Chapter 878
878:
“Cut the act,” Brenna said sharply. “The second you kicked me out of the family, I stopped being your daughter. I’m part of the Harper family now.” She looked him directly in the eye. “Isabella is your daughter. I heard she’s gotten rich these days.”
She knew Alec’s sudden friendliness wasn’t a good thing. He clearly had ulterior motives.
Alec carried a faint smile, wearing an expression that seemed worlds apart from his old, arrogant self.
Once, he had believed that turning an obscure factory into a public company proved his brilliance. Refusing to accept that he had fallen from the upper crust to society’s lowest rungs, he continued to talk down to others with the same arrogance he had wielded as CEO of Barrett Group after the company went bankrupt. However, the elites now barely acknowledged him, viewing him as if he were a beggar.
He couldn’t accept this dramatic shift in his status and felt the world owed him something. Every time he looked for work, he aimed straight for executive positions, asking for millions in annual salary right off the bat. Of course, the only thing he collected was rejection.
Recruiters often sneered, “At your age, you’d even have trouble landing a security job. Maybe try your luck as a doorman.”
At home, Lila and her son grew colder toward him, their words stinging more than before. Only then did Alec feel the full weight of hardship.
In an effort to keep a roof over his head, he signed up to drive for Uber. He found himself drained by the end of each day, but at least his earnings kept the household afloat. He had been doing this for a month, and during this time, his passengers ranged from polished executives to exhausted office workers. Sometimes, he even picked up rural patients heading to the city for treatment. For the first time, he truly witnessed how the working class struggled to get by.
Eventually, a sense of acceptance began to settle over him. He no longer fought against his new place in society.
Meeting Brenna again, Alec realized what she must have gone through growing up with the Barretts.
“Brenna, you might still hold a grudge against me, but I am your father. I know I did wrong. I refused to let you go to school and confined you just to make you design for the Barrett Group. Everything was my fault. I acted like a monster!” Tears welled up in his eyes.
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Alec slapped his own cheeks over and over again, his actions startling the staff inside the store. Brenna stood frozen, taken aback. Never had she imagined Alec would come clean about his cruelty, let alone slap himself in public.
“Yeah, you acted like a monster,” Brenna said, feeling old pain stir within her, especially the memory of being used as the family’s cash cow ever since the adoption. No one in the Barrett family had ever truly welcomed her as family.
“I was never fit to call myself human.” Alec slapped his cheek once more. “Brenna, let go of your anger. I am paying for my mistakes now. No one respects me. Every day, I hear nothing but insults. I can’t even land a job. My own children avoid me. I finally see just how wrong I have been. Please, allow me a chance to set things right.”
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