Chapter 538: All I Want Is The Truth
Seeing that Wendy stayed silent, Michael sighed and said, "Wendy, just tell Grandma that the media made up the stuff. Tell her that both the children are mine."
"But doesn’t that mean I’ll have to lie to Grandma?" Wendy pursed her lips, feeling conflicted.
"How is that lying? The journalists were making stuff up anyway. And besides, I don’t want to bother Grandma with the bad news, which will be bad for her health. As long as we both confirm that the children are mine, she’ll believe us," Michael said.
"Doesn’t this sound good?"
Wendy was dumbfounded, she had no answer to that.
As Michael and Wendy walked into the old mansion, Mrs. Lucas was sitting in the living room, waiting for them with her crutch.
Michael held Wendy’s hands tightly as if he was trying to empower and console her at the same time. Wendy didn’t dare look at Mrs. Lucas’s eyes as she walked towards her.
Mrs. Lucas was ecstatic when she found out that Wendy was pregnant and treated her like a queen. But today, after reading the news, her heart sank from high heaven. Nobody would be able to handle news like that.
Mrs. Lucas sat on the chair and glanced at Michael and Wendy solemnly. She then asked them, "You know why I asked the both of you to come back, don’t you?"
Wendy knelt on the floor, lowering her head. She felt very guilty. Michael wanted to help her get up as he didn’t want her to be kneeling on the floor while pregnant.
He whispered to her, "Wendy, get up. It’s not good for you to kneel on the floor."
However, Wendy insisted on kneeling, which forced Michael to do the same.
Mrs. Lucas asked Michael and Wendy, who were kneeling in front of her, "It seems that you know why I called you both back. Explain yourselves."
"Grandma, it was Christian who set us up, and the journalists were writing fake news. Please don’t trust any of them. The journalists want nothing but publicity and readership, and they will do anything to achieve that," Michael said.
"That’s what I thought. I didn’t believe those articles either, which is why I asked you both to come back."
Mrs. Lucas received a lot of calls from her friends and families asking about the articles online earlier in the morning, and she had just called all those people the day before, telling them about Wendy being pregnant again.
Regardless of the authenticity of those articles, Mrs. Lucas felt humiliated. Although she didn’t care much about her reputation, she still wanted to figure out what exactly was going on, after all, those articles had been circulated on the Internet for hours.
Initially, Mrs. Lucas didn’t believe any of those articles, but after seeing how guilty Wendy looked and recalling the way she reacted in the old mansion yesterday, she could tell that there were some secrets that she was trying to hide from her.
Mrs. Lucas gazed at Wendy, who kept her head lowered and avoided looking at her.
She asked, "Wendy, do you know anything about those articles? Are they telling the truth?"
"I..." Wendy pursed her lips as she didn’t know how to answer Mrs. Lucas. The articles were indeed spreading lies, but the baby she was carrying perhaps wasn’t Michael’s.
She had already felt guilty toward Michael and Mrs. Lucas, and after reading those articles, she had no idea how to lie to Mrs. Lucas again.
Michael knew how stressed Wendy was at the moment, so he reached out to hold her hand, squeezing it gently, signaling for her to deny it.
Michael had accepted Wendy’s baby as his own a long time ago, so he thought that there were no good reasons to tell the truth, which would only hurt everyone, especially Mrs. Lucas.
...
Mrs. Lucas could somehow tell that her worst nightmare was about to come true upon seeing Wendy’s reaction, but she managed to calm herself and didn’t push Wendy to answer her.
Mrs. Lucas asked her another question after Wendy’s long silence, "Wendy, then allow me to ask you this. Have I been good to you?"
"Yes. You have been very good to me," Wendy answered the question sincerely.
Mrs. Lucas had indeed treated Wendy as if she were her own granddaughter, and she was also the first person in the Lucas Family who took care of her.
"Then regardless of what happened, please just tell me the truth," Mrs. Lucas said after sighing.
Although Mrs. Lucas didn’t believe a word of those articles when the rumor started to spread, she still felt compelled to ask Michael and Wendy for affirmation. But now, she was getting increasingly worried.
After hearing Mrs. Lucas’s last request, she couldn’t keep her cool anymore and started tearing up. If it weren’t for Michael, who managed to hold on to her, she would’ve fallen onto the floor.
"Wendy," Michael murmured as he was worried about her health.
Mrs. Lucas waved her hands. She was disheartened. She said, "Never mind. Get up."
For what it’s worth, Wendy was a pregnant woman after all.
"Grandma has already told you to stand up, Wendy," Michael said.
Wendy was too ashamed to stand, but Michael dragged her up anyway, and he put her on the couch.
He then whispered beside her ear, "Wendy, we’ve agreed that..."
