"Killed someone?" Leo frowned as his expression hardened. "What happened exactly? Tell me more."
As a matter of fact, he had already noticed that something was wrong with Marie before dinner.
She often looked distracted during their conversations. She covered it up well, but there was no fooling Leo.
As expected, she was here with ulterior motives.
It seemed that she had suppressed her feelings for quite some time and so had difficulty to stay calm in the next 10 minutes.
Leo was in no hurry either. He waited patiently and then said in a serious tone, "Don't worry. I won't tell Lydia about it. But you have to tell me what's happened."
Marie shook her head. "You can't solve this matter. There's no point in telling you."
"How do you know that I can't solve it?" Leo asked back. "I know you think that I'm not good enough for Lydia, but has it ever crossed your mind that your father has been unable to find me for five years now? Would an ordinary person be able to hide for five years?"
Marie was dumbstruck. She stopped crying at once, and stared at Leo blankly.
She thought, "There's some truth to what you said. Dad is standing at the top of Winbury. It should have been a piece of cake for him to find you. But his efforts were in vain for five whole years. That is kind of weird."
"Lydia is a smart woman too. If I weren't reliable, she would have dumped me long ago. How could I still be by her side now?" Leo continued with a smile, "So, tell me, you never know."
Marie decided to take a chance on him, and slowly recounted her story.
Leo narrowed his eyes slightly after she finished.
It was quite simple actually.
Marie was a medical student in Emerdale University. All the students were studying up before the approaching final exam.
However, this year's final exam was different from the written tests in general. All medical students were asked to treat patients from the streets. To be exact, it was actually a free diagnosis and students would give a prescription. Several days later, patients would do a callback; if they were satisfied with the treatment, the student would pass the exam, or they would fail otherwise.
This exam was directly linked to their employment after graduation, so Marie took it very seriously. But something went wrong with her diagnosis.
Her patient was an old man who caught a cold. Generally speaking, it was very easy to cure a minor illness like a cold. Marie prescribed several medicines, but the elderly man’s condition took a sharp turn for the worse.
A few more days later, he was dying. His family would not accept it, and came to the Medical Department to make a scene. It was said that they even assaulted several professors and demanded compensation from Marie.
The college was afraid that something worse might happen, so they expelled her immediately.
"The family asked me to transfer one million dollars to their bank account within three days. But how can I, as a college student, have that much money?" Marie said with a worried look.
Leo nodded. It was true that despite her prominent family, Marie couldn’t be expected to just conjure that amount of money out of thin air.
And with her extravagant spending habits, she had spent every last penny of her monthly allowance. There was no way for her to raise one million dollars in such a short period of time.
"So, you thought of your sister instead?" Leo questioned her after an angry glare.
Marie blushed in guilt but then muttered in a low voice, "She adores me, and is also rich. Not to mention her assets; the jewelry she has bought so far is worth at least 3 million dollars..."
"Enough!" Leo could not hear it anymore. Marie shuddered due to the shout and lowered her head as if she had been aggrieved.
Leo felt a sudden headache coming on. He rubbed his sore eyes and said resignedly, "I will help you fix this, but you have to promise me that you will never do such things again in the future. Especially stealing from your own sister. Do you know how hurt she would be if she found out?"
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