Chapter 174
Akira's POV
I tried to move my body as I slowly began to wake up, the memory of that man suffocating me with whatever he put in that handkerchief came flashing. How just one inhale from it, my eyes were already shut and I didn’t know what was going on around me.
My head throbbed painfully when I tried to move, I realized my wrists were bound behind me.
I blinked several times, my vision adjusting to the dim light. The room, no, I don't think it's a room, it's a basement, it was a large, windowless space with cracked cement walls. A single bulb flickered overhead. The faint creak of movement made me turned my head, "I told you, let go of my daughter. Keep my daughter out of this."
That voice, I could recognize it.
My head snapped to the other side, only to see my family, and the sight sent a cold spine into my system.
My father. Sarah, my stepmother. Linda, my sister.
All tied to chairs, their faces pale with fear. My stepmother, Sarah, had a gag in her mouth, muffling her panicked whimpers. My elder sister, Linda, looked too terrified to move. She has always been the frightened one. While father, was ranting heavily, his jaw clenched.
And then there was the woman holding the gun.
A tall, chubby woman with streaks of gray in her dark hair, her sharp eyes burning with fury. I didn’t recognize her at first, but there was something disturbingly familiar about her.
Then it hit me.
“Grand Aunt Miranda…” I whispered, my throat dry.
Miranda’s lips curled into a cold smile. “Ah, so you know who I am. I thought they wouldn't tell you about me, because they didn't acknowledge me, even at your party.”
I swallowed hard. Amelia had said something about her aunt but I don't think they were nice things. I only met her at my party and when the family discovered that I was pregnant and she was furious, talking down on me and mother, and after that outburst, when great grandpa reprimanded her, I didn't see her anymore and now, here she was, pointing a gun at the people, I had known all my life.
“Let them go,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “What do you want?”
Aunty Miranda’s expression hardened. “Everything that your existence and your mother's existence had taken away from me all because of this stupid man that couldn't do a simple task right.”
She moved closer to my Father, pressing the gun against his temple. He flinched but didn’t speak. My eyes tilted from her to father, I couldn't understand what was going on. "What are you saying? Don't involve my father in your bullshit."
“Bullshit,” Miranda hissed. “Tell her what you did. Tell her who you are.”
My stomach twisted. “stop it, I already know that father didn't tell Mother, his true identity, so stop it.”
"Did you ask the reason, he gave your mother a wrong name?"
My gaze moved to Father who kept his gaze on the floor.
I know there should be a reason but I didn't see how it connects to my great grand aunt.
Her patience snapped. She grabbed his chin roughly, forcing him to look at me. “Say it, or I’ll put a bullet in your wife’s head first. Then your precious daughter. And I’ll let you live with that for the few seconds before I kill you, too.”
Mother let out a muffled sob while Linda was shaking violently.
“Stop it!” I begged. “I don't know what all this is all about but just let them go.”
"I can't... Your father's sin had made them my enemies."
"Miranda, what do you want?"
"It's Madam Miranda to you." She snarled hitting my father's head with the gun.
"Father..." The three of us shouted at the same time.
"Wow... They all care about you. Tell them..."
Father finally exhaled, his shoulders sagging as if a heavy weight had just crushed him. He looked at me, pain and guilt written all over his face.
“Nadine...” he said slowly, his voice hoarse. “I never loved your mother.” That is no news to me, giving a fake identity to a female, is enough to show that there is no feeling there.
His Laryngeal prominence bobbed. “I was never meant to be with her. I was paid to be with her.”
Now I get it but it didn't stop my heart from pounding so loudly I could barely hear anything else. “No… No, you don't love her, I could understand not being paid to be with her."
“She was a fool,” Miranda spat. “A naive, trusting fool.”
I turned to her, anger surging through my veins. “You made him do this?”
She tilted her head, the gun never wavering from Father's head. “I paid him to take that naughty girl away from our family. She was supposed to leave and never look back. That was the deal, not come back with a bastard.”
“Why?” I demanded, shaking. “Why would you do that to your niece?” if she is the daughter of one of great Grandpa's kids, then she should be aunty to my mother while mother niece to her.
Miranda's lips curled in disgust. “She is not my niece, she is my father's child."
"Mother is great grandpa Shan's child?" I asked with a shaken voice.
"Yes, your mother is a bastard child of my father..." she said coldly as she moved away from father, still pointing the gun at us, "...My father only brought her home on one cold evening and gave her to my elder brother and his wife that couldn't bear a child, I was only fourteen when he brought her home, they didn't know I was just behind the door, he told my elder brother that he had a child from one night stand with a female and the female had passed away while giving birth to Amelia, your mother. He had nowhere to bring the little girl and since he was a grieving old man and we just lost our mother, his wife, he couldn't care for her, so he asked my elder brother to take care of her, treat her like his own." She lit up a cigarette and sniffed it before puffing the smoke out. "For years, I was okay with it because I didn't have any female siblings around, they were two boys and just me and since she was to remain a grand child, I was perfect with it, until my brother and his wife ended up in a car accident and my father wanted to tell Amelia that he is her biological father and not her grand father and make her the heiress of the family when I am supposed to be the heiress, the one and only princess of the Shan groups."
"I am sure Mother wasn't going to fight that with you if you had share with her."
"That is the point..." she snarled, "She was too good to associate anything evil with her. Her simplicity and selflessness were what I hated most in her, and that was one thing father didn't stop reminding me of. How she was better than me in every way, in beauty, intelligence, humility... Everything was just perfect for her except one thing. She thought love was all she needed. Our family had power, status, wealth, and magic. That magic was something I wish to have but I never did and she didn't get it either. But Amelia wanted nothing to do with it. She wanted a fairy-tale romance. She wanted to run away and be normal. She wanted freedoms and I gave her one.” Aunt Miranda spat the last word like it was poison.
“It's not bad to want to love and be Love. That is happiness and I guess she was happy,” I whispered, my voice cracking.
“She was stupid,” She corrected. “And Todd here was supposed to make sure she left for good. No ties. No reason to come back. Let her wallowed in her mirage she called Romance.”
My stomach twisted painfully. “But I exist,” I whispered, realization dawning. “You didn’t want her to have me.”
Miranda’s fingers tightened around the gun. “No. You were never supposed to be born." I was about to ask something else when the door flew open.
"Mother... Vida..."
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