Chapter 306: Chapter 44
It was mid-june and Rayne was almost five months pregnant.
Rayne’s car ca to a stop in front of the ornate gates of Oriana Thompson estate. The iron gates slowly swung open, and she drove up the winding driveway, flanked by manicured lawns and towering trees.
As the car ca to a halt in front of the grand house, Rayne exited the car and caught sight of her reflection in the car’s glimring windows.
With a sense of grim fascination, she studied her unfamiliar appearance. Her head was bent; her shoulders hunched forward, as if bracing herself. Her red hair was a mass of untad curls, hastily pulled into a ponytail because it was easiest, and her pregnancy was unmistakably bulging through her dress.
Liam Thompson’s child was making its presence known...
Ignoring her appearance, Rayne stepped away from the car and walked towards the entrance, ready to et Oriana Thompson, who also happened to be Lilly’s mother.
For months now, she’d watched as her life began to fall to pieces. The restaurant she’d been working hard to build had slowly started to fail because she had no ti to attend to it.
"You are not really invested in running this business. You need to think about selling it." She’d heard those words a hundred tis from her staff as she watched the restaurant crumble before her eyes. All because her mind raced with thoughts of Liam and her pregnancy.
The wound cut deep, and Rayne did nothing to heal and move on. She’d allowed herself to slack and get overwheld by her emotions and her lack of faith in herself.
She should have just gone through with the abortion and gotten rid of the child, but when she stepped into the hospital a few months ago, she couldn’t bring herself to do it because she feared the pain, not because she cared for the baby.
A few months ago—before Liam Thompson—she would have had enough confidence in her judgnt to build up her father’s restaurant and make things better for the Wallace na.
But now, she had lost faith in herself, and it seed everyone else in the restaurant was losing faith in her too. Because of Liam, and because of her pregnancy with his child, she had been reduced to an exhausted mass of raw emotions and uncertainties.
Worse yet, she couldn’t think of the child she was carrying without imdiately thinking of what a gullible fool she’d been about its father.
For weeks, she’d been waiting to feel so sort of maternal bond with her baby, but it wasn’t happening, and she was starting to fear that her feelings about Liam were going to prevent her from loving her baby.
Rayne faced the fact that things were likely to get much worse, not better, unless she could find so sort of resolution and peace about what Liam had done to her.
She had to be able to forgive him and then forgive herself for falling for him. Once she did that, she’d be able to put all the bad feelings behind her and look forward to the future.
But in order to forgive and forget, she first needed to understand how he thought and what had made him so heartless enough to hurt her like that. Which was why she was now here in Oriana Thompson’s estate to get answers to a few questions.
Bracing herself to act normal, she walked up the door steps, but as if they’d been expecting her, the door swung open and she was t with Lilly Thompson, whose face was a mask of joy at the sight of Rayne.
"Miss Rayne!" Lilly exclaid, her eyes rounding in excitent. She was holding a remote control in her hand but flung it away and threw herself into Rayne’s arms.
"Lilly," Rayne murmured, hugging her back for a brief mont before stepping back.
Lilly’s eyes widened as she noticed the bulge in Rayne’s stomach. "You’re... pregnant?" She muttered in disbelief. For years now, she’d silently hoped her uncle would end up marrying Rayne, but it seed she was obviously married to soone else and pregnant for him.
Rayne forced a smile, trying to ignore the awkwardness. "Yes, I am."
Lilly took in Rayne’s appearance and frowned a little bit, noticing that Rayne wasn’t as welcoming as she once was. Though she had a smile on her face, it looked forced and unfriendly.
"Is your mom ho?" Rayne asked, her tone more brusque than she intended.
Lilly nodded, looking a bit hurt by Rayne’s indifference. "Yeah, she’s inside." She murmured a bit shakily while staring at Rayne.
Rayne saw the hurt in the girl’s eyes and wanted to reach out to touch her, but then pulled back again. Her resentnt for the Thompsons was so deep she couldn’t even show affection for the girl she’d once liked. Hating herself for that, she simply decided to go straight to the point. "Can you let your mother know that I’m here?"
Lilly nodded, her excitent replaced by a subdued look. "Okay, I’ll tell her." She dejectedly walked back into the house, holding the door open for Rayne to enter before hurrying off to find her mother.
