Chapter 312: Clarifying the Situation

"Was she drunk, too?" Elaine asked. "Did she sleep with the wrong person? Oh, could it have been Aiden's Uncle Elijah?"

This instantly made Elijah's role in the incident prominent. Everyone wondered why Elijah was suddenly involved.

Aiden paused, then said, "I remember now. Uncle Elijah got drunk. When I took him to his room, he threw up on the bed. I had to take him to my room. Once the servants cleaned up, he refused to leave, so I slept in his room."

Roland said, "Without the lights on, you and your Uncle Elijah are about the same age and build. If he left first the next morning, it would indeed lead to a misunderstanding."

Aiden felt vindicated. He grabbed Ines's hand. "Listen, this is the truth. How could I hurt you? Do you feel reassured now?" He smiled.

Others, however, became curious about Elijah and Yvonne's relationship. The music below signaled the ceremony's imminent start, but the group, engrossed in gossip, ignored it. Even Aiden didn't seem to care about Ralph being cuckolded.

By this point, Yvonne had already revealed her emotional entanglement with Aiden.

Aiden looked baffled. "I didn't even know her before, and now she's my stepmother? Me, with my father's woman? That's repulsive. What is she talking about?"

Ines, wanting clarification, didn't need to speak. Yvonne began recounting her high school days.

Others regarded Aiden skeptically after hearing Yvonne's story. Aiden stood, mouth agape, trembling and covered in goosebumps. "Did I suffer from amnesia? I liked sleeping in the school infirmary to avoid social interaction, but let me think. There was a period when the infirmary had a regular visitor. I assumed she knew who I was and was trying to curry favor, since I was generous and rewarded those who ran errands. Could she have been doing that?"

Clearly, Aiden disdained those who curried favor; he couldn't even remember their names, let alone contact information.

"Pfft. So, in your eyes, Yvonne's campus teen drama is someone running errands for you?" Elaine summarized, laughing.

The others' mouths twitched. How amusing.

Isabella chuckled. "So, this is the chaos of unrequited love, huh? I reckon I'll be traumatized by any literature about it after this."

Ines spoke up. "If you truly don't remember her, what about when you were abroad?"

"Huh? Abroad?" Aiden was surprised.

The recording played, revealing yet another story. Aiden couldn't take it.

"What did she mean by marriage alliance? I found my wife myself," Aiden retorted indignantly. He'd thought finding true love was the luckiest thing, but now he was enraged by the defamation.

Damien scoffed. "Before, there was no interaction between the Burke and Deleon families. She found what she wanted but conveniently missed everything else."

Isabella agreed. Alexander thought the years of misunderstandings were numerous enough for a TV drama. Was there really no flaw, or did Yvonne deliberately avoid them? Clearly, she was lost in her own fantasies.

Elaine chirped, "Aiden, you're not a celebrity, yet you have a secret admirer obsessed with you! I didn't see this coming. She's so head over heels she even followed you abroad."

This cleaned-up version improves grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure for better clarity and flow. The unnecessary repetition and some informal language have been removed. The final paragraph numbers (7/2, 12:41 Mon, Oct 14 B, 1.8K) are meta-information and have been removed as they are not part of the narrative.