The Overnight Chosen Wife: Darling, Kiss Me Deeper

Lanni could agree that she had a point but, "If I do as they say, then they may set dad free, or they may go back on their promise. But if I don't go, then they will surely hurt him. Since there is a sliver of hope, why should I give up?" 

"I would agree if it was anyone else but him." Li Yuming snickered. "He is not worthy." 

Lanni stood up. "He may not be worth it for you since you hate him so much anyway. But to me, he is. I'm willing to risk it all." She turned to go back to her room. If this topic continued, they would fight again. 

"He is a murderer." Li Yuming suddenly spoke. 

Lanni paused in her steps and turned robotically. Her face went pale in shock when she digested what her mother had just said. "You…" 

She was about to ask what her mother meant when in the next second, a chuckle escaped her lips. "To make me give up, you will surely say anything, right? By claiming that he is a murderer, I will hesitate to go and start investigating whether you are telling the truth or not and because of this delay, I will be late. Even if I do go in the end, they might still hurt him. 

Oh, and… when I start investigating, who is to say that you will not create some pieces of 'evidence' to make me believe it?" 

Li Yuming broke into a bitter laugh. Was the father-daughter pair so formidable at convincing people, or was her Lanni just too gullible? Or could it be that her capability as a mother was so lowly that her daughter no longer trusted her? She even thought she was capable of coming up with such a meticulous scheme...

No matter what it was, she decided that she would no longer hold back. "Come here." she sat down and patted the space beside her. 

Lanni thought about it briefly and walked over. 

Li Yuming called the housekeeper to make sure none of the servants went to the living room for the next one hour. After making sure that they were alone, she took a deep breath. "You have always asked me what I hate so much about the Xias and why I do not trust Xia Hanchen. I did not want to give you an answer before because no matter what, they are your biological family but now… it seems like I have run out of choices. 

Lanni parted her lips but no words could leave her mouth. She could only wait for Li Yuming to continue.

The latter looked reluctant to talk about it but braved it. "Before I met Xia Hanchen, I was just a slightly popular artist with no family except my brother. He was still in university so I took care of him. We were as close as siblings could possibly get." 

"You have a brother?" Lanni was surprised. She had never heard of it. 

"I did." Li Yuming said with a bitter sigh. 

"Oh…" Lanni understood the meaning behind it instantly. 

"When I got married, I paid more attention to my husband and in-laws. As for my brother, I would only keep contact with him on phone." She explained. ��But when I was expecting you and your sister, he was so worried about me that he started coming to my house frequently to check on me.

No one minded him at first since he was my brother but with time, he started getting into fights with my in-laws. This was majorly because he once said that he had suspicions about them, paired with the fact that he tried to stand up for me when Li Xiyan happened and it got so huge that he wanted Xia Hanchen and I to get a divorce. Of course, this is not the reason why we went separate ways." 

"Then what is?" Lanni already knew about how her paternal grandmother set her father up with another woman just to get rid of Li Yuming so she guessed that this must be the reason behind their divorce. 

However, Li Yiming's explanation was different from what she knew. "Because Xia Hanchen adamantly rejected the divorce, my brother wanted to find a way to force him to agree. Hence he started investigating your father to get a weakness. He found something… earth-shattering." 

"What did he find out?" Lanni was curious. 

"I don't know. When he found out the secret, he called me and said that he had discovered something shocking about my husband and was going to tell me about it at home. But he didn't return alive." Li Yuming dabbed at the corners of her eyes and blinked rapidly to stop the huge teardrop that was threatening to fall. "On his way back, he had an accident and died on the spot."

Lanni felt emotional as she asked, "If he didn't tell you anything, how did you conclude that dad is a murderer?" She had expected that the shocking secret was what made them divorce. 

"It was a planned accident. There were several bullet holes on his car and he had been shot twice. My brother had no enemies except the Xias and it was just too coincidental that he died immediately after uncovering their secret." 

When Lanni thought about it, it was indeed suspicious. But one couldn't draw a conclusion from a suspicion, right? "Did you investigate it?" 

"I tried my best, Lanni. I couldn't get anything from it but. That's until your paternal grandmother approached me one day and asked me to take you and leave. If I didn't, my brother would not be the only person I lost." 

Lanni was so shocked that she didn't know what to say anymore. She had not expected the truth to be like this. 

She might have still had suspicions but she recalled a fact: Luna didn't tell her anything about Li Yuming's brother. She probably knew nothing about him, which went to say that the family might have banned everyone from talking about him. 

Her head spun from the sudden info dump. So this is why her mother hated the Xias so much…