Come To Me (Amelia and Patrick) novel Chapter 1516

At the sight of Amelia's frown, Jessica hurriedly explained, "Don't get me wrong. I didn't mean to mock your father-in-law."

"It's okay. I understand."

Jessica then sneaked a glance at Amelia before she asked, "Amelia... You don't think that I should put all the blame on my mother, do you?"

"Um..." Amelia noticed the glimpse of sorrow in Jessica's tone, and she could not help but hesitate. At last, she could not bring herself to hurt Jessica's feelings anymore. So, she replied faintly, "Perhaps it's not my place to judge. After all, I'm a mere outsider."

Jessica heard Amelia's reply, and only then did she break into a smile. She seemed relieved as if she finally had an ally who stood by her.

"I'm not accusing her out of the blue. When my father was admitted to a hospital for treatment after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I ran home from school, crying, as soon as I learned of his illness with the money I earned from my part-time job. The last thing I expected to see was a strange man touching her."

"So, I grabbed a chair and began hitting that man hysterically until he fled the scene. The next thing I could remember was her slapping me on my face for wrecking her plan. It was my first time beating someone up to protect her. But the irony is that it was also the first time she had hit me for a man that I did not know. All she could think of to do was mess with another man when my poor father was dying in the hospital. Do you think that's acceptable?"

Amelia's brows creased and hushed, "Jessica, calm down!"

Jessica took the glass of cold beverage from the table and gulped it down. When her rage finally receded, she continued, "Forget about her. The more I talk about her, the angrier I get."

"Well, I shouldn't have brought this up in the first place." Amelia could do nothing but to comfort her. It was not long after that she remembered something all of a sudden and asked, "I remember that the tuition fee for each semester was around ten thousand dollars. On top of that, there were also the living cost and resource fees. I always wonder if the earning from your part-time job was sufficient to cover all those expenses. Was it?"

Amelia merely spoke her mind when her curiosity prompted her to ask the question. She had no ill intention to ask that.

After all, a part- time job required a lower commitment than a full- time job, so the welfare was rather limited. Amelia could only think of trivial tasks such as handing out flyers and errand running, which were common among students.

Jessica looked at Amelia. She could not help but recall to herself, "She's right. What kind of job did I take up back then that supported me to graduate? Also, how was I able to open my own coffee shop not long after graduation?"

Jessica heaved a sigh in melancholy. Then, she muttered faintly, "Amelia, I told you that I looked down at what my mother did. But do you know what's the irony? In the following four years after that incident, I found myself turning into her."

The bewildered look on Amelia's face was enough to imply her confusion. It took her a moment before she stuttered, "Jessica, I don't get it."

Jessica smiled wryly. She was certain that the truth was going to shatter Amelia's perception of her completely. "Most of my tuition fees and living costs in those four years, which included this coffee shop that's now under your name, was all sponsored by a man. I would be broke if it weren't for him. But even so, I might have been happier."

"So you're saying that you'd rather be poor but happy?" Amelia murmured. In the next second, she squeaked, "A man? What man?"

Jessica explained, "It's a long story. I'll start telling you from the time when the doctor declared that there was no hope in helping my father. Even if he were to stay in the hospital, he was only counting down to his own death. Alongside, the ward charges were extremely costly. So, my father insisted that he wanted to go home and wither away as soon as he learned of the expenses."

"But none of us agreed. We didn't want him to suffer, especially when he had not much time left. SO, we thought that it would be best for him to be taken care of in the hospital."

"Although I was only a busy student, I was aware of the financial crisis ongoing in my family. So, I got a job offer to work as a salesgirl in a club through a friend." "I turned eighteen that same year, and I was new to the university. Needless to say, I was inexperienced and naive. As my friend and I grew up together, I trusted that friend blindly. That was why I accepted the offer and attended the job interview."

"I didn't have high hope at first. To my surprise, the boss in charge was easy-going. He gave me full discretion to decide on my working schedule, which was why I could choose to work on weekends only."

"A call girl?"

Amelia was once again taken aback. Her head buzzed since the moment Jessica revealed the ugly truth to her.

Jessica picked up the glass and took another sip. Then, she revealed more, "To process the whole story better, you need to know what happened when I first signed up for the job in the club. I was assigned to promote a particular body massage oil to whoever came to patronize. I was so naive and suspected nothing back then. I had no idea that the massage oil contained an aphrodisiac that would induce arousal upon usage. It was at a much later stage that I learned that the purpose of the massage oil was to retain the customers so that they would stay in the club and spend for additional services."

"For additional services?" Amelia could more or less guess what Jessica was implying.

Jessica looked at Amelia and nodded. "Yes. The club offered prostitutes as well."

Amelia could not help but frown.

Jessica continued, "I bet you can already tell that it wasn't a leisure club in the conventional sense. In fact, it was a brothel that operated under the disguise of a club."

"Did they... hurt you?" Amelia's voice was shaking when she asked the question. Jessica was only eighteen-year-old. Amelia could not imagine what Jessica was going through after she left her parents and got fooled by her trusted friend into working at such a place.

"They didn't." Jessica shook her head in denial. However, she had to admit that the working environment impacted significantly at a much later date.

She went on to explain, "Perhaps because I was one of the youngest in the club, the boss took care of me. All I needed to do was to promote the body massage oil and nothing else. There was time when I got bored and began picking up some massage techniques from the masseur. I was clueless about the ingredient in the oil at that time. Coupled with the fact that I was entitled to a lucrative commission for the sale of the oil, all I had in mind was to spend as much time as possible in the club to promote the oil to the customers just so that I could earn more money."