Chapter 95: Was It Really Just An Accident?
Since the day she spent with Travis in the elevator, some aftereffects were left on Arianna. She was worried about elevators, and she preferred to climb the building even when she had to climb a dozen floors. She had to sleep with a lamp on at night.
What’s more, she saw everyone as an actor now. When others were speaking to her, she always classified them in her heart. A was an experiential actor; B was an expressionist actor; C was always switching in between two performance modes… D was classicism, while E was modernism… When others only regarded her gaze as if she was listening attentively, she felt ridiculous.
Charles methodically controlled everything about them with patience and strength. Charles’s family background was very good, but with not many family members. She had seen some of his family, and they never showed any rejection or hostility. On the contrary, most of them were very kind to her.
Arianna knew she was not favored by everyone. Charles probably did a lot of preliminary work on his family members. Maybe Charles had a high status in the family despite his young identity in the clan, and everyone respected him.
One day she met Charles’s grandfather without being informed. At first, she only regarded him as an elder in the family. The old-fashioned and very familiar old man praised her, “You are Charles’s favorite girl. And he is always right about picking.”
She didn’t panic after knowing the identity of the old man. Charles apologized to her, but he didn’t feel it was wrong. He believed in this way, she could show her true self in the most natural state. And he hoped his grandpa would see her best side.
She looked at Charles’s face and roughly inferred that as long as the old man did not object, there was no room for others to speak.
Charles said, “Let’s get married in the spring of next year.”
Probably because she had been a naysayer in the past few years, Arianna had a bit of rejection and was confused about this suggestion, but she could not refuse him. Feeling upset, she nodded and agreed to his proposal.
Maybe she had reason to hate Travis, but she had accepted his apology. Moreover, that day, when she did not give him a good face, he still let Susan make a lie for her. She knows Travis did not like to lie at all. Even when he tempted her to dedicate herself to him, he did not tell a lie.
It turned out that she was the type of “bully the weak and fear the strong”. When Travis was aggressive, she carefully defended herself. When he softened and expressed goodwill to her, she turned into a hedgehog and deliberately misinterpreted his kindness.
In front of this person, it was too easy to expose shortcomings and defects to her. She finally had another reason to hate him.
The death of Chester was another problem for her, although that matter did not come to an end, and it did not even appear in the newspapers.
One day, she met a policeman who had made a transcript for her on Chester’s case at a fast-food restaurant. He recognized her and called her. Arianna thought twice and finally asked him cautiously about the investigation of Chester’s case.
The policeman replied that this kind of traffic accident happens all the time. The same case as the drivers who escaped after killing the victim in the accident was very common. And there was no way to track them down.
Arianna repeatedly asked, “Was it really just an accident?”All text © NôvelD(r)a'ma.Org.
The little policeman looked around nervously, approached her, and whispered, “Oh, you must have heard some of our conversations that day. Don’t worry about it, and save yourself from getting into trouble. Even his wife and daughter are afraid of getting into trouble again. They even refused to come back and claim the corpse.”
It seemed just like the rumors she heard that this was just a behavior manipulated by the black forces.
But she recalled the strange feeling she felt in her sixth sense in the few days before that accident. She had been followed, but she didn’t feel threatened at that time. She knew that Chester’s death was somehow related to her.
The weather was getting colder, and Arianna’s health was getting bad again. At Charles’s suggestion, she spent two or three nights per week going to the gym. Charles was busy. She could not meet him very often in a week.
Charles gave her a membership card, and Arianna changed to a new gym. She only did yoga and aerobics. She sometimes also did a massage to spend the whole evening.
The massage parlor was still a good place to listen to gossip in the city. Most of the people who came here were government officials, ladies, and wealthy housewives. The information contained in their gossip was coated with more politics and money.
Arianna got to know a few of them. She heard many gossips that ordinary citizens couldn’t hear, for example, the exclusive insight into the exchange of power in this city, the legendary life of a five-star hotel beauty waiter, the spectacular manner of a business celebrity… In short, it is more vivid than the TV series.
She did not know most of the objects that were talked about, so she just listened and forgot. But one day, they launched a new topic. And they had been discussing it for two weeks. She was very familiar with the protagonists of the topic, Travis and Susan.
They could not dig much on Travis. Their comment about him was nothing more than his mysterious origin, his legendary entrepreneurship and low-key style, as well as his astounding choice of bride.
For a while, Arianna was afraid that her name would pop up in their discussions. Fortunately, they did not mention her name.
However, Susan’s history was wonderful. Her life became a chronicle history book in their discussions, from a problematic child to a bad girl, then to a fallen young woman, and then to her disappearance, and finally, she turned into an elegant woman.
In their gossip, Travis seemed to have encountered a big crisis judging from a series of unreasonable decisions and reactions of him.
Arianna did not want to hear any topic about the couple anymore. Whenever she went out, she would deliberately avoid seeing Travis Cooper’s notable buildings in the city. But one day, in order to write a report, she went through all the newspapers of current affairs in the library. She still could not help checking the financial columns.