A few other elders agreed with Tony and urged Laurence to accept the blind date arrangement.
“The most important thing for you now is to get married and have kids,” said one of the elders, Matteo Longbottom.
"We'll help you pick the ladies, and you just have to meet them.
"Take a look at these photographs and see if you fancy any of them.”
Matteo picked up the bag and handed it to Laurence.
Laurence did not reject it. He took the bag from Matteo and opened it to retrieve a thick stack of photos. Every single one was caked in makeup and their poses orchestrated, making it impossible to tell what they actually looked like.
He haphazardly flipped through a few, then passed the stack to Noelle, who was standing behind him. He said to her, "Noelle, you take a look too."
Noelle took the stack and looked through quite a few with diligence before stacking them neatly once more and returning them to Laurence. She said politely, "Sir, these are your potential blind dates, so you should take your time looking through them. My taste is different from yours, so I won't presume the choice for you."
"I can't tell what they look like."
Laurence did not continue looking through the photos. He simply shoved the photos back into the bag and said to the elders, "These photos are all posed and they have such heavy makeup I can't tell what they actually look like.
"All I can say is they all have eyes, ears, noses and lips. The next time you'd like to show me photos, please provide photos of them barefaced. I won't look at any if they're wearing makeup, even if it's just light makeup.
"And they're not allowed to use beauty filters either because again, the photos won't be authentic."
The elders exchanged glances.
Finally, it was still Tony who spoke. He said, “If you feel like you can't tell from the photos, then shall we arrange for you to meet them?"
"These ladies are all socialites, right?"
"Yes, they're all socialites. Even the least impressive ones among them are still charming young women from respectable families. They certainly are a suitable match for you. We couldn't possibly arrange for someone from an ordinary family for you."
Laurence remarked, “Then once we hold the banquet and invite friends, family and the prominent members of the industry, these ladies can come over with their families, can't they? Tell them to all come barefaced then, and I'll take a look at all of them in one go."
The rest were left speechless.
All barefaced? Would those socialites, who were used to putting on makeup before they stepped out the door, be willing to accept this request?
Actually, these so-called socialites on the list were from families on the decline.
Generations of family heads had married rich heiresses, who had provided invisible support.
Thirty years ago, Tony and his accomplices murdered the head of the family and his entire household, and did not let his wife's family go either. They were severely persecuted and went bankrupt long ago, having been destroyed.
They had been terrified that Laurence's maternal relatives would investigate the truth and simply decided that, since they had already come this far, why not go all the way and crush them too?
There was a cousin in Laurence's maternal family left in Havenmill. However, her family was either dead, imprisoned, or had escaped far away, while the ones in prison had been framed or otherwise schemed against and given heavy sentences.
The cousin was now working at a supermarket, earning about three to four thousand dollars a month, and married into an average family. Neither of them earned much, but they had three children, so they lived on a tight budget.
Tony had not snuffed out every single trace of Laurence's maternal relatives and purposely left her alive, unable to cause him any trouble and mainly to use her as bait against Laurence.