Pampered By My Three Brothers: The Return Of The Neglected Heiress - Chapter 1707

Chapter 1707: Send Atlas Bennet a tip about the case.

The room was dark, with only the light from the moon shining through the ajar balcony door.

Zoren lay on the bed, one leg out of the mattress and on the carpet floor. His other foot was on the mattress, his knee bent. He rested his arm over his eyes, his necktie loose with a few buttons of his shirt unbuttoned.

Shifting his arm slightly to reveal one of his eyes, he raised his other hand. In it, he clipped a small mug shot photo of Penny. He stared at it darkly, his expression unreadable.

“Should I… feel sad about this?” his quiet yet cold voice escaped. “Because I don’t know what to feel.”

“What did you feel about it?” he added, already aware of Penny’s backstory at this point.

One way or another, Zoren couldn’t help but acknowledge the similarity of their lives. Just like him, who was not wanted by the woman he thought was his mother, Penny was the same.

She was the real daughter, but none of her family members ever treated her as one. She was a stranger in her own family.

Yet, the reason she was behind bars was because she confessed to save her brother. Although further investigation would still point at her, her action only showed how foolish she was.

But who was he to judge?

Zoren was worse.

He had also spent his entire life pleasing his mother, trying to make her happy. Even when he finally had enough and locked her in an asylum—after her attempt at hurting Old Mrs. Pierson—there was this lingering longing in a child for a mother.

And when he thought he had finally numbed himself to it, he was wrong.

Because if he was numb, he wouldn’t feel this heaviness. A crippling weight that kept him on this bed, where he couldn’t even fall asleep.

He had done so much that he couldn’t even consider himself human anymore. No human could do such cruelty all for power. A power his mother kept telling him to protect, only to find out it was actually a power he was gathering for himself, so she could give it to her real son—Jonathan Pierson.

A child she had even before becoming Naylani Pierson.

And no, he didn’t mean that she conceived Jonathan before she met Enzo Pierson, nor had Jonathan before Zoren was born.

Jonathan was conceived when Zoren was already born.

Zoren kept his eyes on Penny’s mug shot, holding it over his face. “If I get you out… would you go out on a date with me?”

The idea was crazy.

It wasn’t like he developed feelings just because he was getting so deep into her case.

But… from one unwanted child to another, their trauma bonding would be interesting. He understood her, and perhaps, she would be the only person who would understand him. They would talk about the foolish things they did for the undeserving, laugh about it, and just… maybe, just maybe, they could look at each other and see their own reflections in each other’s eyes—not mirrored by what others saw in them.

“Hah…” A quiet laugh escaped him, putting the photo down to his side.

Zoren closed his eyes, chuckling. “I’ve… I’m really losing it, Penelope.”

“If I can’t get you out of there… I’ll just end them all,” he whispered. “That’s what they deserve anyway.”

Zoren must’ve lost his mind, but since digging deep into this case, he always found himself talking to Penny. She never answered; it was just a photo. But this photo had heard him talk—or probably knew more than the people who had been on his side for years.

—

The Next Morning

That night, Zoren stayed away from the case files or the mounting information that kept coming to his home. After all, he had deployed everyone he knew to gather information on the people connected to this case and how the Pierson Family was subtly involved in all of this.

But just like everything, the next morning, Zoren got up from his last emotional collapse and moved on.

His first move?

Send Atlas Bennet a tip about the case.

Just a little bit of information.

But unlike what one would expect, he didn’t send it to Atlas, who had been spiraling after the controversy, to help the man. Zoren sent him the tip just so he could spiral more; just so Atlas could see that it was his fault his sister was behind bars, and that his every breath would be filled with guilt—nothing more, nothing less.

And it worked.

Because the next night…

Zoren sat in the backseat of the car, parked several blocks from Jonathan’s home. He tilted his head, leaning to his side as he watched an anxious man pace back and forth nervously in the back entrance of the home.

Despite the lack of light, one could see how the once-respectable Atlas Bennet had changed. His beard was long and untrimmed, his hair might be under a cap, but one could see the curl on his back. His clothes were unkempt, with visible creases not just on his shirt, but also his pants.

The corners of Zoren’s mouth curled up as soon as he saw someone walk out of the fence.

Nina Bennet-Pierson.

From this distance, Zoren couldn’t hear what the two were talking about. However, just watching them was enough.

Atlas grabbed Nina’s hand while talking in panic, and Nina shoved him away with disgust. Nina’s concern was also visible as she kept looking back at the home, glaring at Atlas as if he were nothing but an inconvenience.

‘How does that feel?’ he wondered. ‘Being treated the way you treated your own blood?’

Did it feel degrading? Disappointing? Harsh?

Zoren wanted to ask those questions, but watching Atlas freeze while Nina tossed him a few bills was enough. It didn’t matter what exactly Atlas felt, because what Zoren knew was that this was emotional devastation.

“Let’s go,” he said, snapping his eyes to the front passenger seat. “I remember I still have to drop by Hugo Bennet’s grave.”

Mark, who was in the front passenger row, looked back and nodded. “Yes, sir.”