Shaka just calmly looked at Haley's father when he asked this and gave a simple nod in response.
When Haley's father saw this nod, he desperately shook his head and said, "No, this can't be real! If it's real, then what has everything that I've been doing for!"
He threw the pieces of paper on the ground and he grabbed his head, pulling at his hair and scratching his scalp. He was doing all that he could to avoid the truth that had been placed in front of him.
But there was no avoiding it.
He continued to suffer like this for a bit longer until he finally reached a conclusion…
"This all has to be a lie! This must be a lie that you concocted to trick me! There's no way that any of this can be true!" Haley's father roared out.
The way that he said this, it was almost as if he was trying to convince himself that this was the truth. He was desperately trying to find some kind of explanation that would help him justify everything that he had done.
But there was no hiding from the truth.
Haley's father reached out to grab at Shaka's collar, but with Shaka's abilities, he was able to easily sidestep this attempt.
Missing the collar, Haley's father fell forward from how suddenly he stood up and dashed forward, falling to the ground once more.
As he laid there on the ground, he slammed the ground again and again with his fists as if he was trying to wake up from a bad dream.
Finally, he calmed himself enough to look up at Shaka and said, "You have to be lying to me."
It was as if he was pleading with him…
But Shaka just calmly said, "What reason would I have to do that?"
Haley's father's expression completely collapsed when he heard this and he fell to the ground face first. He didn't fall unconscious, but it didn't seem like he wanted to move at all.
When Haley saw this, there was a part of her heart that turned soft and she wanted to go forward to comfort him.
But I grabbed her hand and wouldn't let her.
When she looked back at me, I just simply shook my head.
She didn't struggle anymore when she saw this, but it was clear by the look in her eyes that it was as if her heart was being torn apart.
I knew that this was something that had to happen or else they wouldn't be able to move on.
After a long silence, she looked at me and asked, "What was on those pieces of paper?"
I just shook my head and didn't explain anything to her since she didn't need to know. Or at least, she didn't need to hear it from me. She would eventually hear it all from her father when he recovered.
What was on those pieces of paper was the truth behind Alex's engagement with Haley.
The reason that Haley's father had engaged the two of them together in the first place was because of a debt that he owed to Alex's father. Or at least that was what he thought was the case.
But the information on these pieces of paper had shown that it wasn't.
Alex's father had been a crook who had lived in the slums of the city.
One day when he went to the business area of the city to find targets to steal from, but that was when he encountered an accident. It wasn't an accident that he caused, but he was a part of it because…he took what he believed to be Haley's father's corpse from the wreck.
On his way to one of his stores, Haley's father's carriage had crashed in the middle of the street and had hit several different carriages, creating a large pileup. Haley's father was completely buried under the rubble.
Alex's father who had seen this had dug into the rubble to see if there was anything that he could recover.
When he dug far enough, he found what he believed to be Haley's father's corpse.
At first, he didn't want to take him since he didn't think that a corpse would be worth anything. But since the city guards had been called and they were already nearby, he had no choice but to take this corpse.
He would at least loot it and then see if he could sell the corpse back to the family.
But what he never expected was that Haley's father was still alive.
When Haley's father had woken up, the first person that he saw was Alex's father who was standing over him.
When Alex's father saw that Haley's father was awake, he was put in a very awkward situation. That was because he had been trying to rob him of what he had on his body and was currently patting him down.
Luckily for him though, Haley's father misunderstood since he saw the cloth that he had been holding in his hand to avoid touching what he thought was a corpse. He thought that he had been helping clean his wounds with that cloth, so he thought that he was the one who had saved him.
Alex's father was caught off guard by this, but he went along with what Haley's father thought.
Just like this, Haley's father had been bound to Alex's father through this life saving debt.
He gave him plenty of money and even promised that their children would marry for this, which was what resulted in the marriage between Alex and Haley.
He took this very seriously, which was why he had stuck by it even with everything that he knew about Alex…
But all of this crumbled in the end because of one thing…a single ring.
This was the ring that Alex's father had stolen from Haley's father and had passed down to Alex. It was this ring that Shaka's men had found that completely disproved everything about this story and gave him insight on the real story.
He didn't know everything, but the information on the pieces of paper were more than enough for a normal intelligent person to understand what the truth of this matter was.
That was why Haley's father had been filled with despair when he read them.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