Chapter 976 - 509: Bygone Events Like Smoke, Past Lives Like Dreams (Part 3)

"In that era, in such a small village, there was no place for a woman who was heavily pregnant without being married. Later, my grandmother couldn’t wait any longer, the family had no money, and she was already seven months along, so she used the little clues she had to find the big city. She knew the man’s name because he had told her where he lived, so she went to find him. Do you know what that man’s name was?" Eliza Bell drank down the liquid in her glass, smiling as she asked him.

A terrible, ominous feeling slowly rose from his feet. Impossible, this couldn’t possibly be...

"The young man’s surname was Hughes, you guessed it right. That young man was the grandfather of Joshua Hughes..." Eliza waved for the bartender in the distance to come over and make her another drink.

"When my grandmother reached the Hughes Family, she found out that the young man she knew was the son of a wealthy family, and he already had a wife. She watched as that elegant woman drank a cup of tea and then lost consciousness. When she woke, her belly was flat again. No one cared what had happened to her; they simply left her in the hospital with a stack of money beside her." Eliza’s tears finally fell.

"Do you think she was unfortunate? Wrong. In that hospital, my grandmother met the man who would love her most in her life, my grandfather. He was a doctor at that hospital, and he loved her, loved her dearly. After my grandmother recovered, they were set to marry. The day before the wedding, the young man from the Hughes Family found my grandmother. He told her he hadn’t abandoned their vows, he just couldn’t divorce right away, so he felt ashamed to see her. He didn’t know his family would do such a thing, and he wanted to ask her to give him a chance, to leave with him. But my grandmother was scared. My grandfather was a gentle and considerate man, she shook her head and refused him. When the young man from the Hughes Family left, he left behind a document, which was the mysterious eight percent of Hughes’ shares." Eliza’s gaze fell into the distance, as if her grandmother’s figure was still in front of her, shy and lovely, indeed able to drive men crazy.

"Isn’t that eight percent yours? There’s only you left in your family now, isn’t there? Or was it that child?" Julian Carter never would have thought the story was like this, even though it sounds short, it was the tangled grudges of the previous generation.

"That child was said to have died at birth, having been induced at seven months, it was a boy. The eight percent had nothing to do with the child. In her life, my grandmother bore two daughters, one was my mother and me, and the other was my aunt, whom I’ve never met. I heard she looked very much like my grandmother, was also a first-class beauty. One year, she went to Las Vegas and met a gambler. Perhaps fate is such a strange thing. It was said that many people back then fell at my aunt’s feet, yet she only liked that gambler. She even went crazy and stayed in Las Vegas, refusing to leave. My grandmother was very angry, cut off the mother-daughter relationship with her, because she knew how heartbreaking it was if a woman were deceived by a man. It became very tense, later one rainy night, my aunt returned, knelt in the yard, and begged my grandmother to take out a little bit of that eight percent to save her man. Her man had been set up in a gambling scheme, in great danger. But my grandmother had lived her life in the protection of my grandfather’s love, she hardly knew how cruel people outside could be. She just wanted her daughter to learn a hard lesson, even without using the eight percent, grandfather could have come up with that money. But she just wouldn’t agree, she wanted her to suffer a bit and then come home obediently. However, my aunt was even more stubborn than my grandmother, she didn’t stay in the house any longer, stood up, and told my grandmother the mother-daughter bond was really severed. She would never speak of that eight percent again in her life. By then Hughes’ market value was astronomical, even a sliver of that eight percent could have saved her lover. But her mother wouldn’t, and so she left, disappeared into that rainy night..." Eliza’s eyes cast down, her long lashes were wet with tiny tears, sparkling like diamonds under the light. She was ever-changing. This night there was no sign of the slyness of a little fox, nor the slightest hint of flirtation, just recounting the most ancient family history to a man she hadn’t known for long.