CHAPTER 208

The nurse managed to call up Xander to inform him about Angie's condition. At once, he rushed over to the hospital.

He couldn't care less about Angie, and truth be told, he found her to be the bane of his existence. Lucky for her, he was a prideful man who could not risk having anyone call him an indifferent father for not visiting his injured daughter in the hospital.

If word of his apathy toward Angie got out, his reputation would be ruined. He did not know—or rather, he did not want to admit—that he had already lost his standing in Dusktown.

The Colts' brutal fall from grace did not prevent him from coming up with the funds for Angie's medical bills. Xander had his assistant settle the bill at the counter while he went into Angie's room. When he saw how miserable and bedraggled she looked, he frowned and asked, "What the hell did you do to end up this way?"

Angie's left leg and right wrist were broken, and there were scratches on her face and abrasions all over her body after she fell into the flower bed from the second floor. It must have been a horrific experience for her since she looked really badly roughed up.

Angie knew Xander did not care for her, but tears fell from her face when she saw him anyway, and she croaked, "Dad..."

He looked stormy, and his frown deepened as he snapped, "Oh, for heaven's sake! Don't just start crying. Tell me what happened. Go on—Out with it!"

"N-Nothing..." She swallowed her sobs and bit out in a trembling voice, "I didn't watch where I was

going and I fell from the stairs..."

She dared not bring up Luke's name in front of Xander—not when she knew how pathetic and cowardly he was. If she told him that Luke was the one who had forced her to leap off from the second floor, he would abandon her in the blink of an eye just to save himself. There was no chance that Xander would defend her.

More importantly, she still needed Xander to foot her hospital bill, which he would not do if he found out she had gotten on Luke's bad side.

"Why must you go out of your way to make trouble for me? Don't you have anything better to do?" Xander said irritably as he glowered at her.

Amelia had been giving him a hard time since the Taylors dumped Angie at his place. He hated Cameron for doing this to him. As a chain reaction, he hated Angie as well.

He would have cut Angie off entirely if he weren't so worried that the Taylors might confront him for it if they found out. As things were, he was in no position to anger a prominent family like theirs.

Meanwhile, Xander's indifference and sharp tone prompted Angie to clap her unhurt hand over her mouth as she sobbed. She couldn't understand how she had ended up in such a sorry state, either. Back at the Taylors', she only needed to sneeze to have everyone coddle her; now, she was bruised and aching all over, with a broken leg and a fractured wrist to boot, but there was not an ounce of sympathy thrown her way. The nurse managed to call up Xander to inform him about Angie's condition. At once, he rushed over to the hospital.

She couldn't even bring herself to tell anyone that it was Luke who had humiliated her and landed her in the hospital. The Adams Family had more money and power than the Colts could ever hope to attain. If Amelia and Xander were to find out that she had only ended up in hospital because of Luke, they could cut her out of their lives entirely and leave her to fend for herself. Where would she go then?

Life with the Colts could be better, but beggars could not be choosers. At the very least, they fed her and put a roof over her head. If there came a day when they threw her out onto the streets, she would have nowhere else to go.

She thought about how her life had been before this and grew bitter at how it was now. The resentment and the spite welled up in her as her heart shattered into a million pieces.

"Will you stop crying? You're giving me a headache!" Xander snapped, clearly fed up with her. "How are you still tripping over your own two feet at this age? Don't you dare cry over your own clumsiness!"

Angie sniffed and stopped crying at once, shuddering with the effort to keep her sobs down.

Xander waited to see if she would burst into another round of wails, and when she didn't, he said grimly, "I doubt there's any serious damage done, so I'll be on my way. Stop coming to me with trivial matters like this in the future. In case you haven't noticed, I have a ton of things going on as the head of the family. I'm not like you, little Miss Lounge-Around-And-Do-Nothing-All-Day! I swear, it's like you're deliberately getting into trouble just to pass the time!" He turned to leave after that, not wanting to hang around anymore if she wasn't going to tell him anything important. Belongs to © n0velDrama.Org.

"Dad?" Angie called out pleadingly. "Could you hire a caretaker for me? I can't really do anything on my own with my wrist and leg broken."

That was true, but what mattered even more to her was that having a caretaker was the only way she could have her old life back—a life where she was waited on hand and foot by somebody else.

The key difference between the upper echelons of high society and the lower ones lay in having someone attend to you at all times. For as long as Angie had a caretaker with her, she could pretend that she had never fallen from grace—that she was still a young lady of nobility throughout her recovery period.

If she didn't know for a fact that Xander would never spend on something as lavish as a bodyguard, she would have asked him to hire one for her to keep her safe.

However, she did know how stingy he was, so she did not bother making such a request lest he thought it was an outrageous demand on her part.

Hiring a caretaker would not cost much, and Xander thought it was much better to have someone stay here with Angie than to leave her to fend for herself. If she were to perish in a hospital room out of neglect, then it would reflect badly on his already-rocky reputation. He couldn't risk that, and after weighing the pros and cons, he said with a grave nod, "Fine."

When he left, Angie lay on the bed and winced at the pain that shot through every part of her body. For a moment, she thought death might be more welcoming than this agony she was going through. Tears rolled down her cheeks uncontrollably, and her chest tightened with the grudges that she held.

This was not what her life should be like.

She was supposed to be the young lady of the Wendel Family. For as long as she could remember,

she had become accustomed to having people wait on her while she did whatever she liked. She was supposed to be spoiled by everyone and have everything she wanted.

She never imagined that things could take such an ugly turn.

No, this can't be it! I want to go back to the Wendels. I want to be Michael and Crystal's daughter. She was so determined to make this happen that she vowed not to let go of even the slightest hope.

Crying, she reached for her phone with her good hand and called Michael and Crystal, only to find that none of her calls could get through because they had blocked her number. Not wanting to give up, she borrowed the nurse's phone and called them again, but it was to no avail.

Then again, what did she expect? Michael and Crystal did not have the habit of answering calls from unfamiliar numbers.

Left without a choice, she resorted to calling Nelson instead. This time, the line got connected, and she greeted him in a watery voice, "Nelson?"

"Miss Colt?" Nelson recognized her voice, but gone were the days when he addressed her as Angie. To him, she was Miss Colt now. She really wanted to slap him through the phone when she heard his way of address.

As much as she itched to do that, she knew that getting on his good side was of priority. Besides, she did not want to offend him at all. Back when she was living with the Taylors, she saw Nelson and William as nothing more than slaves even though she claimed them to be like her brothers. Her affections for them were superficial, and in reality, she loved having them obey her every whim, and she was not polite about it either.

Nonetheless, they followed her orders and showed her the respect she demanded of them.

But that was in the past. She was a Colt now—no longer a Wendel, and no longer worthy of courtesy on Nelson's part.

She cursed him for rubbing salt in her wound, but on the surface, she sobbed desperately over the phone, "Nelson, I fell and broke my leg. I miss Mom and Dad, but they aren't picking up my calls. Could you call them for me, please?"