Chapter 335 Minds in Sync
Ding! There was another chime of an incoming text message. It was a message from Matthew that read, ‘Roni, the 100 million is my betrothal gift for you.’
Shocked, Veronica immediately said to Elizabeth, “Grandma, I gotta go outside to make a phone call.”
“Just go.” Elizabeth gave her an affable smile.
Only then did Veronica stand up and step out of the ward. Standing in the hallway, she gave Matthew a phone call. After he answered the phone, she immediately said, “What on earth are you doing, Matthew? I only want the reward you promised me back then, not you.” He had promised to give her 100 million when she saved his life back then. When she bid for her necklace at the auction, Matthew had helped cover part of the amount, so there was still an amount of money that he hadn’t paid her yet. Even though they were now dating, they should keep careful accounts.
“You risked your life to save me back then. I can only repay that favor by marrying you.”
“On what grounds? Have you asked for my opinion on it?”
“Are you willing to marry me, then?”
“I… Nope.”
“In that case, I can deign to adopt your last name upon marriage.”
“In your dreams! Where’s your sense of shame?”
“My sense of shame isn’t valuable compared to marrying my wife.”
“In that case, I don’t want the money anymore.” The difference is just tens of millions, anyway. 100 million is already too much in the first place. I can’t sell myself off just for a few ten million, right?
“The money has been transferred to your bank account, so it’s too late to go back on it now.” Matthew let out a chuckle. “And besides, you promised at the hospital that we could get married in secret after my three-month probation. What has been said can’t be unsaid.”
Veronica was rendered speechless. How could he be so shameless? She put her hand to her forehead. She seriously thought that she had carelessly agreed to his proposal to get married secretly because she had been bewitched by him. Would it be too late to go back on my word now? “Then let’s wait until you pass the three-month probation. We’ve agreed on the rules; I don’t believe that you won’t violate them.” Recalling how crazy he had been over the past few days, she felt that he would definitely fail to restrain himself. What’s been said cannot be unsaid, huh? Once he touches me by then, getting married in secret will be out of the question! Easy, Veronica, easy. I’ve got to calm down. How could I sell myself after being in a relationship for just a day? I must’ve been out of my mind.
“It’s a deal.” Matthew hung up the phone confidently before driving to Spinfluence Group’s parking lot.
Due to the uproar caused by the incident about Matthew, Troy immediately ordered the company’s public relations department to deal with the matter with all their might. Not only that, but he contacted the few employees of the clothing store in the shopping mall, bribing them into denying the ‘juicy’ incident that had happened between Matthew and Veronica in the fitting room in front of the reporters.
As for the kiss between Matthew and the ‘man,’ the man who rarely posted anything on Twitter finally posted the first tweet on his Twitter account. The tweet had no words, but it contained a photo—the photo of him kissing Veronica with his arms around her waist when they stepped out of the clothing store at the shopping mall. Since Veronica had disguised herself as a man, the photo showed him leaning forward and gently kissing the man with silvery gray hair in a domineering fashion.
The photo caused a great stir on the internet as soon as it was posted online.
Ignoring the netizen’s comments, Matthew turned on his laptop and typed a continuous string of source code on his keyboard. After hacking into the surveillance system, he called up all the surveillance footage showing him and Veronica and saved them. After that, he designed a firewall and encrypted all the surveillance footage in which they had appeared together.
Meanwhile, half an hour before this, Veronica was also in a state of anxiety because of what had happened to Matthew. All the members of the Kings Family arrived at the hospital after that to keep Elizabeth company, but she lay on her sickbed and pretended to sleep to avoid being bothered by her sons and daughters-in-law.
Taking advantage of the situation, Veronica left the hospital and returned home. Using her laptop, she hacked into her neighborhood’s surveillance system and recorded the surveillance footage of Matthew driving her home, the surveillance footage of her taking the elevator and entering the apartment and leaving home after wearing makeup, and the surveillance footage of them driving to the shopping mall together. Besides that, she also recorded all the surveillance footage showing them in the shopping mall’s parking lot. After that, she found the surveillance footage of her getting out of Matthew’s car and going somewhere to remove makeup—as well as the surveillance videos of her with her makeup removed—and saved all the videos.
Although Matthew had the capability to deal with this right now, he would inevitably draw criticism when he went public about their marriage one day. By then, she could produce the surveillance footage as evidence to silence everyone. If Matthew were to betray her and fall in love with someone else, these pieces of evidence would only gather dust in her lifetime. She wasn’t a saint, so there was no way she would help prove his innocence if he cheated on her.
As she thought of this, it suddenly occurred to her that those from the entertainment media would definitely dig deep into the identity of the ‘man’ whom Matthew was kissing. It was very likely that they would look for the surveillance footage immediately. Wouldn’t her relationship with Matthew be brought to light by then?
She thought of encrypting those surveillance videos, but much to her surprise, just as she was ready to call up the surveillance videos again, she found that these videos had been encrypted and were unavailable. She was involuntarily perplexed. What’s going on?
The next instant, she couldn’t help but smile, knowing without thinking that it had to be Matthew who was able to encrypt the videos so quickly. These videos couldn’t be deleted. If they did so, when someone tried to call up these videos and couldn’t find them in the future, even if they produced the videos to assert their innocence, people would say that these videos were faked. Therefore, the best way to prevent others from deleting the videos was to set up a firewall. Still, she didn’t expect her and Matthew to think the same thing, as if their minds were in sync.
Having dealt with the matters at hand, she immediately went back to the hospital to continue staying with Elizabeth. However, as soon as she reached the door to Elizabeth’s ward, she heard a hubbub of voices inside the ward.
“Mom, what do you mean? Don’t you think you’re too partial to Matthew?”
“It’ll be hard for you to assuage the public’s indignation by doing this.”
“Don’t you care about the fact that Matthew has disgraced our family?”
“Hmph! The way I see it, you’ve gone off your head because of your old age.”
Thump!
…
Just as Veronica stood at the door and listened to the conversation inside the ward, she suddenly heard the sound of something being smashed to pieces from the inside. Startled, she immediately pushed the door open and entered, only to see Roxanne Barnes, the wife of Nicholas Kings, the fifth son of the Kings Family. Smashing the glass on the table to the ground, she pointed at Elizabeth, saying, “If you don’t do anything about this today, then don’t blame us for defying you in the future!” Being tall and plump, she spoke in a loud voice, and the words she said were particularly unpleasant to hear.
When those people standing in the ward saw Roxanne exploding with rage, not only did they not stop her, but they even added fuel to the flames.
“That’s right! What Roxanne said makes sense.”
“Mom, you’ve got to give us an explanation for what happened today. Even if you’re partial to Matthew, you have to do so with propriety.”
“Exactly! When did you ever care so much about us? Are we far inferior to Matthew as your sons or what?”
“Yeah, that’s right!”
…
These people kept going on at Elizabeth because of this. However, she merely leaned back against the head of the bed and hung her head without saying a word.
At that very moment, Veronica’s heart suddenly twinged. She felt very sorry for the aged Elizabeth.
