Falling For My Ex's Uncle - Chapter 245: Chapter 245

I shook my head with a smile.
There was no way Alex cared about my feelings.
If he truly did, he wouldn't have forced me to apologize to Helena without even considering the truth.
Of course, I wasn't completely blameless either.
I never should have let her in. If I hadn't, none of this would have happened today.
Sophina lowered her gaze, biting her lip gently. Her eyes held a trace of sadness as she wrapped her arms around me as if trying to shield me from reality.
But we both understood the truth.
Alex didn't care about me. He cared about Helena. That was why he kept siding with her, again and again.
Even after she had deceived him, he still chose to forgive her, believing she had her reasons.
"Laurel, if she ever comes here again, I'll kick her out myself," Sophina said, still fuming.
She despised women like Helena—those who knew a man was married yet shamelessly clung to him.
In her mind, women like that deserved to have their legs broken, just so they wouldn't go around wrecking other people's marriages.
"Nowadays, even illegitimate children can share the inheritance. A man who wants to cheat, even if you break his mistress's legs, he'll still find a way to see her."
Sophina fell silent for a long moment.
"Are you thinking about divorce?" she finally asked.
Her face was pale, her voice unwavering. "If it were me, I wouldn't have lasted a week."
I lowered my eyes and spoke slowly, "I'm only tolerating this for the money. I'm not a good person either."
Sophina clung to my arm and shook her head. "That's not true. You're the kindest person I know, Laurel."
I wanted to tell her she was wrong.
Because good people never got good endings.
My grandparents had been good people. They spent their lives accumulating good karma, helping countless strangers.
During the years after my mom left home, my grandparents always helped the homeless and those in need.
They did it hoping to accumulate some blessings for her, praying that she was alive and doing well.
And my mother—she had been a good person too. She never hesitated to help stray animals or struggling strangers.
I still remembered one time when we saw a couple on the street, asking passersby for money. They claimed they had come to the city for work but had been scammed, leaving them without a way to get home.
They had asked dozens of people for help, but no one was willing to lend them money.
So my mother gave them all the money she had left in her wallet. She even told them to wait there while she went to buy them food and withdraw more cash for them.
But by the time we returned, they were gone.
Maybe they had overheard me say, "Mom, we don't even have enough for rent this month."
Maybe, out of pity, they decided to let us go.
I was never a kind person. I could never bring myself to save others at the cost of my own survival.
Maybe that was why fate had left me alone in this world, to experience every bit of its bitterness and pain.
Bonnie and Maliyah had both gone to work. Javier didn't go to school and stayed at home instead.
He didn't ask about Angela again. Maybe he already knew. He just didn't want to say it out loud.
It seemed like we all liked deceiving ourselves.
The chef and maids had been dismissed since there was no one left in the house who needed tending to. Only Dorothy was left home to take care of me.
During lunch, Javier sat there with a sullen face. He didn't say anything until we were done eating. "Laurel, why don't we move back to our old place?"
I replied calmly, "I'm not divorced yet."
"That's true. If anyone bullies you, I'll step in. That way, you and Alex won't end up hurting each other's feelings."
I smiled and replied, "What feelings do I even have with him?"
Javier did not expect me to say this directly. His eyes revealed a trace of suspicion.
He was probably wondering why I had married Alex in the first place if there was no love between us.
But he didn't ask. He must have been afraid of hurting me.
He knew I had only married Alex because I had broken up with Austin, and my mother had pressured me relentlessly.
In the end, I had simply found someone and married him on a whim.
I never expected it would turn out exactly as Gideon had said—I had climbed out of one mess only to land straight into a bigger one.
A mess is just that—a mess.
But this one was different. It wasn't just chaos; it was full of wolves, disguised as harmless sheep.
Alex didn't come home until late in the evening. His expression was cold.
"Helena is fine now."
I replied, "You don't need to tell me. She was the one who threw herself into it. It had nothing to do with me."
Alex's brows furrowed slightly. "Do you have to be so petty? No one ever taught her manners when she was growing up."
So in his eyes, just because she was an abandoned child, she was allowed to do whatever she wanted.
I should be the one to keep tolerating everything.
And that made me nothing more than someone to be stepped on and taken advantage of.
I smiled as I looked at him, but my eyes remained cold. My hands clenched tightly together. "How old is she?"
"Helena has always been fragile. She never had a mother, so she grew up feeling insecure. We were raised together, which is why she relies on me so much."
I sat quietly across from him, staring at the man in front of me with a smile.
But my hands resting on the table were trembling slightly.
At that moment, I couldn't help but see traces of Austin in Alex.
I let out a self-deprecating smile. Sure enough, my judgment of men was terribly off.
After picking and choosing, I ended up making the same mistake again. But fortunately, I didn't love the man in front of me, so I wasn't hurt too badly.
"I don't care what your relationship is, but tell her not to show up in front of me again," I said with a cold smile, looking at Alex Herrera.
"Next time, if I take action, it won't just be her injuring herself and framing me with a simple bump on the head."
Alex didn't respond. He simply stared at me with dark, cold eyes, his gaze filled with barely concealed anger.
It was obvious he was pissed off.
But he had clearly seen me carve into Abigail's face before. He knew very well that I was a woman who would always repay a grudge.
I stood up from the table, keeping my eyes locked with Alex's. Despite the chill creeping up my back, I held my ground.
I slightly pursed my lips, pausing for a moment before continuing, "After all, I don't have parents anymore."
Alex's pupils constricted, and his handsome face revealed a flash of sympathy.
My throat tightened, and I couldn't help but want to curse him for his saintly attitude. He deserved to be tricked, caught up in his own foolishness.
I went straight to my room to avoid saying anything more that would stoke the flames of my anger.
After taking a shower and lying back in bed, I sent all the information I had gathered about Helena's birth mother to the reporter who took photos at the hospital last time.
Of course, I used a different SIM card, and once I was done, I flushed it down the toilet.
I was curious to see what kind of excuse Alex would come up with for Helena's "revived" mother.