Chapter 389: Not Divorcing, and Keeping Him for the New Year?

Chapter 389: Chapter 389: Not Divorcing, and Keeping Him for the New Year?

With Julian Croft as a living example, Arabella Donovan had a pretty good idea of the character of the couple who raised him. Still, hearing their outlandish claims made her question her own sanity.

"Sis, did I hear that right? Our aunt’s husband married into our family, right? She didn’t marry into his."

"You heard right, and you understood perfectly. Our aunt’s husband did marry into the family. Otherwise, Sean and Iris wouldn’t both have her surname."

"Jeez, so I remembered it right. The way she was talking, with that condescending tone, you’d think our aunt was the one who owed them some great debt."

Eloise Donovan seamlessly added, "The ’favor’ of almost having her entire family fortune devoured?"

"PFFT..." Arabella Donovan burst out laughing. She’d never realized her fourth sister had such a sharp tongue. Every word she said was a direct hit.

"Exactly! Back in the day, our aunt was a wealthy, beautiful woman from a good family. An only daughter, no less. She had countless rich, handsome men lining up for her. Then there’s *that* guy—some nobody from the sticks who got lucky. And let me be clear, I’m not looking down on people from the countryside; I grew up in the mountains myself. But we have to be realistic about the gap between their family circumstances. Let’s just stick to the facts."

Arabella had learned her lesson from her recent showdown with Cassandra Lynch. She immediately put up a defensive wall to preemptively shut down the usual fallacies—the "you look down on the working class" and the "I’m the victim, so I’m always right" arguments used for moral blackmail.

"When they got married, my aunt’s family and his were worlds apart, and they still are today. If my aunt weren’t the type to look past someone’s background, if she hadn’t been taken in by his ’honest and simple’ act, he never would have had a chance with a true city socialite like her. But if he was really so ’honest,’ why would he refuse to tell my aunt the truth? Why would he lie and claim his wife and child were actually his sister and nephew? With my aunt’s standing, why would she ever settle for a deceitful, divorced man? Oh, wait..."

Arabella clapped her hands once, correcting her own imprecise phrasing. "He’s a marriage fraudster who was still married."

Arabella’s words quickly found favor with many of the onlooking parents who were there to pick up their kids.

"The young lady has a point. Isn’t the whole point of the husband marrying in so the wife’s family can continue its line? It’s only natural for the children to take the mother’s surname."

"It is, but... for the husband’s family to want to continue their line... there’s nothing wrong with that either, right?"

"Oh, don’t get me started. Following your logic, if a woman marries into a man’s family and wants to continue *her* family line, she could just find some other guy, have a baby that takes her surname, and have that other guy help raise it. Her legal husband should be totally understanding, right? After all, you said yourself ’there’s nothing wrong with that.’"

"...That’s different, isn’t it?"

"How is it different? It’s a classic double standard. Just swap the genders and watch the internet explode. Looks like I struck a nerve with all you men, huh? You never feel the pain until the knife is pointed at you."

"Exactly. It’s because of scumbags like that, always scheming to prey on women and bleed their families dry, that so many wealthy families with only a daughter would rather she have a child without a father than bring a fatal disaster of a man into their home."

"..."

’Have a child without a father?’ Listening to the crowd’s chatter, Eloise Donovan stroked her chin, deep in thought.

Arabella didn’t notice her sister’s odd expression. She was quite pleased with the crowd’s reaction and decided to gleefully add more fuel to the fire.

"And ’providing for the family’? Please. You make it sound like your son worked himself to the bone after getting married. But in reality? The company he ’worked’ for was owned by his father-in-law—my aunt’s dad. He came and went as he pleased and still collected a much higher salary than anyone else doing the same job."

Arabella spoke with a voice full of heartbreak and indignation. "And even with all that, three-quarters of the money for the house he bought for his parents—these two right here—and his *other* wife and child, a house they’ve lived in for over a decade, came from my aunt! What is that if not treating her like an absolute sucker? If she doesn’t divorce him, get her money back, and send him to prison, what’s she supposed to do? Wait around until he’s squeezed every last drop of value from her and then arrange for her to have an ’accident’?"

By now, the crowd was completely riled up. Hearing Arabella’s words, they began to shout their support in a wave of righteous indignation.

"Divorce him! She has to divorce him!"

"Why keep a scumbag like that around? For the holidays?"

The Croft elders never imagined that the advantage they had spent the last few days building up would be completely reversed in just a matter of minutes.

In their fixed mindset, they were the biological grandparents of those two "little bastards." As the family’s most senior elders, they naturally held the moral high ground. All they had to do was act a little weak, play the victim, and people would surely rush to their side and defend them.

They weren’t supposed to be here, facing the pointing fingers and sneers of so many people.

Mrs. Croft was a classic bully who preyed on the weak and feared the strong. Seeing that the crowd was not on their side and was, in fact, starting to turn on them, her eyes darted about nervously. She was already looking for a way out.

But the thought of her precious grandson at home, waiting for the money for his treatment, made her unwilling to give up on these two cash cows. Steeling herself, she decided to press on stubbornly.

"No matter what, that bitch is the reason our Julian is in jail, so she has to take responsibility! She’s not one of The Crofts, so we don’t care if she lives or dies. But these two kids have our Croft blood in them, so they have to support us in our old age!"

The faces of Iris and her brother, Sean, flushed red. They once again hated the Croft blood running through their veins. The last time they’d felt such revulsion was when they learned about Julian Croft’s secret wife and child, and all the shameful, deceitful schemes he’d been plotting.

Arabella just rolled her eyes, both annoyed and amused. "Didn’t you just say that since they have the Donovan surname, they’re my aunt’s heirs? That to keep the Croft family line from dying out, you had another child hidden away with the Croft surname? *He’s* your true heir. If I remember correctly, that child is several years older than my little cousin and his sister here. Why aren’t you asking *him* to support you in your old age? Why are you latching onto my aunt’s two children instead?"

"I know the answer to that."

Arabella raised an eyebrow, looking at her fourth sister with great interest. "Oh? And what is it?"

"Because before this whole mess came to light, that child was *also* being supported by our aunt. Now that he’s lost her financial support, he can barely take care of himself. How could he possibly have the means to support these two?"

"So that’s how it is."

Mrs. Croft and her husband flushed beet-red under Arabella’s knowing gaze, but they still gritted their teeth and played their final, desperate trump card.

"We don’t care about all that! Whether she married out or he married in, whether their name is Donovan or Croft, at the end of the day, they have to call us Grandpa and Grandma! This young lady just said it herself—our son can’t support us right now, so they have to pay to support us in his place! If they don’t, we’ll come here every single day, and... and we’ll sue them!"