Although Michael tried to lower his voice, Mrs. Lucas had heard what he said. She stomped her crutch on the floor and said sternly, "I’ve lived so long that I’ve seen everything. All I want is the truth."
"Sorry, Grandma..." Wendy couldn’t bring herself to lie to Mrs. Lucas. She pushed Michael away to show that she didn’t want to lie.
She sniffed and said truthfully, "I... I don’t know who this baby belongs to either."
If it were some other woman, Mrs. Lucas would deem her a slut who slept around and got knocked up by accident. But she knew Wendy well enough to believe that she didn’t do that.
"I did try to seduce a guy two months ago, but I only did it to get information from him so that we could go against Christian. Unfortunately, he saw right through my trick, so that night, I just..." Wendy bit her own lip and she couldn’t garner enough strength to finish her sentence.
"Are you saying that you’re carrying that man’s child?" Mrs. Lucas stomped the floor with her crutch again as she was getting more and more agitated. "How could you be so reckless and put yourself in that kind of danger, Wendy?"
"Grandma, it’s likely that Wendy isn’t carrying that man’s child," Michael explained.
"Wendy passed out that night, so she probably didn’t even know what happened.
Besides, I got there on time and it was nowhere as bad as Wendy thought it was.
Maybe nothing catastrophic happened, and she was only having some post-traumatic stress and subconsciously made herself believe that she was raped."
"What did you see when you got there then?" Mrs. Lucas was very shrewd, and she could easily tell that Michael was trying to defend Wendy.
"I... I..." Michael stuttered. He knew that his grandma would see right through him if he lied.
However, the truth was that he saw Wendy covered in blood and was completely naked when he got there, and if Mrs. Lucas knew about it, she would only affirm that Wendy wasn’t carrying his child.
...
Michael stayed silent for a brief moment and said, "Grandma, the journalists were just making stuff up. There was nothing going on between Wendy and Todd, and Wendy has never used sex to advance her career. She achieved everything purely because of her talent."
There were only three people in the living room as Mrs. Lucas had asked all the helpers to leave before Wendy and Michael arrived. It was so quiet in the living room that they could hear their own heartbeat.
Mrs. Lucas shook her head and sighed. She believed in Wendy.
After a long while, Mrs. Lucas looked at Wendy and Michael earnestly again and asked them, "Then what are you going to do? Are you going to wait until the baby is near-birth before taking a DNA test?"
This was the best solution that Mrs. Lucas could think of, as DNA testing was the most accurate way to determine who the father of that child was. They would keep it if the baby belonged to Michael. Otherwise, they should abort it, or it would only hurt the child and the family when the truth came to light later on.
"We’ve decided that we will keep this child," Michael said.
"Keep this child?" Mrs. Lucas was both shocked and confused. "Aren’t you even going to find out if you’re the father or not?"
"Wendy is too weak to get an abortion, Grandma. She’s been having health conditions after she gave birth to Leah and Jake, and it was already a miracle that she got pregnant. If she gets an abortion, her life might be in danger," Michael said while holding Wendy’s hands tightly, expressing his determination. "I don’t care who objects to it, but I will make sure that Wendy gives birth to the child safely."
Mrs. Lucas had no idea how to respond to Michael. Six years ago, when Wendy got pregnant, Michael had suspected that Wendy cheated on him, so he forced her to get an abortion and walked her into the abortion clinic.
However, he was now so determined to keep the baby even though this child might not be his.
He was the proud and aloof Michael Lucas. But now, he was willing to raise a kid that he might not have fathered just to keep Wendy safe.
Mrs. Lucas took a deep breath and her eyes turned red. She was the matriarch of the Lucas Family, and she felt aggrieved that her grandson had to swallow his pride like that. But on the other hand, she was happy for Wendy.
After all, Wendy had been married to Michael for nine years, which was more than one-tenth of an average person’s life. Wendy used to devote her life to Michael, yet he never reciprocated her feelings. But now, nine years after, Michael was willing to do so much for her. It was a happy ending for Wendy after all.
"Have you ever thought that the baby Wendy’s carrying might become foes with your kids in the future, just like how you and Christian are?" Mrs. Lucas asked.
Christian and Michael were half-siblings who shared the same father, and they had been competing against each other for years. Now, they had nothing but hatred for each other.
Mrs. Lucas knew about their feuds. Although she had never interfered with their fights, she couldn’t accept that the same thing would happen to her great-grandchildren.
"No, it won’t," Michael said sternly. "I’ve talked about that with Wendy. I’m not my dad, and that child is not going to become Christian. I’ll give him the same fatherly love that I give Leah and Jake, and I’ll make sure that they’ll grow up in a family full of love. We will bring them up to be good people who will be appreciative of others."
