Chapter 13 It’s All Just a Misunderstanding
- At the lakeside villa, Stanley Carlson stood in front of Matthew with reverence written all over his face when he promised, “Mr. Larson, please don’t worry because I’ll do it well for you!”
- Matthew nodded and waved at Stanley, who left immediately after that. He called Stanley over this time to assign him with a task of carrying out an investigation on Sasha. He did not want to have a fall-out with her but at the same time, he was not interested in hearing her explanation. Therefore, he decided to let Stanley get to the bottom of it and get himself some concrete proof, so that he could put an end to the marriage with a rightful excuse.
- Not long after Stanley left the villa, he received a call from Helen. “Matthew, the 70th birthday celebration of Old Master Cunningham will be held tomorrow night. Go and borrow the Maybach you drove the last time so that you can drive us to the venue tomorrow with the car!” Helen hung up on him immediately without giving him a chance to talk.
- Holding the phone, he couldn’t help but put on a bitter smile. Was he some sort of a tool to the Cunninghams? On one side, they were trying so hard to persuade him to get a divorce with Sasha. On the other side, they were asking him to borrow the car purely for reasons of vanity, so that they could look good at the family gathering.
- Speaking of tomorrow, he suddenly remembered one thing—wasn’t Sasha also having her birthday on the same day? Sasha and Old Master Cunningham had both their birthdays on the same day, but everyone only paid attention to the latter. Basically, no one celebrated Sasha’s birthday every year because of that.
- Over the past three years, Matthew was the only one who cared or even remembered. Although penniless, he would start preparing for her birthday gift one month in advance and put in a painstaking effort to do some handicrafts for her as a present. She did not really take them seriously, but he always made sure to do the best he could in preparing the gifts. The rest of the family, including her parents, had their entire attention focused on Old Master Cunningham.
- In hindsight, he felt silly by making so much effort over the past three years. Sometimes he would think, Are all of these worthwhile? However, that was not important anymore because everything would be put to an end soon.
- …
- On the following night at seven o’clock, Stanley rushed to the villa that Matthew was staying at, who had just had a sleepless and restless night. “Mr. Larson, I’ve finally got to the bottom of everything!” There was something weird about Stanley’s expression as he looked like he was holding back from revealing the truth to him.
- “What have you got?” Matthew asked him curiously.
- “Mr. Larson, I-I think you might have misunderstood Miss Cunningham!” Stanley muttered.
- “Have I?” Mattthew widened his eyes in doubt. How did that happen? He witnessed everything with his own eyes and heard it with his own ears.
- “Mr. Larson, I know you must be puzzled. Why don’t you take a look at this first?” Stanley took out a pendrive, put it into a laptop and clicked on one of the videos in the file.
- “This is the CCTV footage which showed the corridors of the hotel yesterday which was sent by my men. Please take a look at it first.”
- Matthew fixed his eyes on the screen, which was showing the corridor of the 20th floor of Hotel Marriott. From the angle of the footage, the door of Room 2018 could be seen clearly. After some time, a couple who was cuddling each other emerged along the corridor as they made their way to Room 2018. The man was the one who Matthew had come across the other day.
- Matthew couldn’t help but be stunned at the sight of the couple. So, did that mean that that guy was with another lady inside the room on that day? He continued watching the footage and after a while, he saw Sasha walking along the corridor. She reached the door of the room and knocked on it before the man opened the door to invite her in.
- At the end of the footage, Matthew saw himself appearing on the screen as he had indeed followed Sasha there. He was dumbfounded when he realized that the girl who was with the guy earlier had not come out of the room throughout the entire scene. In that case, had there been one guy with two women inside the room?
- Matthew was seen leaving the corridor then. Shortly after that, the door of the room was suddenly opened through which Sasha stormed out. She appeared enraged with her eyes reddened as she walked toward the other end of the corridor and made her way downstairs.
- Matthew opened his eyes wide in shock. So, Sasha had actually left the room after barely spending two minutes inside. D-Does it mean that the voice that I heard at that time wasn’t hers?
- As the footage continued, Matthew was then seen walking over the corridor again after some time and then he stepped into the adjacent room to Room 2018. He then recalled how he had heard the moanings coming from Room 2018 after that. At that time, he had thought Sasha was inside the room. Now, it seemed like it was nothing but a misunderstanding because the woman inside Room 2018 wasn't Sasha at all!
- At the right timing, Stanley fast-forwarded the footage as people could be seen coming and going along the corridor. After over one hour’s time, the door of Room 2018 was once again opened when the couple left the room cuddling each other. Stanley then elaborated further in a soft voice, “I arranged for someone to look into the issue of Miss Cunningham’s phone too. We tracked the call log and discovered that there was something fishy with it a few days ago. Although you tried calling her hundreds of times, her phone couldn’t receive even a single call from you.”
- Shocked to hear that, Matthew pressed on, “What was wrong with it?”
- “I had it investigated and found that someone had tinkered with your wife’s phone to switch on the function of call-forwarding. Only calls from your number were forwarded to another number, while calls from other numbers weren’t affected. We also managed to trace the owner of that number, and found that it belonged to a person named Francis Cooper!”
