The five test results all appeared one after another. All came out positive.
“I’m really pregnant!” Iris grabbed one of the test kits while her other arm hooked around Jin Liwei’s neck in a half-hug.
He glanced at the results. “Of course you are. Second Brother already confirmed that you’re pregnant. A doctor of his calibre won’t make such an amateur mistake, not to mention that we already saw our babies from the ultrasound.”
She nodded.
“Did the test kits satisfy your curiosity?”
“It was fun.” Then she paused before asking, “Do you think what I just did is pointless?”
“If you had fun, then it’s not pointless. It served its purpose.”
She blessed him with a bright smile which infected him and made him smile as well. Then his smile dimmed as he observed her expression. “Are you still afraid?”
“What do you mean?” She tilted her head to the side in confusion.
“Afraid of becoming a mother, of carrying our babies inside you, and of giving birth.”
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He nodded, and then he turned serious. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“What secret?”
He leaned his head down and whispered to her ear. “The truth is…I’m also a little afraid of becoming a father.”
Her eyes widened. “Really? But you told me that you’re very happy and excited to become a father!”
“Of course I’m happy and excited. I’m fathering the babies of the woman I love. I feel like the happiest man in the world right now.”
“Then why?”
Shifting his body, he stood in front of her so that they were now face to face with their eyes locked on each other. Then he grabbed both her hands and held them tightly but not hard enough to hurt her, just enough to convey to her the sincerity of his words.
“Because it’s something that I’ve never experienced before,” he said. “We can only imagine what it’s really like how to be parents and we’ve also had some practice with our cats and Little Jun, but having our own human children that we made ourselves is a whole different experience, don’t you think? Our twins growing inside you literally came from a piece of you and me. It’s something new to both of us.”
She understood what he meant. His was more of an intrinsic fear of the unknown. Hers, however, was deeply rooted from her personal experiences with her own mother from her past life. Both of them were afraid of becoming parents but for different reasons. She didn’t tell him that, though. Maybe he thought that her fear was the same as his.
This kind of man was an alpha and would never show his vulnerable side to anyone else, even to his own friends and family (now demoted as “relatives” because she was now his main family). Hell would freeze over before that could happen. At least, that was what everyone believed back then, including him.
Then he met her.
Looking back now, both of them fell hard and fast for each other. He fell for her first, but she soon followed, especially after resolving the issue with the remnant’s grudge inside her. [This novel is a contracted work with W e b n o v e l . c o m (remove spaces). If you’re not reading this chapter on W e b n o v e l, it has been stolen. It’s very discouraging to see thieves profitting from my hard work. Please read this novel on W e b n o v e l. Thank you! -Arria Cross]
Both of them experienced tremendous changes because of their relationship. He bared himself to her, showing his everything from his unexpected sides unknown to everyone else and also his vulnerabilities. It was like ripping his own heart out of his chest and offering it to her.
Her heart also belonged to him now, of course. She loved him so much that she sometimes felt in awe that she was capable of feeling this kind of strong, deep and intricate love for another person. However, unlike him, she realized that she hadn’t bared her everything to him yet. He knew some of her vulnerabilities and even caught glimpses of her deepest fears, but not everything. And she wasn’t sure if she would reveal all her secrets to him.
How would he react if he knew that she wasn’t the original Long Xiulan? That she was Evelina Vetrova, the sheltered princess of the most infamous criminal family in the international underworld?
If her biggest secret only concerned her, then she might have already decided to tell Jin Liwei. Whether he believed her or not, they would work it out between them for sure. Unfortunately, her secret also involved her older brother.
She could only imagine how Jin Liwei, and his other brothers for that matter, would react upon discovering that their happy-go-lucky Fifth Brother Lu Zihao was already dead and that the crown prince of the Vetrov family who could shoot a bullet in a person’s head without batting an eye now lived in their brother’s body.
Compared to a hidden figure like Evelina Vetrova, the notoriety of Nikolai Vetrov in the criminal world was close to legendary. He had frightening charisma that exceeded all the previous heads of the Vetrov organization. He was able to instill fierce loyalty from his own subordinates that was completely different from the mindless, robotic obedience programmed by the organization to its subordinates through special training.
The Vetrovs, as a whole, were evil. She could never deny that fact. But to her, evil was not completely black and white. The grey areas allowed her to see the goodness within such a bloody organization—namely, her relationship with her big brother and coming to close second, with their father.
To others, Arman and Nikolai Vetrov might be the devil incarnate themselves, but to her, they were simply her father and older brother respectively. They slashed countless throats with their bare hands but those same hands always held her with doting love.
After their deaths, both she and her brother had been reborn into different bodies. And coincidentally, the two of them still crossed each other’s paths in this second chance of life. They were no longer blood siblings but their bond still remained as strong as ever.
She was now Long Xiulan or more known as Iris Long while her brother was now Lu Zihao. If Jin Liwei and his brothers ever learned that Nikolai Vetrov, such a dangerous and deadly man, now owned their Fifth brother’s body, would they still accept him? What about Grandpa Lu? For all his loud, booming laughter and ribald jokes, he was still a loving and protective grandfather. How would the old man react once he discovered that his real grandson died before him?
All these thoughts circulated in her mind as she looked at Jin Liwei admitting his fear of becoming a father to her. It might be a normal fear compared to hers but it was still a vulnerability that an alpha man like him was trusting her with.
What about her?
For the first time ever, she felt like a fake. She now lived as Long Xiulan, a.k.a. Iris Long, and even completely owned the identity after facing off with the original’s remnant, but the truth was that she wasn’t really Long Xiulan. In her deepest core, she was still Evelina Vetrova.
But the love of her life, Jin Liwei, didn’t even know anything about her. The real Evelina. Because she didn’t tell him.
Did she want to tell him?
But she couldn’t.
The secret that she and her older brother were keeping was too enormous, too heavy, too dangerous, and too deadly. Once it was known that the Vetrov siblings still existed, albeit in different bodies, it would cause a deadly worldwide manhunt and a gigantic tsunami of bloodshed that would destroy their current lives.
