Flash Marriage: Slow Down Mister novel Chapter 96

On the tombstone, there was a black-and-white photo of a beautifully smiling girl at her flowery age, whose stunning beauty had been frozen in the picture forever.

"Sorry," Horace suddenly said in a deep voice, while Clara immersed in associating with the tomb, "Are you mad that I brought you here without asking you beforehand?"

Clara soon shook her head when she came to herself.

Sure she wouldn't feel mad, and quite the contrary, she was sort of delighted.

Ever since she had learned from Stephanie about the kidnap, she had been trying to talk it out with Horace.

But it was his privacy after all and it was such a heavy history, so she failed to bring herself to do it.

To her surprise, Horace talked about it himself, and wouldn't it mean that he was ready to open up?

His eyes faintly twinkled as he stared at the tombstone, holding Clara's hand, feeling the warmth of their touching palms. "I guess you know who she is?"

Clara hesitated for a while before she nodded. "A bit."

"And you've heard the rumor?" Horace's face remained blank, voice dry. "That I left her behind and ran for my life without her."

Clara felt a little tense, not knowing what to say.

Compared to her unease, Horace was calm and even smiled slightly. "Don't be nervous, and just tell me the truth."

"Yes, I did hear about the rumor," said Clara honestly, after hesitating, and she soon added, "But I don't believe it."

There was a weak light glittering in his unfathomable eyes, "Why not?"

"Because I don't think you would ever turn your back on others, especially your girlfriend," Clara said quietly, while looking at him with a little uncertainty. "Am I right?"

Horace didn't answer her directly, and instead stared at the tombstone, murmuring, "You really think so? Actually, I.. I don't know..."

Clara was startled.

He didn't know?

What did he mean he didn't know?

Without continuing with the subject, he then said, "Laura and I grew up together. She was a Hutchinson. The Hutchinsons and the Kirklands have been friends for generations."

Clara froze there.

The Laura turned out be the daughter of the Hutchinson family.

The Hutchinson's, the Jakovich's (Alastair's family), as well as the Kirkland's were the three prestigious families in Stratmont for generations.

Sure enough, that Laura had been a pretty and precious daughter of an old money.

Clara smiled wanly, feeling bitter inside somehow.

She must have looked like a weed compared to a woman like that.

She repressed the upset feelings and asked, "And then?"

"I thought we would grow up and get married, just like any other ordinary couple," whispered Horace, "But then she was abducted along with me during the kidnapping ten years ago."

Clara had heard that from Stephanie, and what mattered was what had happened after the incident.

"We were shut inside a warehouse, and when they got the ransom, they didn't let us go, but tied us up and injected something into us to make us sleep. Then they set the place on fire."

Horace's remained poised when he said that, but Clara could hear the concealed madness and murderous intent.

"They put you to sleep?" Clara was shocked at the part that she had never heard from Stephanie. "So you saw their face and they had to kill you?"

"No." Horace frowned. "The kidnappers wore mask and gloves the entire time. No evidence was left on the scene."

Clara was then confused.

She and Stephanie had thought that they had seen the face of the kidnappers, who was afraid to be recognized, so they burned down the warehouse.

But then as told by Horace, there had been no need for them to murder.

The magnitude between kidnapping and murder was completely different. If those kidnappers had got that large sum of money, they should have left the country quickly, but why would they have chosen to murder?

"Then why did they have to kill you?" Clara couldn't help but ask the question.

An evasive look appeared in his eyes for a second. He seemed to know something, but he didn't answer, and simply continued with his words, "I was then woken up by the smoke of the fire."

Clara was surprised.

Why did it sound so much familiar with the fire she got gone through before?

But without thinking further, she pricked up her ears and kept listening, because she knew he was at the most important part of the story.

How did Horace run away after he woke up? Did he run without his girlfriend Laura?

Horace continued to say, with his eyes rested on the tombstone.

"When I was awake, I realized that my hands were no longer tied up and Laura, who had been lying next to me, were gone."

Clara was perplexed.

She had been wondering how Horace struggled free from the rope, only to be told that it had been undone itself.

Also, where was Laura?

Clara had never expected such a story, so she couldn't help but ask, "Are you sure?"

Then Horace looked at her aslant, "So you don't believe me either?"

"That's not what I mean," Clara soon explained. It was just that the whole thing had been so weird, and she noticed that the word "either" used by Horace, so after hesitating for a while, she asked, "So people didn't believe what you say?"

"No," Horace slowly lowered his eyes, "After the fire, nobody believed my story. Even the police said I was lying. But whether I was lying or not, I didn't commit any crime, so they ended up letting me off the hook."

Clara was struck numb.

To her surprise, that was the "truth" she had been dreading to find out.

Anyway, she really wanted to believe Horace and that he would never have done such thing as abandoning his girlfriend, so she racked her brains to come up with a more reasonable explanation. "If you remember it right, then there are two possibilities. Laura had left by herself, or been taken away by someone else."