Fortunate to Have You This Lifetime

Jade Carlson had not a trace of joy on her face.

Her eyes wide open, she stared at Evelyn Willard in shock and anger.

“What exactly have you done?!” Jade Carlson demanded.

She was no fool. Nathaniel Summers detested her to the extreme; how could he possibly get engaged to her?

It must have been Evelyn Willard doing something behind her back!

“I told you not to set your sights on him!” Jade Carlson said angrily. “I can handle my own matters. You don’t need to interfere!”

“How do you handle it?” Evelyn Willard said scornfully as she looked her up and down. “Your way of handling it is to hide like a rat, unseen, staying in my place every day?”

Jade Carlson was at a loss for words.

Evelyn Willard patted her shoulder, “Mrs. Farrell’s child was saved by the Summers family; she won’t fail to give them face. You only have a way out if you get engaged to Nathaniel Summers. I did all this for your own good.”

Jade Carlson’s heart softened slightly.

Seeing her calm down a bit, Evelyn Willard told her all about her meeting with Nathaniel Summers, sparing no detail.

After hearing this, Jade Carlson’s face turned as pale as paper.

“Are you out of your mind…” At this moment, Jade Carlson no longer felt anger, only extreme fear. “How could you tell him these things! You’re going to get me killed!”

“Get you what?” Evelyn Willard crossed her legs and took out a cigarette from her pack. “Afraid that the mastermind behind it all will come after you, to commit murder as a cover-up?”

Jade Carlson’s body swayed, and she looked at Evelyn Willard in utter horror. “How… how do you know?”

Upon hearing this, Evelyn Willard laughed softly. She took a light drag of her cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and spoke unhurriedly, “Of course, I know. I’m your mother. When you suddenly disappeared and came home, you were not right in the head, as if you had been deeply frightened. You begged me to live with you, wouldn’t dare to sleep with the lights off at night—all these, have you forgotten?”

Jade Carlson opened her mouth to say something, but her lips were numb.

Evelyn Willard said, “You’ve always hated me, yet you asked me to stay with you—you must have been scared out of your wits, right?”

Jade Carlson was utterly confused. She snatched the cigarette from Evelyn Willard’s hand, took several hard drags, her body still trembling.

“You don’t understand. Those people are very powerful; they cannot be offended!” Memories began to resurface in her mind, and Jade Carlson’s sense of fear remained undiminished. “When they let me go, they instructed me to make Nathaniel Summers get a divorce! And to never leak a word!”

“The one offending those people is Nathaniel Summers, not you. Telling you not to let the news out was probably just to keep Nathaniel Summers from getting suspicious,” Evelyn Willard said, trying to reassure her with a smile. “Jade, fortune favors the bold. If you want to marry into the Summers family, you have to take drastic measures.”

Jade Carlson was still hesitant.

She wasn’t sure if, after everything that had happened, she could still win back Nathaniel Summers’s heart.

Someone came through the door; it was an ordinary-looking middle-aged man, accompanied by two workers.

“Make it clean,” Evelyn Willard instructed.

The middle-aged man led the two workers to the washroom to fetch water and gather tools, moving about the house as if he knew it well.

Yet, Jade Carlson felt as if she had been struck by lightning; she froze completely.

She saw her own reflection on the middle-aged man’s face…

Jade Carlson’s neck, as if frozen, turned stiffly… and she looked at Evelyn Willard.

Evelyn Willard asked, “What’s wrong?”

Jade Carlson gazed at her, asking, “Am I… not George Carlson’s daughter?”

Evelyn Willard’s smile was meaningful and long, “I never said you were.”

Jade Carlson’s mind was in a haze. Indeed, Evelyn Willard had never said so, but Jade Carlson had calculated the timing; when Evelyn Willard was pregnant, she was with George Carlson! That’s why, when she found out George Carlson had become mayor, she changed her name immediately—from Evelyn Carlson to Jade Carlson!

She did all this to be acknowledged by her biological father—how could she end up not being his daughter?!