Chapter 231 Ballot Fraud
After two long seconds of deathly silence, screams and shrieks tore through the air.
My pupils dilated sharply. I instinctively looked toward the falling Holden when a hand suddenly covered my eyes.
Lucas almost reflexively pulled me into his arms, using his back to shield me from the bloody, horrific scene.
"Don't look."
My ear pressed against his chest, I could clearly hear his heartbeat—wild and nearly out of control.
The scene descended into chaos.
Police sirens, ambulance sirens, reporters' questions, Tessa's screams, Donald's crying and cursing.
All the sounds mixed together like a nightmare impossible to wake from.
Holden landed on the edge of the safety cushion and died on the spot.
Donald had only tied a safety rope to the wheelchair, not to Holden himself. No one expected he would do something so stupid.
And that kick he gave to the wheelchair was captured clearly on camera. The internet was filled with condemnation.
"How could he do that to his own father?"
"This family is terrifying—they'll do anything for profit!"
"He called Lucas cold-blooded, then killed his own dad with his own hands!"
Back home, I pulled Lucas into the bedroom.
His eyes were bloodshot, but not a single tear fell.
I cupped Lucas's face and kissed his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the tip of his nose, his lips.
I held his lips between mine, rubbing, sucking, gently biting, silently comforting him.
His trembling hands gradually steadied. He tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I'm fine."
Lucas, who was always calm, strong, and capable in front of others, was at this moment fragile, like a shattered doll.
"I never thought he would die in such a way."
"No one could have imagined that." I gazed at Lucas and gently stroked his back.
The weight of that falling life pressed heavily on Lucas.
"It's all Donald's fault." A fire seemed to burn in my chest, and I wanted to burn Donald and everyone else who dare threatened Lucas.
To me, Holden was nothing more than an annoying old man. Why couldn't he have died somewhere else?
Why did he have to die right in front of Lucas!
"Anyway, Holden's already dead. There's no need to take what he said seriously."
Lucas's breathing paused slightly.
I tightened my arms, hugging him harder. "You won't end up as miserable as him. You'll have a beautiful life."
"Lucas, I'm still here, and our baby is too."
I pulled his hand to my belly. The baby seemed to sense our emotions and gave Lucas's hand a gentle push.
Lucas clung to me like a final lifeline, burying his face deep in the crook of my neck. Suppressed breathing sounds came muffled, and drops of warm wetness slid down my collarbone with restraint.
I repeated comforting words in Lucas's ear over and over.
Outside the window, the sky gradually darkened. Inside, we hadn't turned on the lights—only faint daylight remained.
We embraced quietly, filling each other's world with warmth and breath.
-
Donald's suicide livestream was a complete and utter conspiracy.
Behind him were the Thornfield family, the Marr family, and officials from opposing factions at city hall.
They bore part of the responsibility for Holden's death too.
I worried Lucas was deeply affected and wanted him to rest properly, but Lucas refused.
He sent Donald and other members of the Valeri family to prison as principal and accomplice offenders. Inside those iron bars, he had already arranged tough characters to "welcome" them.
Lucas collected Holden's body, arranged for a funeral home to cremate it, and scattered the ashes on a mountain.
Then Lucas cleared out the traitors who had helped Donald climb to the top of the company building with swift and decisive methods.
He didn't tell me exactly what he did, but after this incident, I could tell that Lucas's authority among his subordinates had grown even stronger.
3 days until the election.
The third-place candidate Derek's vote count began to surge dramatically, overtaking the second candidate Veselin.
Meanwhile, Brian's approval rating was far from reaching the expected target.
My instincts told me something was wrong, and then chain pharmacies and hotel branches reported the same issue around the same time—
Regular citizens wanting to redeem gifts claimed their voting rights had been used without their knowledge.
My first reaction was that someone was faking votes.
Brian immediately mobilized his legal team to report it to the committee, but the investigation showed every vote was real—no fraud existed.
Marcus's hacker friend Mole also said, "There really is no fraud. Usually fake voting rates exceed the community's resident population limit, or multiple key voting districts show large amounts of repeated voting from the same IP at the same time. I also didn't find any traces of manual tampering in the backend logs."
"That's not right!" Karen examined the original voting logs and IP records Mole provided and said sharply, "Bella, look! These IDs all belong to Chaotic Zone residents!"
Marcus slammed the table in frustration. "Did those guys all get fooled by Derek's 'Light of the Common People' title? Brian, you should have called yourself the Light of the World from the start!"
Brian rolled his eyes. "Stop talking nonsense."
I shook my head. "What Karen means is, Chaotic Zone residents don't even have phones, let alone internet access. Their identity information was just registered recently. Normally, they should vote offline—there's no way they could leave voting records online."
Marcus jumped to his feet. "Right!"
"So it was fraud after all." Brian narrowed his eyes. "City hall staffs are in charge of registering residents' identities—they're in the best position to pull this off."
Marcus looked at Brian and me. "They deliberately created fake votes for Derek to take Derek down?"
Brian looked at him in surprise. "You suddenly got smart!"
Marcus snorted. "I was never dumb! Bella, so what should we do?"
I curved my lips slightly. "Derek's already in the trap. Do we really need to save him?"
Brian's legal team reported the vote irregularities again, this time providing detailed evidence. Half a day later, the election oversight committee issued an emergency announcement, disqualifying Derek and voiding all his votes.
Co-governed District had worked hard to cultivate Derek, carefully covering up the stains on his character. They never imagined Derek would fail this way.
Co-governed District's power council reacted strongly. I immediately had the PR department expose the details of the vote fraud online.
The power council quickly realized city hall was behind this and strongly demanded an investigation, but city hall had already arranged scapegoats—nothing could affect Veselin anyway.
1 day to go. Brian led Veselin by a narrow margin of just a thousand votes.
Local news and online sources suddenly exploded with various negative stories about Brian, me, and Lucas, fabricating rumors from every angle.
I didn't issue any rebuttals.
Rumors were not worth serious responses.
I directed internet trolls to the comment sections of these fake news stories to mock them:
"I've seen the exact kind of news before, just with different main characters. Do you guys have templates for making up stories?"
"How much does one fake news story pay? Where can I find this kind of work? I want to do it too!"
"You even got the candidate's gender wrong. Do you really think people are idiots?"
At the same time, Gale and Lucas, who had bought large numbers of votes offline, began to make their move.