She Was the Treasure All Along novel Chapter 673

The elderly woman's cloudy eyes stared out the window. The silence stretched for so long that Loyce thought she wouldn't answer. Her frail chest heaved with heavy breaths, as if every inhalation dragged up decades of buried agony.

Finally, she turned her head, her voice raspy and broken.

"I actually only have one biological daughter—Lucinda. Melody... Yale's wife... was adopted."

Hiding quietly by the door, Lucinda's eyes widened in shock.

"Melody had cancer. At the time, there was an unapproved, experimental drug from overseas. It couldn't cure her, but it could buy her time."

The old woman's gnarled fingers dug into the armrests of her wheelchair. "Yale and Lucinda wanted to use their political privileges to smuggle it in. But the price was... trading classified intelligence."

She took a shaky breath, tears pooling in her eyes, though she stubbornly refused to let them fall. "I stopped it. Before I retired, I worked in national security. I knew that once you cross that line, there's no going back. One compromise leads to another. The safety of the nation outweighs any single life."

Loyce's heart grew heavy as she listened.

"But my youngest daughter was raised so sheltered. She didn't understand global politics. All she saw was her sister dying." The old woman's voice cracked, dripping with endless guilt and heartbreak. "She hated me. She thought I was a cold-blooded monster. She thought I had the power to save Melody, but just chose not to..."

"She thought if she poisoned and paralyzed me, I'd be out of the way. Then she and Yale could do whatever they wanted." The old woman closed her eyes, and two trails of hot tears finally spilled down her wrinkled cheeks. "So I beat her to the punch and permanently closed that loophole myself."

"She did it to save her sister, so I don't hate her for it," she choked out, barely able to form a complete sentence. "But why couldn't she understand that it was tearing my heart out too? Melody was my daughter too..."

Did they really think watching her own child die was any easier for her?

"Later on, Yale found a new loophole. He was going to take Melody overseas to use the medical equipment there." The old woman's face looked like withered parchment. "But Yale had made a lot of enemies in his career. Someone leaked the itinerary. He was supposed to fly out with her that day, but a sudden crisis kept him behind. The private jet was tampered with... and it crashed."

Only Melody died. Yale miraculously survived, but the tragedy twisted him into someone unrecognizable.

Loyce sat in stunned silence.

"So that's what happened."

The old woman looked at Loyce. "I originally thought I'd just spend the rest of my life in this bed as penance for Melody."

She took a slow, rattling breath. "But then I realized the entire Pierce family was rotting from the inside. My granddaughter became a ruthless butcher. My family was walking down a path of pure evil."

Even now, forced to choose between her family and her country, the old woman chose her country.

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