The Villain's Wife

"What? No!"

"Claude… "

"I said, no! Pack your things! You and I will leave for France tonight!" His voice contained certainty. "You are coming with me tonight!"

A snort escaped her grandmother\'s lips. "Look at you, acting like a grown-up." She smiled before she thought of the letter that she sent to an attendant earlier— a letter that was addressed to Lily. "Claude… you have grown up." Her voice was calm, eyes placid as she stared at him. "Sadly… you made the wrong choice."

"What— "

"I will come with you. But let me tell you this. You made the wrong choice. I owe Lilian my life. It is my right to repay it however I want to."

"I am only thinking about your health." Claude frowned. He wanted her to live and be happy. How could she risk her life by telling Lily that the same organisation murdered Lilian and Prince Fred? He was sure that his grandmother would die before she could even get close to Lily. "Please only pack the small things… I will ask someone to help you with your clothes. Let us depart as soon as we can." He turned his back against her.

"And Eliza?" His grandmother\'s words immediately stopped him.

"What about her?"

"You like her."

"So?" he asked. "What does it have to do with anything else?"

"If you leave without telling her how much you love her…" Sadness flashed in her eyes. "You might regret it."

A sigh escaped his lips. "As long as you stay alive." He said. Right now, his priority is his grandmother\'s health. His emotions can wait.

"You are making the wrong choice." He heard his grandmother\'s soft voice when he started walking out of her room. The most important thing is to keep his grandmother alive. His personal feelings can wait.

He went to his room as he started packing all of his things.

Sadly…. Fate had different plans for him and Madam Luo.

........................

"You think she was faking it?" Zhou Jingren asked, amused. He didn\'t personally metMadam Luo, but he already had her files with him. However, the files showed that the older woman indeed hasAlzheimer\'s.

"I think she was faking it too." Qin Yuanfeng started to explain the inconsistencies. "She could easily fool a lot of people simply because she was old. But what she showed us simply does not make any sense."

"Interesting." Zhou Jingren stared at his wife. "What are you thinking?"

"I think… For some reason… I think my grandmother might be associated with the Spectre."

Silence immediately followed her words.

Lily added. "Madam Luo keeps on saying that ghosts will kill her. Spectre means ghosts. Now, why would the Spectre kill her?" In Lily\'s mind, everything already made sense. Madam Luo is pretending to have Dementia to fool the Spectre. However… something is still not right here. She is missing something.

"So you are saying that Lilian might be a member of the Spectre? And they killed her as well?" Finally, Zhou Jingren decided to blurt it out in the open. Madam Luo had been saying the ghosts killed Lilian, does that mean The Order killed their own member?

"And they might be the reason why Grandma Ye died as well." Lily concluded. "It wasn\'t just a coincidence that Grandma Ye told me that someone had been following me around since I was a child and she died a month after Lilian. She must have found out something." She met Zhou Jingren\'s eyes. Both immediately understood that there is no need for them to mention the journals.

"Doesn\'t make any sense." Qin Yuanfeng blurted as he shook his head. "It just doesn\'t make any sense. I mean… remember how I did some research about you?" Before he met Lily, he already made a research about her. "My research and the things that we discovered after that is saying that Lilian didn\'t know where you are, nor did she know where our mother was. If she was indeed a member of Spectre, why not use her power to find out about our mother? To find us?"

Qin Yuanfeng watched as a myriad of emotion flashed in Lily\'s eyes before he continued. "If… This organisation was as big as they claim it to be, looking for our mother must have been too easy for them. Think about it… Qin Chuan and the Qin Family were influential and would hold parties and events before. Surely, some people must have seen our mother, right? Now… when she was hiding in the Qin Family in Hong Kong… she became a maid. During events, Tang Lingyun would embarrass her and would scheme against her. Meaning, at some point, a lot of people saw her."

"With the power that the Spectre holds, it would be easy to locate someone that does not look Chinese in China and Hong Kong." Qin Yuanfeng said. "So… why didn\'t she use Spectre to look for her daughter?"

Lily pursed her lips. What led her to believe that Lilian is a member of the Order of the Spectre is the Yu Family\'s photo of Lilian in the same event as old man Yu and Mrs. Brooke\'s words about The Order who killed her grandmother.

First, during Old Man Yu\'s birthday party, he specifically told her that he could give her access to unimaginable influence. Lily declined.

However, the death of Old Man Yu\'s wife and Lily\'s actions against Old Man Yu\'s children could have made the old man give the seat to Zhou Jingren.

Second is that photo. If both Old Man Yu and her grandmother is a member of a particular organisation, it would only make sense that they interact with each other in highly exclusive events in Europe. And third, was the photo that Mrs. Brooke gave her. It means that Mrs. Brooke\'s grandparents were related to Lilian and Fred. Their deaths could be connected too!

Slowly, every single dot in Lily\'s mind, dots that she didn\'t even know existed before, started to connect with each other. But something is still lacking. A little part of the puzzle inside her head was lacking. She needed to talk to Madam Luo. This time… she needed to do it with just the two of them.

A knock on the door interrupted the silence inside the room. Zhou Jingren immediately looked at the peephole before he opened the door.

"Madam Luo wanted me to give this to Mrs. Zhou." A soft voice came from the other side of the door. "She said it\'s urgent."