Allen shook his head, “Who knows? It happened twenty-five years ago. Maybe it was just bad luck.”
Joey nodded thoughtfully and didn’t go any further.
In a family as powerful as the Charles family, there might be more than one skeleton in the closet. One could always dig up some dirt on prestigious families. But Joey wasn’t interested to know any of it. She just wished that Allen was an honest and innocent man.
However, she had no idea that some things would turn out to be more serious and complicated than she had thought. A suffocating life in the powerful Charles family was awaiting her.
The next day, Mrs. Charles acted quickly and sent for Joey on the ground that it would be good for the baby if Joey could stay at the Charles family with the attentive care of many servants.
Joey didn’t want to go at all. The thought of spending every day with Mrs. Charles was intimidating. She could only imagine how miserable her life would be. But Allen wasn’t at home because he had gone to her hometown to ask for her parents’ permission to marry her. Joey was forced to get in the car and then quickly driven to the Charles family.
The Charles family was even more grand and luxurious than she had imagined. It was a Hacienda-style villa that covered a vast area, fully equipped with a large swimming pool, a golf course, a private garden, etc.
After Joey got there, Mrs. Charles appointed two maids to exclusively take care of her. The maids were named Seventeen and Eighteen.
The servants in the Charles family weren’t called by their names. They were called by their individual numbers instead, because there were dozens of them in the family and it was difficult to remember them all. The name tags on their uniforms were used to tell them apart.
Seventeen and Eighteen were very young, twenty years old at most. Wearing maid's uniforms, they looked very serious all the time. But they were quite polite to Joey, and they would quickly bring her anything that she wanted. They followed her around and even guarded the door when she went to the bathroom.
Joey sighed.
She was overwhelmed with Mrs. Charles’s gesture of hospitality, but it was rather difficult to say no to it.
One day, she decided to go for a walk in the garden when she had stayed in her room for most of the day and gotten bored. Seventeen and Eighteen followed her closely again.
The glow of the setting sun was splendid.
There were an old man and a young girl on the grass in the garden. The grey-haired old man was sitting in the wheelchair. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth. The beautiful young girl in the white dress was catching butterflies with a smile on her face.
The old man was watching the girl running around with a warm smile on his face. He waved at her and she instantly ran up to him. He took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat on her forehead gently and lovingly.
“Who is the old gentleman?” Joey asked Seventeen curiously.
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