Chapter 463 The Patient Avenger
"Edward knew all along?"
I was even more shocked.
"Did you really think Edward hadn't done his homework over the years?"
"Yeah, he's sharp. No way he wouldn't have figured it out."
I paused, lost in thought, flipping through the documents.
"Nicholas's dirty deeds go way beyond this. If you add it all up, he totally deserves to die. Too bad the law can't make that happen."
"These are just shady business moves. They wouldn't give Nicholas the death penalty. Is there more?"
As a lawyer, I knew the legal stuff as well as Lila. But if Lucas said so, there had to be more to it.
"See for yourself."
Lucas couldn't resist and lit another cigarette.
I frowned slightly. I didn't remember Lucas being a smoker before, but now he seemed glued to his cigarettes. I didn't have the energy to worry about that now.
I trembled as I opened the yellowed pages. The bank statements were filled with numbers that seemed to twist and writhe like snake scales before my eyes. Each large transaction was labeled "special service fee," and the recipient was the city's largest security company. A child's autopsy report slipped out from between the pages, and the photo of a small, charred body made me go weak, sweat beading on my forehead.
"Who is this?" My voice was barely a whisper, as if an invisible hand was choking me.
"The real Lucas."
The voice beside me was as cold as ice. Lucas, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, was using tweezers to pick up an amber-colored prosthetic eye. The sound of the metal base detaching from his eye socket was faint, and the empty socket revealed mechanical gears reflecting the flickering lightning on the wall.
Lucas's fingers traced the edge of the prosthetic eye, his tone calm as if recounting someone else's story.
"Twenty years ago, on New Year's Eve, when Nicholas saw the '99.99% similarity' on the paternity test report, a 'clearance plan' was added to his safe."
Lucas tugged at his suit sleeve, trying to cover an old burn scar.
"Back then, Lucas and I were just ten years old, running through the narrow alleys of the inner city, chased by men in black wearing wolf masks. The rubber soles of their shoes made a terrifying thud against the cobblestones.
When the rusty streetlight at the alley's entrance went out for the third time, Lucas shoved half a compressed biscuit into my hand, his blood-stained fingers drawing a crooked arrow on the wall. 'Run to the air-raid shelter, I'll distract them.'
I'll never forget his thin back as he turned, like a wounded bird, yet he fearlessly charged at the pack of wolves.
The rain washed over the collapsed rubble, and the barking of search dogs pierced through the downpour. When I woke up in the ruins, I was still clutching Lucas's gradually cold body.
An ambulance's lights spun into a crimson vortex in the rainy night, staining half the sky red. The paramedic removed his stethoscope and reported into his radio. 'Two bodies confirmed at the scene, all clear.'
I was still alive, but I had to play dead. Fortunately, that paramedic hadn't completely lost his conscience. He secretly saved me and performed surgery. My eyes were burned, and he transplanted Lucas's corneas into me."
Lucas reinserted the prosthetic eye into his socket, the sound of the metal parts clicking together reminiscent of a trigger being pulled. Then he pulled out a yellowed newspaper from his briefcase. The front-page headline read "House Fire Kills Two Children," with a photo of charred remains crudely pixelated.
"Every word in the police report was written with Nicholas's pen dipped in blood."
Lucas's voice was ice-cold.
The photo from the child's autopsy report lay on my lap, the charred outline overlapping with the image of Lucas handing me the biscuit. I remembered seeing Nicholas at a charity gala, shaking my hand and saying, "Young people need to be grounded," with a ring inscribed "Lucas Foundation" on his finger. It turned out that his so-called good deeds were built on a monument of atonement made from real lives.
"So you're not Nicholas's son?"
My voice caught in my throat.
Lucas tapped his prosthetic eye with the tweezers, the metallic sound making me shiver.
"I'm just a counterfeit wearing a human mask."
Lucas opened a compartment in his briefcase, revealing a row of yellowed medical records, each marked "facial skin graft surgery."
"The real Lucas has long rotted in the basement of that burned-down house. But I'm still alive, living for Lucas."
I suddenly started coughing violently, as if a burning ball of cotton was lodged in my chest.
The bank records labeled "special service fee" now had a vivid image. The wolf masks of the men in black, the search dogs' teeth, and the paramedic's barely noticeable smirk.
I was so engrossed that I accidentally knocked over my thermos. Broken glass mixed with milk spread across the floor, like the blood rain from twenty years ago that could never be washed away.
"Diana, don't be afraid. Lucas is a good person."
Seeing this, Lila quickly picked up the broken pieces of the cup.
"Let me do it. Be careful not to cut yourself."
Lucas gently took the broken pieces from Lila's hand and threw them into the trash.
Suddenly, hurried footsteps came from the operating room, and a nurse with a pale face appeared at the door.
"There's a complication in the surgery. Edward's blood pressure..."
"Stabilize him."
Lucas, returning from throwing away the trash, saw this and urgently commanded.
I watched as Lucas deftly buttoned his suit, the murderous intent in his eyes instantly replacing the earlier gentleness.
"Tell the surgeon, even if they have to crack open his chest and manually pump his heart, they must keep him alive."
As Lucas turned, the hem of his suit brushed against my hand, carrying a bone-chilling coldness.
"From the moment I received Lucas's corneas, I learned to speak like him, mimic his signature, and even burned off my fingerprints to replace them. Now, I am Lucas."
Lucas took two steps closer, the smell of blood in his breath making me instinctively step back. "Now I have all the evidence of Nicholas's crimes. Just one final blow remains."
With that, he closed the folder and headed for the emergency exit.
I watched Lucas's figure disappear around the corner, a sharp ringing in my ears. As the emergency door closed, the reflection in the glass faintly revealed the image of two small figures huddled together in a garbage dump years ago. Countless Lucases overlapped in the light and shadow. The wandering beggar, the enduring illegitimate child, and now the blood-soaked avenger. It turned out that each of us was trudging through our own abyss, but his abyss was a prison built over twenty years.
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