Rayne didn’t walk past the large, elegant foyer and stood there to wait for Oriana.
A few minutes later, Oriana walked down the stairs in an elegant plain blue dress, her black hair let down her shoulders in wavy curls with a friendly smile on her face. Rayne couldn’t help but think that Oriana was one of the most beautiful won she’d ever seen, and that made her feel self-conscious about her own unkempt appearance.
"Rayne, it’s so good to see you," Oriana said warmly, extending her hand. "Please, co in."
Rayne forced a smile and took Oriana’s hand. "Thank you, Mrs. Addison."
Oriana led her to the living room where the H2O series was playing on the flat-screen television where Lilly had obviously been sitting but had gone up now. Oriana muted the television and asked, "Would you like anything to drink, Rayne? Tea, coffee, water?"
"I’m fine, thank you. I don’t want anything," Rayne replied, trying to keep her voice steady.
Oriana gestured to the sofa. "Please, have a seat. What brings you here today?"
Rayne took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the conversation ahead. "I heard you are the closest to your brother, I an Liam, so I ca here today to ask you a few things about him, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d answer
honestly."
Oriana’s smile faded slightly, replaced by a look of concern. "Is he in trouble or sothing? Brother Liam is out of the country and as much as I’d like to answer your question, you’ve got sothing wrong, we are no longer close after the incident of my step-brother’s death."
"Actually, I just want to know if Liam, I an if you knew about him and
in..."
A knowing smile crossed Oriana’s beautiful face. They all knew about Rayne and Liam on the island because of the photographs Milo had received from his online friend, capturing their monts together.
"Of course, I do. If that’s what you’re trying to find out by coming here today, the answer is that you were the only woman he showed any interest in while he was on the island."
"How lucky for ," Rayne said, then she shook her head to stop herself from betraying, or feeling, any bitterness.
"Actually, he wasn’t interested in
at all—" she said, starting to explain the truth, but Oriana’s incredulous smile stopped her in mid-sentence.
"He certainly looks interested in those photographs of both of you. I would even have said absorbed in them," Oriana replied.
"What photographs? Never mind, that doesn’t matter. I’m getting sidetracked," Rayne said, and decided to abandon her carefully thought-out plan and go straight to what did matter.
"I need to ask you sothing, but before I do, is there the slightest chance you’d be willing to give
your word that what I say here won’t leave this room?"
Oriana smiled and leaned forward on her chair, ready to listen. "You have my word that our conversation won’t leave this room."
"Thank you. What I need is to know more about your brother."
"What is it that you’re curious about?"
"I’m not curious," Rayne said simply. "I’m pregnant with his child."
The words dropped like a bomb, sending shock waves rippling across the room. Finally, Oriana said, "You could probably locate him yourself with so intense snooping on the Internet. However, I’ll give you his addresses."
"I don’t want to locate him," Rayne said, and for the second ti Oriana was silent with shock.
"Why not? He has a right to know about this baby, and he also has financial obligations to you and to it."
"Trust , I will give Liam no right to this child. And he despises
so much he would never want anything to do with the child." She said, but Oriana looked ready to argue that with her, but to stop her from insisting, Rayne said, "Tell
everything about Liam instead."
Oriana regarded Rayne in a mont of silence. She’d heard that her engagent with Max had been called off but Max had made it seem like he was the one who ended the relationship because he was fed up with her, he didn’t let anyone know that she’d cheated on him to keep his pride and ego.
Finally, Oriana decided to tell Rayne about everything about Liam’s life.
"As you may have noticed, my brother is of mixed race, and he never likes admitting it to anyone—"
"He admitted it to ." Rayne said without thinking, and that took Oriana by surprise yet again.
"He did?" She muttered. "That’s a first, then. Did he also tell you he was half Chinese?"
"Yeah, he did."
"And then you said he didn’t care about you?" Oriana scoffed. Liam had never admitted his origin to anybody before; he never even let any woman know anything about his personal life.
"Well—"
"Give
so minutes." Oriana excused herself and went upstairs. When she ca back down, she was holding a huge photo album and a sack of files.
She dumped them on the table in front of Rayne and picked up the largest album among them and then handed it to Rayne.
"Here, take a look at this. You will find every single picture of Liam from his childhood to adulthood."
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