Tang turned to stare at her, naked hostility visible in his eyes.

"Have you received the divorce papers from my lawyer?" He asked her bluntly.

She blanched at the blatant disregard of her emotional plea.

"I…uh…that is…" she tried to form an appropriate answer.

"I tore those papers down. There will be no divorce in this house till I am alive," his father said with authority.

"Is she YOUR wife?" Tang asked him calmly.

Mr. Xie spluttered in indignation, "what kind of a disgusting question is that?"

Tang shrugged his shoulders, "if she isn't, who gave you the right to intervene in the matters solely between husband and wife? I know that you are extremely fond of her. So why don't you go ahead and adopt her? I don't care as long as she isn't related to me in anyway."

"Really? So how is it that you intend to support yourself going forward? You haven't been coming to work off late. You have left the house. Do you think you can survive without the Xie name and money behind you?" his father challenged him.

"Why don't you think about how the company would survive without me? As for the Xie money and name, the former I don't need, the latter I can't escape in this lifetime. I suggest you start finding yourself another general manager," Tang replied savagely.

"And why does he need to do that? Who would take care of your sister's and my stake in the company? You may have started working there because it was partly owned by your father. But this is the place to which you have given your sweat and hard work. Just because you don't like the boss, you shouldn't quit. In any case, I don't think the company would exist without you being a part of it anyways. The senior management has grown a bit too old and the other partner's son has only just discovered his duty to come to office on a daily basis. Who knows when that would change. Why don't you take a break for a couple of more weeks and then go back to work," everyone turned to look at her in complete shock as Mrs. Xie uttered these words calmly, in a no nonsense tone.

"How dare you defy me?" Mr. Xie said quietly but menacingly to her.

"The fact is, between, my son, my daughter and me, we own twice the number of shares than you do. Of course I can defy you. Now that I look back, I feel that it was my mistake to let you create havoc in my child's life all those years and I kept mum," she addressed him boldly.

Before he could react to his wife's new avatar, she turned to her son and said, "I am thinking that I should s.h.i.+ft to your new place for a few days. It would help you settle down faster. As it is, I haven't lived anywhere else in the past decade or so, except this mansion. After becoming rich, your father decided that my relatives were too low society for him to a.s.sociate with. Hence he forbade me from interacting with them as well. I, being the subservient woman, blindly followed his instructions without a question. Thinking back, I guess he really got lucky getting me as his life partner. Had it been someone like, ahem…the current women around him, he would have not dared to become so tyrannical."

There was a pin drop silence in the room. All three of them stared at her as if she had sprouted horns. Suddenly, Tang started laughing. It was a deep rumble emanating from his stomach.

"Oh, I so badly wish that Chu was here to see this. She would have been so proud of you. All through my growing years I kept wondering about the anomaly that my younger sister was. Today I finally realised that she had managed to inherit your hidden genes," he continued laughing.

Mrs. Xie was relieved to see the colour which his laughter had brought to his face. While she had stood there, listening to her husband condemn her son again and again, a tide of anger had started to surface. She had tried initially to hold it in but maybe the dams inside her had broken after the constant holding back the rush of her real emotions for so long. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, she could feel herself starting to tremble. She needed to sit down before her legs gave way.

"I love you, mom. Thank you!" Tang enveloped her in a warm tight hug and whispered the words.