CHAPTER 281: CHAPTER 281: FALSE MONEY, REAL CONTRACT 3_1

"Last summer, I found out I was pregnant... I don’t know how it happened... Mr. Wan was furious when he found out. I can’t blame him. He’d warned me beforehand that he already had an arranged marriage and would never marry me. He also said he didn’t like women like me and that if I got pregnant, he would kick me out... That was a condition he’d set when I first started seeing him... It’s understandable... He probably assumed I was scheming... It’s all my fault..."

"What about the child?"

"I rolled down the stairs twice..."

Liu Daqing could not believe what she had just heard. What did "rolled down the stairs twice" mean? Yan Xixi had specified "rolled," not merely "fallen." The distinction was subtle, a testament to the profound depth of the Chinese language.

"After I found out I was pregnant, I immediately went to the hospital to schedule an abortion, but there were too many people, so it was delayed by a week. Around that time, Zhou Ting came to the city to see Mr. Wan. He got very nervous, and we had an argument..."

"So he pushed you down the stairs because you didn’t get the abortion immediately?"

She remained silent. Those are your words, not mine.

Yes, I did fall down the stairs twice: once shortly after moving in with Wan Donglin, and the second time on the night we broke up. I was running too fast, missed a step, and fell, landing right on him.

She hadn’t told a single lie; she had merely adjusted the timing of the falls ever so slightly.

However, Lady Liu Daqing, in her extreme shock, had already filled in the blanks: Clearly, her son found out she was pregnant and thought she was scheming. Then, with Zhou Ting’s arrival, he must have feared exposure and, in a fit of rage, attacked her!

It terrified her that a man could push a woman—a woman carrying his own child—down the stairs twice, no matter the reason!

"So Donglin pushed you down the stairs twice, and then the baby was gone?"

Yan Xixi’s head bowed lower and lower as she thought, I’m sorry, Empress Dowager, but those are your words, not a single one of them mine...

If Liu Daqing hadn’t seen the wounds on Yan Xixi’s forehead and the bruises on her hands the moment she walked in, she would have doubted her story. Moreover, while waiting, she had inquired about the situation from two local women. These simple, working-class women both confirmed that the young master had indeed beaten the girl severely, almost killing her. She even had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment. They said it had been much worse a few days prior, but that she was doing much better now...

A sense of compassion stirred within Liu Daqing as she watched Yan Xixi. The girl kept her head bowed low, her thin shoulders trembling slightly, clearly struggling to keep herself from sobbing uncontrollably.

Meanwhile, Liu Daqing felt her own graying hair practically stand on end in horror. She was nearly seventy years old and had only one son, who led a dissolute and untamed life. Her main reason for urging him to marry and start a family was so he would have children quickly, thus fulfilling his most basic duties as a son. She had never imagined he could be so cruel, even to his own flesh and blood.

To think, there was finally a child, even if illegitimate—and he had destroyed it.

Over the years, Liu Daqing had not been entirely oblivious to her son’s behavior. But when Wan Donglin moved to a different house with Yan Xixi, she had merely assumed it was just another one of his usual flings and hadn’t bothered to inquire further.