The Second Life of a Discarded Heiress novel Chapter 549

At that moment, everyone in the Saunders family was sitting in stony silence, their faces drawn and pale. Beneath the shock and disbelief in their eyes, there was a deep well of worry and heartbreak.

Monica and Wade stared down at the floor, looking ghostly white.

Only now did Monica truly understand what Hilda had meant.

It really was too cruel—asking someone who was already drowning in their own pain to empathize with someone else’s suffering.

Especially when her own sister had endured even worse.

An eleven-year-old child, sent away to a place like that… No one really knew how she’d survived.

But everyone understood, in their hearts, that Citrine must have gone through unimaginable hardship just to stay alive.

After a long, heavy silence, Hilda finally spoke, her voice thick with guilt. “If I’d just watched Citrine more closely back then, the nanny wouldn’t have taken her. She wouldn’t have suffered at the Iversons’, and she never would have ended up at Mirage Cay. This is all my fault—I failed her.”

The Saunders family looked at Hilda, wanting to comfort her, but none of them could find the words. The same bitter regret weighed on every heart in the room.

——

Verona Heights.

After sending Sawyer away, Raymond rolled up his sleeves and cooked a full dinner for his daughter—four dishes and a pot of soup.

When he’d finished, he headed to wake her for the meal, but just as he walked into the living room, his phone began to ring.

Assuming it was his own, Sawyer hurried over to grab it.

“It’s Citrine’s,” Sawyer said, glancing at the phone on the table. It wasn’t his after all.

Raymond was about to put it back down when a new message popped up on the screen.

Monica: Citrine, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things the other day. I shouldn’t have meddled and tried to force you to empathize with Aunt Hilda.

Ever since learning Hilda was Citrine’s biological mother, Raymond had thoroughly investigated the Saunders family.