Chapter 13
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"Mr. White, come on, I was your girlfriend for six months. How can you just stand by and watch me struggle without caring at all?"
The man called Mr. White heard Lucy's voice, muttered something rude, and hung up on her.
Frustrated, Lucy bit her lip and called someone else.
"Prof. Clark, remember that night at the hotel near the college..."
However, before Lucy could finish, the line went dead.
She was so busy trying to find someone to help her that she did not notice the camera above her blinking red.
When she heard footsteps, Lucy quickly ended the call and ran to Samuel, hugging him tightly.
Samuel's doubts melted away in an instant.
This was his Lulu, the girl he had secretly loved for years — so innocent, pure, and good.
The mean things his friend had said, and the nasty comments online, they had to all be lies spread by the man who claimed to be Tania's fiancé.
Samuel decided to get to the bottom of it. He hired a private investigator to check out the car that had been parked in front of the County Clerk's Office.
He was determined to find out who Tania would leave him for.
While Samuel was busy with that, the Ferguson family called him back to their old house.
The mood there was so serious that Samuel felt a little nervous.
"Come here," said Samuel's father, Ashwin Ferguson, in a chilly tone.
A report landed in front of Samuel with a thud.
He opened it.
It was all about Lucy and her secrets.
The report spilled the tea on Lucy’s disastrous stint at Kingston University, where she barely scraped through her courses for four long years. It dished the dirt on how she’d dipped into Samuel’s wallet to buy herself a spot at a fly-by-night university abroad, all in a desperate attempt to polish up her sad excuse for a degree. But her charade didn’t last: even that fake college had had enough of her after a while, and she wound up bouncing around in the company of wealthy men.
It also revealed that while Lucy was supposed to be dating Samuel, she was actually getting too close to lots of other guys.
At the end of the report, there were tons of photos.
Samuel saw a different Lucy in those pictures, acting wildly and dressed inappropriately around other men.
There were also some medical reports that made Samuel shake from head to toe.
Before he could wrap his head around Lucy's story, another report was dropped in front of him.
This one was about Tania. It was much shorter, just a few pages, but it showed how smart Tania was, all the awards she had won, and that she really had been in charge of a special medical research center.
After reading it, Samuel felt like his whole world had flipped upside down.
He had thought Lucy was his pure and innocent love, his lifeline, but she turned out to be someone who used men. Tania, the one he never gave much thought to, was actually the one who could help him? She had married him and left behind a bright future, all to stay at Kingston University with him?
Ashwin pointed at his son, his voice filled with anger. "This is what you call a good job? Do you have any idea how much money and effort we spent to get the Russells to agree to develop that medicine?"
Samuel tried to defend himself. "The medicine's development isn't behind schedule. Just today, the lab said we're only five days away from it being ready to use."
Ashwin eyed his son with suspicion. "Tania's gone. How can the work still be on track?"
Samuel kept quiet about the truth.
"Tania finished her part before she left. The project's still on time," he said, but without much confidence.
Ashwin's suspicion did not wane. "Samuel, you better be honest with me. If this fails and you get sick, it's all over!"
Samuel hesitated. Should he tell his father what Tania had said? About Lucy changing the data? He chose to stay silent. He believed he could fix it himself. All he needed was the original data from Lucy. He wanted to give her one last chance.
