely ignoring my presence.

I sighed heavily, dropping my phone on the couch next to hers before approaching her. "Mom, how long will you keep this up? How long will you continue to ignore me?"

My mother's response was cold and devoid of any warmth. "For as long as you remain keen on your decision to ruin your life, and that of that poor girl," she said, her eyes void of the usual emotions that I was so accustomed to seeing. Witnessing my mother in this uncharacteristic state filled me with a deep sense of agitation, for she was the most priceless person in my life. Yet, I was torn between her happiness and the happiness of the woman I had come to love, Peyton.

I loved my mother dearly, but my heart had also been captured by Peyton. If this had been before, when Peyton had not asked me for something from Lavender, I might have considered listening to my mother's pleas. But now, I could not bring myself to do so. If I were to quit now, how then would I be able to fulfill Peyton's request? Lavender, in my eyes, was a foolish woman, blinded by her desperate desire to be loved by her father. Although she was the CEO of her mother's company, she had given full ownership of that legacy to her father and stepmother. Most of the income she made went directly to them, and I doubted she was even aware that her name was not written in his will. Even if she did know, I suspected that this docile and desperate woman would simply accept it as a testament to her father's love.

I would have felt bad for Lavender if she had at least possessed a modicum of intelligence. But alas, she was painfully dense, mere inches away from requiring psychiatric institutionalization. What other woman would so readily accept her boyfriend's closeness to another woman? At some point, Peyton and I had stopped even putting in the effort to deceive her about the true nature of our relationship. She would believe anything we told her, as long as the words came from our lips.

Such beauty and kindness, wasted on a fool like her. I shook my head, trying to regain my focus and concentrate on the task at hand—convincing my mother to see reason.

I looked at my mother as she continued to ignore me, biting into a passion fruit as she stared venomously at the laptop screen. "Are you seriously going to keep ignoring me because of that dumb woman?" I asked, feeling the irritation rising in my chest.

"That's precisely what I'm going to do," she replied, her voice laced with disdain.

"Mom, she's not worth it!" I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in frustration. "She's just a foolish, mentally deranged woman with daddy issues! She's so stupid that she doesn't even realize how much her friends love and adore her, especially that good-for-nothing Ferris she can't stop thinking about. Only a fool would decide to date her best friend for a trial run, only to lose her virginity to him instead of her real first boyfriend…" I laughed bitterly, the memory of her pathetic confession replaying in my mind.

I believed that I was her first. She had been reluctant when it came to intimacy, and she had never admitted to being physically involved with anyone before. Her feeble excuse was that sex had always been a boring, painful experience for her, and that was the reason her previous relationship had ended. She had been afraid the same would happen with me.

"If you were just going to regret it, why did you go through with it in the first place?!" I exclaimed, my frustration boiling over. "And I refuse to accept that he was her first, by the way. I am her true first, not him. I am far more important to her than he could ever hope to be. Just look at her—she abandoned him simply because I demanded it. She chose me over everyone else, so it is my prerogative to decide who was her first and who was not!" I shouted, pulling at my hair in a fit of anger and resentment. Everything about her was utterly infuriating, causing my blood to burn with rage.

She had claimed that her friendship with Ferris was unbreakable, yet she had betrayed him countless times to be with me. And when forced to choose between our relationship and that friendship, she had chosen me. Why would she do that? She should have chosen him. She should have left me. And maybe then… I… she would have been safe from my clutches. That had been her last chance to escape, her final opportunity to free herself from me.