Chapter 442 Branded

Owen snapped, "I told you to tell the truth!" He thought Paul was spouting nonsense again.

"Damn it, I said I never touched Yunice! Are you her real brother or something? You can’t sleep at night if I don’t screw your sister, is that it?" Paul shot back, enraged.

Owen fired back, “Bullshit. Everyone in Silverburgh knows what happened between you and Yunice. And now you’re denying it?”

Paul sneered. “Are you that stupid? You treat my words like gospel, but why don’t you ask your sister what she has to say?”

Owen was speechless.

Oscar held a scalpel in his hand and frowned at Owen. “Did Yunice ever talk to you about this?”

Owen’s face turned pale. He seemed to realize there was more to the story, but he tried to justify himself. “I thought Yunice was just scared of getting yelled at, so she denied it… Besides, how could they not have slept together? They were so close…”

Oscar snapped, “Everything’s just what you think. You think this, you think that. Do your thoughts count as evidence now? This is serious—shouldn’t the first thing you do if Yunice was assaulted be calling the cops?”

“Oscar, it’s easy for you to talk—you’re not the one whose reputation is on the line!” Owen sneered. “Now I get it. I’m the one who did the most for this family, but in the end, I’m the one everyone blames.”

Oscar lost it. “So you only care about your reputation? Do you have any idea how badly people talk about Yunice? You know exactly why no decent guy wants to marry her!”

Owen jumped to his feet. “Then what do you want me to do?! She’s a woman, I’m a man—what can I do to prove anything for her? Who has the power to clear someone’s name when the rumors are that filthy? Elsie slept with Paul too, and did I throw a fit? I treated them the same, didn’t I?!”

Then he glared at Paul, lashing out at everyone now. “What the hell are we supposed to believe from you? One second you say you did, the next you say you didn’t. Are we just a bunch of idiots to you?”

“And Wyatt? That lunatic? He knew Yunice wasn’t a virgin when he married her. So what’s he trying to pull now? Just to save face, he wants to go public and say she was never touched? That he married a ‘pure’ woman? It’s laughable! He really thinks people won’t mock him behind his back? Say he’s overcompensating, putting on an act? The more someone lacks something, the harder they try to fake it.”

“It’s like getting mud in your pants—people will say it’s shit whether it is or not,” Owen said. “If you don’t bring it up, no one cares. But you all insist on humiliating yourselves just to look ‘righteous.’”

With that, Owen stormed out.

Paul sat on the hospital bed and let out a dry laugh. Then he looked up at Oscar. “Now do you see what kind of person Owen really is?”

“The one you should be blaming isn’t me. It’s Owen—he’s the one who wanted to sweep everything under the rug. If he hadn’t let it slide over and over again, who would’ve dared to treat Yunice like trash?”

Oscar’s hand tightened around the scalpel. He already knew Owen was a bastard.

But that didn’t mean Paul should get off easy.

Fury surged inside him. Without a word, Oscar raised the scalpel and slashed Paul’s face again and again.

He moved fast, with barely any pause between cuts. The blade was razor sharp, so the pain didn’t register right away.

It wasn’t until Oscar was done and pulled back that Paul felt the searing, throbbing agony. His eyes widened as he raised his bandaged hand toward his face. Even before he touched it, he let out a strangled scream.

Blood dripped steadily onto the pristine white sheets, like rain.

Paul was terrified and in shock, unable to react.

Oscar gave him one last cold glance before turning and walking out.

He knew why Wyatt had summoned them today—it was a test of loyalty.

If Paul made it through the meeting unscathed, it would mean they had failed.

But no matter how brutal their actions were today, Wyatt would have their backs.

After Oscar left, the guards outside Paul’s room returned to their posts, looking serious and alert. But their ears were deaf to Paul’s cries and thuds—no one responded to the sounds of him stumbling around.

Paul kept screaming as he fell off the bed, dragging his crippled legs. He couldn’t bear to imagine what his face looked like now.

There was no mirror in the room, so he fumbled his way to the bathroom, clinging to the wall.

When he finally saw his reflection, his face was drenched in blood. Two bloody characters were carved into his cheeks—one on each side.

One said “bastard.” The other, “scum.”

Each character was etched deep, blood oozing along the strokes in grotesque trails.

Paul collapsed to the ground, ghostly pale. His hand scrambled for his phone, and in a daze, he called Jackson…

Chapter 443 The Outsider