- Matthew, who looked rattled, finally learned the truth. No wonder his calls had been picked up by Francis the other day, since all his calls had been forwarded to his phone! In fact, Sasha had not refused to take his calls. She just failed to pick them up as she simply did not receive them, because apparently they were all forwarded to Francis’ number! “But, I saw someone sent her a message…” Matthew quickly said.
- “Mr. Larson, after we got to know about the call-forwarding function, we realized that someone had been fiddling with her phone. At last, we confirmed that your sister-in-law, Demi Cunningham, was the mastermind behind it. As your wife’s sister, it was the most convenient for her to come into contact with your wife’s phone. Also, that message that you saw was in fact sent by her. She deliberately asked you to fetch the phone for her just so that you could catch that message in time. She was also the one who put that box of condoms inside your wife’s backpack. After that, she quickly took the backpack away and threw away the condoms after you had seen it so that your wife wouldn’t be suspicious.”
- Feeling flabbergasted, Matthew asked, “How did you get all this information?”
- “We seized and detained Demi Cunningham’s husband, Liam Hayes, who told us everything. In fact, a huge part of the plot was also his idea and it was him who arranged for your wife to come back to the city together with Francis Cooper. Just a day before your wife’s scheduled return, he had asked Francis Cooper to go to the city where your wife went on her business trip. Then, he bought the ticket for the same flight as hers, so that they could return to Eastcliff together. In actual fact, your wife had had zero interaction with Francis Cooper. He has been staying in Eastcliff prior to that.”
- Matthew thought of what had happened yesterday. Coincidentally, Demi had asked him to get her phone for her and he had then happened to notice the box of Durex in Sasha’s backpack, which was then taken out by Demi. At that time, he had assumed Demi was there to cover up Sasha’s affairs. It was only now did he realize that he had actually misunderstood Sasha. Everything had been orchestrated by Demi right from the beginning, and it was her plan to sow discord between Sasha and him!
- Suddenly, Matthew felt a throbbing pain in his heart. As it turned out, he had misunderstood his wife all along. “But, why are they doing this?” he asked frantically.
- With a sigh, Stanley explained in a soft voice, “Mr. Larson, you might not know about this yet, but the Cunninghams have been trying to persuade your wife to leave you for a better man. However, your wife made it clear to them that you’ve been suffering a greater humiliation than them by being a live-in son-in-law of the family. She thought she owed you a great one by choosing you back then, causing you to suffer all of the humiliation you’re facing now. Therefore, she won’t leave you as long as you don’t ask for a divorce.”
- Matthew’s eyes went red-rimmed, feeling extremely guilty. Sasha had always had a heart of gold despite looking cold and unapproachable. Hence, he knew she would never utter hurtful words to him in his face. However, it was very obvious that she had recognized him as her only husband deep down inside!
- At that juncture, his phone suddenly rang and it was a call from the landlady. “What do you want?” Matthew snapped furiously.
- “M-Mr. Larson…” The landlady’s quivering voice came from the other end, “I’m very sorry, I-I have a sum of money… that I have to return to you…”
- “What sum of money?” Matthew asked with a frown.
- “I-It belongs to your wife, Miss Sasha Cunningham. She has been paying me a sum of money every year in the past as your rent, and she has asked me not to tell you about it. But, I-I was greedy and decided to t-take the money as my own… I’ve realized my mistake now and I’ll give the money back to you. C-Could you please don’t sue me?”
- When Matthew heard what she said, he was completely nonplussed. He just wanted to burst out crying at that moment. Although Sasha seemed to be treating him very coldly, she had actually cared about him and even offered him help secretly over the past three years! Not only did he have no idea about all the things she had done for him, he had even misunderstood her to be unfaithful to him.
- “Mr. Larson…” Stanley continued in an undertone, “We also ran a search on the guy your wife met at Hotel Marriott yesterday… In fact, your wife started contacting him a long time ago because h-his bone marrow turns out to be a suitable match for your sister. Your wife has just gathered a sum of money which she prepared to offer him in order to convince him to donate his bone marrow to your sister. That was what she discussed with him at the hotel yesterday…”
- “Say what?!” Matthew widened his eyes as the pain in his heart just grew even more intense.
- Stanley then added, “Miss Cunningham might have misappropriated some assets from the company for this, and her family is holding her accountable for that. Not only have they fired her, they also wanted her to pay a sum of three million as compensation. Miss Cunningham is currently in a hot mess right now. In order to raise that money, she headed straight to several banks yesterday after her flight landed, but no one was willing to lend her a single dime. She even went to a loan shark later on. From how things are looking at the moment, she is really at her wit’s end…”
- “Stop it!” Matthew sprung to his feet and demanded through gritted teeth, “Where is she now? Tell me, where is she now?!” Feeling miserable and guilt-stricken, Matthew wished he could just beat himself up. At that instant, all he wanted was to locate Sasha, pull her into his arms and never let her go again.
- Stanley told him, “She has gone to Cunningham Residence as Old Master Cunningham is having his birthday celebration tonight. Perhaps she wants to go there to beg him for more time for her to raise some funds.”
- “Get me a car and drive me to Cunningham Residence!” With his fists tightly clenched, Matthew said through gritted teeth, “Also, tell Billy Newman that I have something for him to do!”