Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 1540

Arianne could not even be angry. It was a misunderstanding, after all, and one that might require a lengthy explanation at that.

In resignation, she dragged a chair and sat. “With all due respect, Aunt Shelly, methinks you’re reaching,” she began. “You’re right. My dad was an innocent victim who didn’t need to die in that plane tragedy. But the burden and pain that incident brought weighed more on Mark than it ever did me, and it would be unreasonable of me to judge him as the sinner and take him out as my revenge. And also, I call him ‘Mark’ out of deadset habit! Doesn’t mean I don’t love him.

“Frankly, you shouldn’t be making these baseless, paranoid accusations. I’ve been with him for years, Aunt Shelly. Smore’s already past his second birthday. If my intention had always been to murder him, I have had many, many chances. For goodness’s sake, he sleeps with me every night. What’s keeping me from seizing the chance the first time it presents itself? A simple slit across his neck, and he’s done for good. Why would I need to stake the rest of my life with him to kill him? I’m a simple-minded woman. I don’t know any elaborative scheme to kill someone; all I know is this simple, direct, and Hollywood-slasher-style throat-slitting, and that’s it.”

Shelly sneered. “Please, no one thinks you’d be stupid enough to go for something so obvious. If you kill, you get punished by the law, so you choose to go after his heart and everything else he possesses. Tell me, what’s your mighty excuse for legally appropriating the all-powerful Tremont Enterprise under your name, huh? That’s right. I know all about that, too. I have to say, it sure takes a clever schemer to go from an orphan at the mercy of others to becoming the mistress of the Tremont empire. I applaud you for the artifice!”

Arianne was growing weary. “God, if you could spend just a bit more time learning beyond the surface, you wouldn’t even come to suspect me like this! The Tremont Enterprise was at its tether back then, Aunt Shelly. We were desperate. He almost died because someone else wanted to kill him! I exhausted every method and means I knew to protect Tremont Enterprise back then, and at that bleakest moment, that had to be done. When he came back, I told him that we should rectify this and make Tremont Enterprise his again, but he didn’t want to do it. You know why? ‘Cause he trusts me just as I trust him. He doesn’t even think it was necessary,” she rejoined. “Pardon my candor, but our lives had been pretty happy and peaceful before you came. I’m by no means banning you from joining our lives, and I don’t even mind you seeking to stay here permanently, too. But don’t inject yourself into our personal relationship. Don’t interfere with how we live.”

Then, soon after her ultimatum, Arianne reminded her, “You’re just his aunt and nothing more, you know.”

Suddenly, Shelly became severely agitated. “You vile—are you speaking to me as the matriarch of the house?!”

Shelly was so apoplectic that she raised her hand high. Yet, the wallop never came.

Arianne did not duck nor jerk. She took one glance at Shelly’s hesitance and sneered flatly. “What’s stopping you, hmm? Was anything I said even wrong? You’ve been excluding me in any way you can imagine ever since you butted into our lives. You wouldn’t even let me mingle with Smore. At first, I thought you didn’t intend any of it, but now, well! It’s clear as day how deliberate you are. The thing is, you’re just Mark’s aunt. You have your own life and social circle while he now has his own family. At most, the two of you are people with individual lives that just happen to be related. How could some relative think she’s got the right to overstep lines, huh?

“I didn’t want to spell it out to you out of respect, but I guess I have to now. Whether you could stay in this house permanently or not depends on whether I, the mistress of the house, nod.”