THE LAST MINUTE GROOM - CHAPTER 26

“I shouldered the responsibility of catering for myself and my brother for 20 years. What were you doing? Where were you when your so-called family wanted my brother and me dead?! You all owe me, instead of hiding away from my sight, you dare to provoke me?!” He curled his lips into a mocking smile.

“Lu Ren calm down–”

“Do you take me for a fool? How did my father die? When he was alive, how did you care about him? You all cast him aside immediately after he started regressing. You turned a blind eye when the family was after my brother and I. Old men, why are you suddenly getting involved with my life? Is this a show of hypocrisy because the rainborite ore?”

“Don’t you dare disrespect us! Lu Ren, you–” Another old man who had been fuming for so long could no longer take it anymore and spoke up but Maverick wasn’t going to give him a listening ear.

“Wh@??ver I do with my life is not your business. Whomever I marry is none of your concern. Whether I have the rainborite ore or not shouldn’t be your problem… Unless you want to end up being my enemies.” He looked from one of them to the other. Seeing they weren’t talking, he continued.

“Today, I’ll let this slide but the next time you try this with me, you’ll taste my wrath!” He stood up and walked out.

After he left, one of the living ancestors shook his head, “He cannot be controlled. He is willing to destroy himself and his enemies if need be.”

“Then, there’s only one choice left,” another said. The two turned to look at the one who tried to convince Maverick earlier, waiting for his contribution.

The third one narrowed his eyes in deep thought. After a long while, he said; “Do it, we do not need a leader who wouldn’t heed our words. As for the chip, we’ll get it from that Yu boy and have Rex or Valen work on it. They should be able to do it.”
…

As for Rex, he was seen at Madam Caroline’s house with a few men dressed professionally.

They were checking out the house and the surrounding. After they were done, Rex asked;

“What do you think?”

The leader nodded, “It’s indeed a beautiful building, We’ll buy this too.”

Rex clapped and whistled, “Very good. Send the money to that same account and complete the procedure with my lawyers.”

He looked at lawyer Spid’s juniors and sighed, “Why didn’t lawyer Spid come? You guys are boring.” He left them and walked into the house.

Rex roamed the sitting room before going upstairs, to his mother’s room. There were a few pictures on the wall. He glanced at the pictures on the wall, only Madam Caroline’s photos were there and none of her children’s could be seen.

Searching everywhere nook and cranny of the room, Rex was hoping to find something that would make him change his mind, at least, a redeeming quality, even if it was an old photo of their family, provided the picture has him or Maverick in it, just anything would do.

However, after turning the room upside down, all that Rex saw were pictures of Levi and their mother… Including a framed picture she took in high school. She was in it with a young boy who looked almost identical to Levi. He must be Levi’s father.

Rex angrily threw the framed pictures across the room, causing the three to hit the wall and shatter into pieces.

The young man chuckled sadly as angry tears ran down his cheeks. He furiously wiped them off with his hands and sat on the bed, trying to calm himself.

At that moment, Madam Caroline barged into the room in fury but before she could take a step, her eyes caught sight of the broken frames.

Like a madwoman, she rushed to the pictures and grabbed the closest one, not minding the broken glasses.

“D– did you do this?!” she asked in shock.

“Who else is here?” Rex retorted. He was equally angry.

“How dare you?!” The woman lurched at him, grabbed a lampstand, and hit him on the head.

Rex didn’t dodge, he wanted to see if she would hesitate but the woman didn’t.

“Bang!”

The sound echoed in the room. Rex was still staring at her as blood trailed down his forehead and dropped on his lashes.

Madam Caroline smiled, then laughed maniacally before she burst into tears and knelt on the broken glasses, holding the framed picture to her chest.

“I’m sorry,” she cried.

Rex’s eyes shook, thinking she was talking to him.

“I’m so sorry for everything! Please forgive me!”

Rex was touched by her remorse. He stood up but before he could take a step, he swayed and quickly held the wall for support.

“Vance, I’m sorry,” she lifted the photo and kissed it.

Rex felt a movement in his throat, and the next thing, a fishy taste assaulted his taste bud. He sat back on the bed as his heartbeat rose and fell at great speed.

The young man was heartbroken seeing his mother displaying love for a broken picture.

“Vance, I promise, I didn’t forget you, I’ll take the revenge to its fullest. I’ll make them pay!”

“Have you ever considered me your son for a fleeting moment? Mum?” Rex asked. He was in an unspeakable grief. Was it too hard to tell him sorry and wipe off the blood from his face? Even a stranger would do that, right? But this was his own MOTHER! His own BLOOD!

“Hahaha…” The woman suddenly laughed. “You, I will rather die than love anything that cames from Lu Hao!” She screamed.

Rex was shocked once more. “So, my father was the problem?”

“Lu Hao, that monster ruined my life! Seeing him dying was not enough to pay for everything he did to me!”

Images flickered past Madam Caroline’s mind.

*Years ago…*

Madam Caroline was still a high schooler. She looked excited as she jogged towards two young boys who were sitting under a tree in a school premises.

“Brother Hao! Brother Vance!” she called.

Young Hao smiled when he saw her. He stood up and hurried to her, “I told you to stop rushing like that, you’ll fall.”

“Hehe, I won’t, Brother Vance is there to protect me,” she giggled.

Vance didn’t get up from where he was. Rather he looked upset, “What do you want now?”

His cold voice surprised both Hao and Caroline, but thinking it was because she hadn’t wished him a happy birthday, Caroline smiled and said, “I– I brought you cake,” she pouted for a moment before she beamed, “Happy birthday!”

Vance smiled faintly, “Thank you,” he collected the cake and just abandoned it.

