Chapter 111- Gloria's pain

Lucca pov

The elderly gentleman noticed something peculiar from his wife's words.

"My wife used to be a maternity nurse, so her words made me think of a possibility."

"She had been involved in baby trafficking."

To investigate the past, the elderly man went to various places and used his connections extensively.

He finally found out the identity of the couple who died in the accident.

"I asked around to see if this couple had any children. However, they had unstable jobs, and their contacts were transient, so not many people knew their situation.

In the end, I learned from their previous landlord that they had a daughter, who they claimed to have 'adopted.'"

Gloria opened her mouth slightly, her voice hoarse and trembling. "Please, go on..."

"I reached out to many friends to inquire about their situation, and I managed to contact an old colleague who had known them for decades."

"The old colleague said that this couple lived in poverty, had difficult jobs, and had a low level of education. It was impossible for them to go through the normal adoption process.

The girl they claimed to have 'adopted' was dark-haired, most likely an abandoned child whom they had picked up."

The elderly gentleman paused here, looking at Gloria. She gasped for breath and began to cry uncontrollably.

She instinctively held onto me tightly.

My wrist ached, and I watched her in silence, my mind filled with curious thoughts.

Gloria choked out, "A dark-haired... a dark-haired girl? Around 20 years old?"

The elderly gentleman nodded silently.

He continued, "After I returned home, I pried open the box that my wife had hidden under the bed. She had a habit of writing in a diary. In one of the notebooks from twenty years ago, she had written down the entire story."

Back then, she was a young nurse working in a run-down clinic, often attending to women facing unexpected pregnancies and helping them resolve their issues.

She had just married the elderly gentleman, and they were preparing to have a child, but they were living in dire poverty and couldn't see any future.

That's when a couple approached her. They offered her a sum of money to steal babies from women who were having abortions.

"The amount of money wasn't substantial, but it was exactly what my wife urgently needed, so she... took a risk and stole a child for that couple from women who were having abortions.

She then told the pregnant women who had lost their children that the babies had died due to congenital heart defects."

As the elderly gentleman spoke, Gloria was in tears, unable to hold back her emotions.

Her face was flushed, her eyes bloodshot, and she appeared to have aged ten years in the blink of an eye.

Just moments ago, she had told me that indiscriminate attacks were unacceptable, but now she seemed as if she wished she could have been the one to run over that couple herself.

It was this couple, along with the nurse, who had taken away the child from her.

They had kept her immersed in the pain of losing her lover and her daughter for twenty years.

She had completely lost the joy of living, her sense of self, and her ability to feel happiness or sorrow. Her eyes held only a solitary goal: to cure congenital heart defects.

To achieve this goal, she had squeezed every last drop of life and time out of herself, never daring to pause for a moment.

She had developed a psychological disorder and couldn't bear to have another child, which meant that Frank, who had supported her, had also lost his right to be a father.

This couple, along with the nurse, had ruined her life.

They had cast her into the fiery depths of hell, where she lived day and night with nightmares of losing her beloved daughter. Now they were either dead or rendered senseless.

Gloria's anger and resentment had no outlet but to overflow as tears. In her hazy vision, my face was covered with an impenetrable mask of steel.

I remained silent.

"I've come here to atone," the old gentleman said, trembling as he slowly knelt down in front of Gloria. Gloria didn't help him up; she didn't even seem to notice him.

She cried out in grief and despair.

"I'll never see my daughter again. She's gone to the slave camp, been reprogrammed into a mindless rogue," Gloria sobbed. It was unimaginable what she must be enduring.

From death to separation, all the pain had been inflicted upon her by these people.

"Leave," Gloria suddenly erupted in her wailing.

"Just leave me alone! Go!"

She hurled a sharp fork to the ground.

The old gentleman and I were pushed out, still bewildered.

The heavy iron door slammed shut. The sumptuous and delicious lunch, the sweet scent of juice, the warm and dry breeze—all disappeared behind that door.

The old gentleman felt a heavy weight on his heart. He adjusted his disheveled clothes and seemed about to say, "I apologize," but then he saw me, sitting against the iron door, finally breaking down completely, covering my face with my hands as I sobbed uncontrollably.

I, who had shown no emotions just moments ago, now seemed to have perfect empathy, absorbing every ounce of Gloria's pain as if it were my own. I sat there by the door, completely out of control, overwhelmed with grief.

My parents hadn't "adopted" me; they had bribed a nurse to steal me from Gloria. I had heard Gloria tell the story of her "daughter who died young" so many times, but I had never considered that I might be the subject of that story.

Looking back now, the bomb plot I had designed, which mistakenly killed my adoptive parents, felt more like a ridiculous farce. Love, hate, death, separation—all the rich and poignant emotions had washed over my body like meaningless water, leaving me numb and cold.

Perhaps the old nurse was right. Perhaps there really is a karmic cycle that binds us all together in this world.

The old gentleman reached out his hand, attempting to help me up, but I pushed him away and stumbled down the stairs.

I didn't know where I was going or in which direction to head. I had no simple way to turn back, knock on that iron door, and reveal my identity to the grieving Gloria.

It would only cause her more pain.

She would know—her daughter was alive, but she was a rogue, used by the silver-haired lycan as a forbidden concubine, giving birth to his third child at the age of nineteen, near death on countless occasions in the research facility, and scheduled to undergo a high-risk bridge operation in a month's time. Knowing all this, would Gloria find relief? No, it was impossible.

I understood that if I confessed everything to Gloria, she would have to endure the pain of losing and regaining her daughter.

She would go through a cycle of loss and recovery. She would face an immense emptiness once the brief and illusory sense of happiness faded after a month. This time, she might not be able to bear it.

I didn't intend to let Gloria go through all of this.

I ran back to the school without realizing it and found myself sitting under the plane tree for a long time.

The bell rang repeatedly until all the afternoon classes were over, and I still had no intention of going home.

I watched the sunset at my feet, and the shadows crept into my body inch by inch. The wind blew, and darkness danced over my head.

Everything was overwhelming, and my thoughts were unclear, undistinguishable, hiding the mysteries of fate within.

I felt like I was sinking.

At that moment, a car blocked the setting sun. The car door opened, and Vincent's radiant silver hair pierced through the night.

He was dressed in a sharp suit, adorned with intricate medals, and his wolf-headed cane gleamed with lifelike light.

His well-defined profile softened in the dim light, except for the sharp and cold point of his eyebrows, making him appear warmer than usual.

"I've come to pick you up," he said, tilting his head slightly, and his silver hair cascaded from his shoulders.