Free Web NovelChapter 87: Chapter 87: Something Is Amiss
This incident was getting way too much attention online, so much that it felt abnormal.
When they were looking at the house yesterday, Lawrence had mentioned that the family wasn’t from Aethelburg. They were from a remote town in the neighboring Eldoria Province. The reason they had moved to Aethelburg and pooled their money to buy a house was because the old woman’s grandson had a girlfriend from Aethelburg. The girlfriend had laid down an ultimatum: she wouldn’t marry him unless he bought her a house in Aethelburg.
For the sake of their grandson’s marriage, the family had sold their old house in the small town and scraped together a significant amount of borrowed money, arriving in Aethelburg with a heavily loaded bank card to look at properties.
The family wasn’t very educated. Although the grandson had a job in Aethelburg, he was just an insurance salesman.
His girlfriend’s job was even worse. She only had a vocational school diploma and had drifted between various restaurants after graduating, working as different types of waitstaff.
And yet, a family like this had thought to expose the incident online the moment it happened. They had no experience with the internet, yet the post they published managed to get over ten thousand likes in an extremely short time and was simultaneously discussed and shared by countless netizens.
Some netizens had even "helpfully" dug up the property deed for the house, conveniently throwing Felix Preston and Sonia Quincy into the public eye to be vilified.
Could this family really have orchestrated such a smooth and rapid escalation of public opinion?
The more Sonia Quincy thought about it, the stranger it seemed. She reopened the post she had just been reading and scrolled down to the comments section.
The IP addresses of the commenters were all in Aethelburg, which seemed normal at first glance. But when Sonia Quincy randomly clicked into the profiles of a few accounts that had posted abusive comments, she immediately noticed something was off—
These were all new accounts, created just recently. Their profiles were completely blank, and some didn’t even have a profile picture.
Sonia Quincy frowned. "Is this family really that capable? Not only do they know how to work the internet, but they also hired an online troll army?"
"What troll army?" Felix Preston had parked the car and was unbuckling his seatbelt.
Sonia Quincy put away her phone and smiled meaningfully. "I discovered something. I’ll tell you in a bit."
"Why in a bit?" Felix Preston opened his door, got out, and strode over to the passenger side to help Sonia Quincy out of the car.
"Can’t you tell me now?"
Sonia Quincy shook her head. "I could, but we don’t have time. Let’s go back and get rid of those troublemakers first."
"Alright," Felix said.
"Pay up! Pay up! What kind of cursed house is this? My grandma was jinxed to death the moment she stepped inside!"
"My grandma could have lived to be eighty, but because of your house, she died in her seventies! You have to compensate us for this loss!"
"So what if the police are here? Does that mean you can side with murderers? My grandma is dead!"
The moment they stepped out of the elevator, Sonia Quincy’s ears were assaulted by the sounds of a furious argument.
Felix Preston pulled her into his arms, covering one of her ears with his hand. He wrapped his other arm around her shoulders and guided her quickly through the chaotic crowd, getting her safely back to their room.
"Get some rest. I’ll handle things out here." Before leaving, Felix Preston kissed Sonia Quincy on the forehead, his voice calm and gentle.
A sense of security washed over her. She grabbed Felix Preston’s hand and gave it a light squeeze. "Be careful. Don’t let those lunatics hurt you."
"I will." Felix Preston lifted her hand and placed several kisses on her palm before reluctantly closing the door and heading out.
Outside the door, several police officers had already pushed the troublemakers out into the hallway. As the crowd parted, Felix Preston finally saw it: the hallway walls by his front door and the door itself had been splashed with bright red paint.
The paint was a vivid, thick red, looking at first glance like splattered blood.
"Mr. Preston." The lead officer walked up to Felix Preston and shook his hand before speaking. "Just a little while ago, the station received the medical records from the hospital. They show that the deceased woman was admitted to the ICU over a month ago for a cerebral infarction."
"The woman’s condition was quite severe. According to her attending physician, the hospital had already advised her family to prepare for her passing."
"Prepare for her passing..." Felix Preston adjusted his glasses, his eyes behind the lenses as cold as ice. "So, you’re saying your family knew all along that she was on the verge of death?"
"Yes!" Lynn Preston chimed in from the side. "Their grandmother was already fading. Even if she’d stayed in the hospital, she would have had a month to live at most. She was in such poor health, yet they still dragged her out to look at a house. What were their real intentions?"
"It’s precisely because my grandma was dying that we had to bring her to see the house!" the old woman’s grandson retorted righteously, holding a banner. "Buying a house was her greatest wish! While she could still get around, of course we had to bring her out to see her grandson’s new home with her own eyes!"
"Couldn’t you have found another way for her to see the house?" Lynn Preston had been arguing all morning, and her voice was now completely hoarse. Shielding Mrs. Preston behind her, she roared, "You knew she could pass at any moment, yet you still brought her into our house! Didn’t it ever occur to you that something might happen?"
"Never crossed our minds!" the old woman’s son replied unreasonably. "My mother was perfectly lucid when she left this morning, but the second she entered your house, she collapsed. Your house is unclean—it cursed her to death! You have to give me an explanation today!"
The police officer interjected, "What do you mean, ’cursed to death’? Let’s be scientific about this, alright? We’re already investigating this matter. We will issue a report on how and when your family’s matriarch passed away."
"You should all just go about your business and stop causing trouble here. There’s a pregnant woman inside."
"They have a pregnant woman, and we have a dead one!" the grandson shouted. "You wanna see who has it worse?"
"What did you just say?" Felix Preston took a step forward, glaring furiously at the man before him.
The man stuck his neck out, completely unafraid. "I said, your pregnant woman is going to end up a dead one, too—"
WHAM!
Before the words were even out of his mouth, Felix Preston swung a heavy fist into the man’s face.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
"He’s hitting someone! Police, he’s hitting him!"
The hallway erupted into chaos once more, but Sonia Quincy remained remarkably calm as she stood by the balcony.
’Causing a scene, demanding compensation, waving banners, trying to stop the sale... why do these tactics seem so familiar?’
Sonia Quincy gently stroked her belly, a suspect already forming in her mind.
And just then, a familiar figure suddenly appeared at the entrance of the apartment building.
Sonia Quincy leaned forward to get a better look. The moment she saw who it was, her suspicion instantly solidified into certainty.
"Hmph. Perfect timing." A cold smile touched her lips as she turned, pushed open the bedroom door, and walked straight out.
