Defying Fate: The Unstoppable Eileen



Egbert, what a pain in the neck!

As the car started up, Eileen was stewing in the passenger seat.

When the car came to a stop at a traffic light, Eileen suddenly blurted out, "Why Harriet Forrest? Is Bartley using his mom's last name?"

Egbert glanced at her, surprised that she'd picked up on it.

"Bartley's just his stage name," Egbert replied.

"What's his real surname then? Or his dad's surname?" Eileen demanded, frowning.

"Why do you want to know?" Egbert asked, looking at her.

Eileen glared at him and turned away. "I'm just curious," she muttered.

Egbert looked at Eileen's stubborn face and after a while, he said, "I'll give you a chance. Ask whatever you want to know and I'll tell you."

"I don't want to know anything!" Eileen stammered, suddenly nervous, "I'm not curious at all!" she blurted out defensively.

As the light turned green, Egbert started the car again and said calmly, "Alright then."

The car fell quiet and Eileen, annoyed that Egbert wouldn't spill, huffed in frustration.

What's the big deal? She could just ask Bartley herself!

Egbert was not the only one in the know, so what was he so smug about!

When they got home, Eileen went straight up to her room and called Bartley!

The next time Eileen came downstairs, it was dinner time.

During the past few days when Egbert was recovering from his injury, Eileen had cooked for him.

Now that he was back on his regular diet, the servants were in charge of the meals again.

The table was laden with a feast. The moment Eileen sat down, she started digging in.

Across the table, Egbert placed a piece of meat in her plate.

Eileen promptly picked it out and threw it back in Egbert's plate, before helping herself to another piece.

Egbert looked at the piece of meat in his plate and, realizing she was still mad, so he didn't say anything more.

Throughout the meal, Eileen would sneak glances at Egbert, who ate slowly and appeared to have been spoiled rotten since childhood.

Her background was very different. When growing up, she often went hungry at Sarah Roach's house and would get beaten if she came home late from school and there was no food.

She used to go hungry for entire nights, and after she started learning boxing, she would sometimes faint from exhaustion.

That's when she started to overeat.

But Hubery liked slim girls. To win his affection, Eileen kept her food intake to a minimum even when she started earning money. Over time, she got used to it.

Thinking about it, Eileen realized how different her world was from Egbert's.

After finishing her meal, Eileen quickly wiped her mouth and dashed upstairs.

Watching her retreating figure, one of the servants asked Egbert, "Mr. Reed, did you upset Ms. Lopez?"

Egbert looked surprised, "What?"

The servant pointed at the leftover pasta and said indignantly, "Ms. Lopez only had four plates of pasta today! How could she possibly be full? Did you upset her and ruin her appetite?"

Egbert didn't answer.

The servant went back into the kitchen and brought out the dessert they had bought that day.

"You should take this upstairs for Ms. Lopez as a midnight snack and maybe apologize if you need to," the servant suggested, handing the dessert to Egbert.

Egbert didn't take it, or reply. He just sipped his soup.

"If you don't take it, I'll call your mom!" the servant threatened.

Egbert didn't respond.

Egbert put down his bowl and looked at the servant seriously, "Just do your job."

An hour later, Egbert knocked on Eileen's door with a cake box in hand.

Eileen, in her pajamas, came to open the door.

Seeing Egbert, she squinted and asked with a stern face, "What is it?"

Egbert handed her the cake box.

On seeing the cake, Eileen's eyes lit up. She grabbed the box and asked, "How did you know I wasn't full?"

Egbert didn't answer.

"Why didn't you eat enough?" Egbert asked.

Eileen didn't answer. Her mind had been elsewhere during dinner.

Instead of answering Egbert, she just said, "Thanks," and prepared to close the door.

But Egbert stopped her. From the gap in the door, he saw a pile of documents spread out on her bed.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

Eileen immediately blocked the gap and said, "None of your business!"

With that, she shut the door in his face.

Egbert stood outside her room, feeling the draft from the closed door.

He touched his nose, contemplated for a while, and finally went back to his room.

Eileen, with the cake in her arms, went back to her bed. She opened the box, took out a piece of dessert, and started sorting through her documents.

She worked till the early hours of the morning before finally going to bed.

But at six o'clock the next morning, she was awake.

After freshening up, Eileen quietly went downstairs.

Finding Egbert was not around, she quickly grabbed her backpack and drove off in Egbert's car.

Eileen went to the bank and retrieved the inheritance documents she'd received at the law firm.

Using these documents and a password, she managed to open her grandparents' safety deposit box at the bank.

Inside the box were the same items as in her previous life - a property deed and a dozen old USB drives.

After taking everything out, Eileen returned to the car.

She took out a laptop she'd swiped from the Reed's and plugged in the USB drives.

Most of them were unreadable due to age and would require some data recovery work.

But a few could still be accessed.

Eileen quickly skimmed through the files on the accessible USB drives, then started cross-referencing them with the data she had organized last night.

The drives were full of donation records. Eileen was doing some accounting work.

She had no idea how Ableson found out her inheritance was worth a pretty penny.

Her grandparents were not loaded!

Well, it's not like they were penniless, their jobs did bring in the dough, but they weren't greedy. Both of them were highly respected educators, devoted their lives to teaching countless students, completely dedicated to serving the society.

These USB drives, they were packed with decades of records of her grandparents' donations to underprivileged students.

There were a dozen of drives, adding up to a whopping 200,000 records, with donation amounts hitting the billions.

Well, if you look at it that way, her grandparents were actually rolling in it.

After stuffing all the drives into her bag, Eileen checked a property deed that was not part of the drives.

She punched the address into her phone's GPS.

Finding out that she couldn't drive there, Eileen bit the bullet and bought a plane ticket, then drove to the airport.

Three hours later, Eileen arrived at the old rural house on the property deed, in a rickety vehicle.novelbin

In her previous life, Eileen had visited this old house once, what she saw now was pretty much the same.

After getting out of the car, the local driver warned her in his thick accent, "This is Mr. Howard's house, which has been vacant and dangerous. It could fall down any time, so watch your step."

Eileen shot him a grateful smile and said, "Thanks."

After that, Eileen entered the house.

The situation inside the house was the same as in her previous life.

After a quick look around, Eileen finally walked to the center of the living room.

She looked at a table that must have once displayed ancestral photos.

Eileen pursed her lips slightly, took out some snacks and half a box of cupcakes from her backpack, and placed them on the table.

Then she sighed and said, "Ancestors, I stumbled upon a huge problem yesterday. I don't dare tell my dad, or my grandparents. I don't even know who to turn to for help, so I came to you! If you guys can show some signs, could you come out and help me brainstorm? But you might want to tidy up a bit before you show up, I'm a little scared of ghosts."