870 The Vetrov Report Part V (1/2)
Jin Liwei's vision turned red and he was already in front of Nikolai grabbing and shaking the man's collar before he even realized what he was doing. ”Your family tortured my wife?!”
”Liwei, stop! Please don't fight! Big Brother, please!” Iris also arrived not long after and tried to squeeze her small body between the two men.
Lu Zihao pried Jin Liwei's hands from his collar, ripping the top part of his shirt in the process but not caring about it, before pushing the other man back with a casual-looking but powerful force. Jin Liwei staggered backwards but quickly regained his balance. Iris hugged him while placing herself in front of him to prevent him from coming for her brother again.
”I was just stating a fact,” Lu Zihao said in an emotionless voice. ”That was how we, the Vetrovs, lived.”
Fury flooded Jin Liwei until it was all he could feel. ”You didn't do anything to protect your sister?! You allowed them to torture her?!”
”Please stop, Liwei!” Iris cried and tried to force him to look at her. ”Don't blame Big Brother! He was tortured, too! It was training, that's all!”
Finally, Jin Liwei looked at her with a face filled with furious disbelief. ”That's all? You call torture 'that's all'?”
”He tried to protect me. He really did! He suffered more than I did when he tried to protect me—”
”Evelinka, that's enough!” Lu Zihao interrupted her in Russian. ”No need to explain to him that part and try to defend me. Let him believe what he wants to believe. I don't care. He already thinks that I'm the devil anyway.”
She ignored her brother and continued explaining to Jin Liwei as much as she could. ”He was still a teenager that time and I was only a little girl, so Big Brother couldn't do anything—”
Jin Liwei was horrified and held her tightly. ”The torture began when you were still a little girl?! What the hell, Evelina?!!”
She also ignored him, too caught up in finishing in her explanation. ”But Big Brother eventually grew stronger and he was able to protect me! He really did! I didn't have to undergo the torture training as much when I became a teenager because of Big Brother's interference.”
”Not always,” Lu Zihao whispered. ”I had to fulfill my duties, so I was often out of the estate, leaving you there all alone to fend for yourself.”
She couldn't say anything to counter what he said because it was true. Although she reigned as one of the supreme hackers in the cyberworld back then as the legendary Fantom, she was still the weakest in physical combat among the Vetrovs. She couldn't always avoid being forced to undergo the Vetrovs' harsh basic training regimen which was a requirement for everyone in the family. There was only so much that she could do to resist whenever they literally dragged her away despite her protests and threw her into training.
A wave of dizziness washed over her. She swayed a little on her feet. The two men reacted in an instant. Jin Liwei who was right in front of her caught her while Lu Zihao rushed towards her on instinct but stopped himself mid-stride upon remembering that she couldn't take his scent.