Page 34 of Lesson on Depravity

Coco’s hand twitches when she grasps my shirt, green eyes widening in bafflement. This is news to me, and I never expected this turn of event.

The woman doesn’t know when to shut up, and it’s giving me more ammunition to fuel the plan forming in my head. if she thinks she’s walking out of this place a free woman, then she needs to rethink her life and change her will.

“I just knew it. The moment I saw your pictures on Xavier’s inept brother’s room—those green eyes, they are the same as my husband’s. You look like his dead mother, and it’s sickening.”

“What do you get out of this?” Coco asks without changing her tone, but I can pick up on the small shift in her emotions. “This… this game you’re playing.”

She scoffs. “My husband admitted the affair; he’s just as guilty as your harlot mother.”

“This is to get back at my mother?” Coco stutters, lips moving slowly as if she can’t believe this ludicrous ploy was so petty.

“I can’t get to her, but I can get to the abomination that came from this affair.” The woman glares.

The table under my hand squeals, the fine wood splintering beneath the silky covering. Insulting my beloved princess is a death wish, and she just signed that last piece of paper to seal her fate as my tolerance breaks in half.

“It wasn’t much at first; a couple rumors here and there, and it worked for a time. Police are causing trouble in your neighborhood, but it wasn’t enough.”

Jessabelle’s eyes widen with crazed flickers of a cunning woman. “I wanted you to hurt just how your mother has hurt me. She seduced my husband. Who does she think she is? I am the wife, his trophy wife, and a socialite. She is nothing but a common whore.”

From Coco, I have gathered that her mother is not the worst mother. She just doesn’t have the ability or the knowledge to take care of a daughter, and her brain had been fragmented by drugs.

It’s her father that takes the cake on being the biggest bastard. Coco was nothing but a meal ticket from the government aid, and he kept her in the house for that sole reason.

“Xavier is a dimwitted man, but he has served his purpose wonderfully. It was a shame that he did not finish what he had started from his paranoia. It does that to criminals who have something to hide, especially after losing his warehouse full of products.”

Jessabelle shakes her head in a mockery of his downfall for getting in bed with her. She’s a sociopath, unfeeling and unwilling to try because she only cares for herself, and she won’t even have mercy on Coco.

My Coco is young and impressionable, and it’s no wonder this woman could whip up a flawless ploy to trap my princess. It is a good thing that Coco has Daddy to clean up the mess.

“You are a bad fruit, an eyesore to our family. My husband will not allow—I won’t let you get your inheritance. He doesn’t want you.”

Coco breathes in, green eyes staring confidently with bravery. “That’s okay. I don’t want to meet him either.”

The woman inspects her nails again, the face of nonchalant. “My husband and I will be traveling around the world for our anniversary, which is an endless reminder because it was also the day that he had been unfaithful.”

I don’t think she even cares for her husband either. She only thinks about herself, and she is most likely staying married to him for his money to continue this lifestyle of hers.

Not for long, the voice in my head snarls.

Coco prepares herself, leaning away from my chest and facing Jessabelle with hidden disappointment.

“I don’t know what you gain from this—from playing with my feelings, but I do want to thank you for doing it.”

Coco had said to me one day: “Kill them with kindness.”. And she is following through it in her own way.

Jessabelle thought she was going to get tears and a scene of heartbreaking sobs, but she only gets my princess’s brave and strong resolve.

“Even if it was a fleeting moment, I still believed that you were my “Auntie Jessie,” and I did start to love you. It’s not normal behavior, but I don’t know what parental love is so you’re the first person to show me even if it was all a lie.”

She stands up, tipping her head forward as a sign of respect to a woman who doesn’t deserve it, and she smiles.

“I learned so much, and credit is given where it’s due.”

The shock on Jessabelle’s face makes this sweeter. My chest thumps with pride, swelling with love, and my heart had been seized once again.

That’s Daddy’s princess.

Chapter Ten

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