“Hey, don’t be so mean,” Hao said and tapped Vance on the head.

“Stay out of this,” Vance glared at him.

“Brother Hao, can you please excuse us for a moment?” Caroline pleaded with her eyes.

Hao looked confused but nodded. He patted Caroline on the head and warned, “Don’t go anywhere, if you’re done, come look for me in class. I won’t be able to explain to your parents if anything happened to you.”

“Mn, I won’t go anywhere, I promise,” she raised a pinky finger.

Hao still didn’t feel alright. He went to Vance and pulled him up by the collar, “I won’t warn you again, if anything like what happened before repeats itself, I won’t forgive you.”

Vance slapped his hand off, “What would happen? She’s your friend, so she’s mine. Our families are discussing our engagement, so what can I do to her?” He rolled his eyes.

Vance and Hao are best friends like brothers but the only time they quarrel is when it has something to do with Caroline.

Hao left the two under the tree, trusting that Caroline would be fine. After he left, Vance turned his back to Caroline with his hands folded on his chest.

Caroline walked around him and stood in his front like a drenched little kitten. “Brother Vance, I– are you still angry?”

“Should I not?” He raised a brow.

“I– I’m sorry.”

“Will that fix anything? Caroline, what are you scared of? That I won’t marry you after that or what?”

“No, no, I didn’t say that, I’m just afraid that… That…”

“I’ll take care of everything, I promise… It’s my eighteenth birthday today and I’ll be graduating highschool next month, but you’ll still be here for two more years. It’s only right that you bid me farewell with it?”

Caroline didn’t want to give in, yet Vance pressured and emotionally blackmailed her until she succumbed.

The two left school and went to a hotel. Sixteen years Caroline and Eighteen years Vance were soon seen under the duvet as they made love passionately.

Caroline cried a few times from the pain but later, her sweet cries for more could be heard.

A few days later, videos of two students from Jace highschool entering a hotel room and ending up having segz was posted online. Although the faces were blurred, Caroline knew it was her and Vance.

She went to him but Vance blamed the hotel for it and told her not to worry.

However, a few days later, the unblurred video that had only Caroline’s face showing was sent to Caroline’s family, and her engagement with Vance was called off.

Due to the incident, Caroline’s father died from a heart attack and her mother also died a few months later when she found out her daughter was pregnant.

Even though the incident was fishy, the girl refused to blame Vance for anything because Vance met up with her a few times, explaining that it wasn’t his doing and blamed his enemies. Caroline believed him and they continued seeing each other behind everyone’s back.

One day, Caroline caught Vance with another girl behind the school, kissing. Feeling hurt, she barged in on them and started fighting the girl.

Vance didn’t try to stop the fight and left the two to ki|| themselves. The other girl was eighteen. She almost ki||ed Caroline, but God intervened and Hao ran into them.

He separated the fight and took the injured Caroline to the hospital, that was when he realized she was pregnant.

Caroline didn’t want to say who was responsible until her mother forced her to speak up. Her sick mother couldn’t take it and died.

Hao saw how everything unfolded. After the funeral that Vance and his family didn’t attend, Hao started suspecting a dirty game, so for that, he stopped being friends with Vance until one afternoon after their final year exam.

Hao was walking down the corridor when he heard Vance telling other guys about the girls he had slept with. Hao would have ignored him if he didn’t talk about Caroline.

So he confronted Vance but the bastard denied the pregnancy at first, claiming that Caroline slept with another man at a hotel.

Hao had seen the video trending for weeks and didn’t know it was Caroline’s. Refusing to believe it, he called an expert to return the video to its original form and that was how he saw the two people in the video.

He approached Vance with the evidence, this time, Vance didn’t deny it.

“Hahaha… What can you do about it? Her parents are dead, she has no power to fight me. What, do you want to break our family’s old ties for a girl? I already ate her, you should do the same. To be honest, she was sweet and submissive in bed. I can’t take the image of her pleading for more, away from my mind. The way she begged me to go harder…
“The way she called my name and told me ‘I love you so much!’ Oh Lord, I can’t forget those words, too bad she’s pregnant now, I don’t want to be a father yet, so let her get rid of it, who knows, we might get back together after. But she definitely cannot be my wife, she can only be a mistress–”

“Vance!!” Hao was so angry that he punched Vance in the face.

Vance burst out laughing. “Hahaha… Fool in love. Look at you, you’ve loved her all these years, yet she doesn’t like you one bit. She knows I don’t like her, yet she’s willing to die for me, fool…”

Hao threw a punch at him again but Vance deflated it and the two got into a fierce fight.

The students in the school had no idea why the two best friends were fighting. Some thought they were sparing but the amount of injuries on them were more than just sparing.

They fought from the corridor to the top of the stairs. Just as Vance pushed Hao off the stairs, Hao instinctively grabbed Vance’s hand with one hand and held the railing with the other.

He pulled Vance who lost his momentum and fell off the stairs. Before he got to the end of the stairs, he had hit his head countless times, so even when he was immediately rushed to the hospital, he couldn’t make it.

When Caroline heard the news, she concluded that Hao ki||ed her boyfriend out of jealousy and that hatred had been in her heart and grown with her.

Hao felt guilty and wanted to make amends but he didn’t know how until his mother brought him Caroline as a bride.

He loved her, plus the guilt he felt towards Vance, he allowed her to do everything she wanted without reprimanding her, including when she threw little Rex away.

Madam Caroline snapped back to reality.

“Your father was a monster! A bad man, he ki||ed the love of my life because he was jealous, then told his mother to give me to him in marriage. He deserved what he got! I’m just sad that I couldn’t ki|| him myself!… Hahahahah…!”