Chapter 347: Chapter 347: You Are the Mole
"Let me go... Phoebe Huxley, are you crazy?! Felix Thorne, aren’t you going to do something about this crazy woman!"
Phoenix Golding struggled desperately as she was dragged along the ground, but she was powerless in Phoebe Huxley’s grip. Catching sight of Felix Thorne out of the corner of her eye, Phoenix refused to give up and shouted, hoping he would step in and stop his wife. If this brute of a woman kept dragging her, her clothes would be torn to shreds.
Perched on Felix Thorne’s shoulders, Tang Xiaonan instinctively clenched her fists. A sharp pain shot through Felix’s scalp; he knew without asking that his precious daughter was angry. He quickly turned his head away, refusing to even glance at Phoenix Golding. He had to make his position clear, otherwise Xiaonan would get upset and ignore him again.
Satisfied, Tang Xiaonan patted Felix Thorne’s head and smoothed down his hair. ’It’s good that he can learn from his mistakes,’ she thought. ’If Dad still couldn’t tell right from wrong and kept things ambiguous with Phoenix Golding, hmph, I’d definitely make Grandpa and Grandma give this clueless father a good thrashing.’
Felix Thorne let out a sigh of relief and raised a hand to wipe away his sweat.
"You slut, how dare you try to seduce my Felix!"
Burning with rage, Phoebe Huxley kicked her viciously. She wanted to land a few more kicks but was stopped by Preston Thorne, who told her to hurry up and get the woman onto the stage. The villagers parted to make way, and Phoebe easily dragged Phoenix Golding up.
After being dragged all that way, Phoenix Golding was a complete mess. Her neat hair was disheveled and her clothes were in tatters. But her mind was quick. The moment she was on the stage, she started wailing, "Uncle Preston, if you wanted me up here, you could have just said so! I have my own two feet, I can walk up myself! Why’d you let this psycho drag me? The Thornes can’t just bully the Goldings like this, can you?"
Down below the stage, the members of the Golding family had complicated expressions. Phoenix Golding’s words had indeed swayed some of them, fanning their resentment toward the Thorne family.
Linden’s mother also shouted from the crowd, "Why’d you call Phoenix up there? What did she do wrong?"
Preston Thorne gave Phoenix Golding a long, hard look and sneered. Raising the megaphone, he announced, "I certainly wouldn’t call Phoenix Golding up here for no reason. Now all of you listen to me! I’ve spent the last few days in town making inquiries. The mole who snitched on us... was Phoenix Golding! So tell me, does she deserve to be up here or not?"
"She does! Kill the traitor! That damn bitch deserves to die a horrible death!"
The villagers were furious, surging forward to beat Phoenix Golding. Even though she had only reported Byron Thorne’s family this time, who knew if they would be next?
THWACK!
A stinky shoe slammed into Phoenix Golding. It was thrown by one of Raina’s neighbors. The woman was raising three pigs, which made her the most worried person in the village about being reported. On top of that, being Raina’s neighbor, she feared that if the work team came back to inspect Raina’s home, her own household would inevitably get caught up in it.
The three pigs were only about a hundred catties each now, but by spring, they’d be well over two hundred. She could sell two and use one for the wedding banquet. That would cover most of the money and meat for her son’s wedding, and she wouldn’t have to borrow much.
The woman’s plan was perfect, but the work team introduced an unexpected variable. If they actually investigated and found out, her extra pig would be confiscated. A live pig sold to the state purchasing station went for six jiao per catty, meaning one pig could fetch over a hundred yuan. But anything confiscated by the work team was gone forever; you wouldn’t see a single cent.
The more she thought about it, the more her heart ached with anger and fear. Over a hundred yuan, nearly lost! Overcome with emotion, the woman had ripped off her shoe and thrown it. Now she was pushing her way toward the stage, wanting to give Phoenix Golding a good thrashing to vent her fury.
Many others, all of them housewives, felt the same way. In their households, it was the women who raised the pigs, chickens, and ducks, so they were the ones who felt this threat most acutely. Their eyes were bloodshot, and they looked as if they wanted to eat Phoenix Golding alive.
