Step aside, Uncle Pride：Your Nephew is My Next Man - Chapter 59: Chapter 59

Before coming home, Aurelia had played out thousands of scenarios in her head, imagining what her parents might say.
She'd known it would hurt, but she'd never expected the pain to be this fucking brutal.
She stared directly into her father's eyes, her voice shaking with barely controlled rage: "What the hell do you mean 'older sister is like a second mother'? We're twins. I came out maybe twenty minutes before her—that doesn't make me responsible for her entire life."
Hadn't she already sacrificed enough of her childhood to that meaningless accident of birth order?
Seeing her defiance instead of the compliance he expected, her father's face twisted with fury.
"You selfish little bitch! Are you really going to stand there and watch your entire family get destroyed? How can you be so goddamn heartless?"
"This is YOUR disaster, not mine!" Aurelia's voice cracked as years of suppressed rage finally erupted.
Her father's control snapped completely, his hand flying toward her face with vicious intent.
Aurelia squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the familiar sting of his palm—a sensation she'd endured countless times growing up.
But the blow never landed.
When she opened her eyes, Isaac was gripping her father's wrist in what looked like a bone-crushing hold, the two men locked in a staredown that radiated pure violence.
"Who the fuck are you to interfere with family business?" her father snarled.
Isaac's voice was ice-cold as he twisted her father's wrist until the older man winced. "Aurelia is classified government research personnel under federal protection. I'm her assigned security detail."
He stepped protectively in front of her, his body radiating lethal energy. "Nobody touches her. Ever. I don't give a shit if you're her biological father—lay one finger on her and you'll be eating through a straw."
Her father's face went purple with humiliation as he tried to jerk free, but Isaac's grip was unbreakable.
"Assaulting federal personnel is a felony. You want to spend the next decade in prison? Keep trying me."
Only then did Isaac release him, sending her father stumbling backward.
Her mother rushed forward with tears streaming down her face, desperately trying to salvage the situation.
"Please, this is all just a horrible misunderstanding! Your father is losing his mind with worry about Rosalia—he didn't mean it."
She reached for Aurelia's hands, but Aurelia recoiled like she'd been burned.
"Don't take it personally, sweetheart. You and Rosalia are both our precious girls. It's just that those loan sharks are terrorizing us every day, and we're falling apart. Your father's just scared and stressed."
Isaac's laugh was harsh and bitter. "Scared and stressed? Lady, the favoritism in this family is so extreme it's criminal."
His protective fury was blazing as he looked between Aurelia's parents with pure disgust. "Aurelia has the shittiest luck in the universe, ending up with toxic parents like you."
He grabbed Aurelia's elbow and started steering her toward the exit, his entire body vibrating with barely contained violence.
Before they left, Isaac turned back with a promise that sounded more like a threat: "Predatory lending is federal crime territory. I'm having this whole situation investigated by people who actually know what they're doing. But if either of you tries to manipulate or hurt Aurelia again—if you so much as send her a guilt-trip text—you'll find out exactly how creative federal security can get."
Outside the hospital, Aurelia finally found enough breath to speak.
"How... how did you even get here?" Her voice was hollow, shell-shocked.
Isaac's expression transformed from lethal protector to gentle concern as he looked at her. "I pulled every string I had to get emergency clearance to follow you. You're too important to the program—and to me—to face this nightmare alone."
His voice cracked slightly. "Jesus, Aurelia, if I'd been thirty seconds later, he would've hit you. Again. How many times has he—" He couldn't finish the question.
"It doesn't matter anymore. I stopped feeling those hits a long time ago." Aurelia's words came out flat, practiced, but Isaac could see the little girl behind them who had learned to shut down her pain to survive.
Actually, she preferred their cruelty. It made everything clearer, easier to walk away from.
Their occasional moments of fake kindness were what fucked with her head and made her hope for impossible things.
"What do you want to do now?" Isaac asked, his voice gentle but his eyes still burning with protective rage.
Aurelia looked utterly defeated. "I need to understand what really happened with Rosalia's debt. Get the real story behind the manipulation."
"They created this mess—you don't owe them anything." Isaac wanted to grab her shoulders and shake some sense into her, but he could see she was already hanging by a thread.
Aurelia's voice was barely a whisper: "Whatever else they are, they're still the people who raised me for eighteen years."
Despite their toxic favoritism, they had fed her, clothed her, and funded her education until she could escape.
She couldn't be a complete monster and abandon them entirely. She'd handle Rosalia's crisis and then walk away forever.
Isaac watched her resignation with a breaking heart, wanting to protect her from her own misplaced loyalty.
"I have federal contacts here who can cut through the bullshit and get us real answers fast."
For the first time all day, Aurelia looked at him with something approaching gratitude. "Isaac... thank you. For everything."
"Don't." His voice was fierce. "You never have to thank me for protecting you. Ever."
The irony was devastating—strangers who owed her nothing would move heaven and earth for her, while the people who should love her most demanded she sacrifice everything for them.
At least this nightmare would be over soon.
Once she handled this crisis, she'd be thousands of miles away with no obligations, no guilt, no connections.