"Catherine and Charles Montgory married shortly after Matteo’s mother passed away," Ronan said to Alia in the deserted hospital hallway. Not even the nurses would venture here― everyone knew to give them space.
"However, Matteo went missing shortly after. He was also very young," Ronan continued, "and as a result, wasn’t allowed to inherit the inheritance left by his mother. She never wrote a will, and because of that, everything she owned went to Charles Montgory."
"Went missing..." Alia trailed off, deep in thought. She recalled this. Cherry had ntioned sothing similar the other day.
"Catherine sent Matteo to the orphanage for a period of ti," Ronan said. "She wanted Aiden to be the only Montgory heir. As such, Matteo stayed away from the Montgory ho for a long ti before he was eventually returned."
"Do you know what happened to him at the orphanage?" Alia asked.
"Hardly," Ronan said. "Matteo doesn’t like to talk about it. I only rember that it was called the All Saints Orphanage... I think? But the place has since closed down. I think... I might be wrong... but I think he was kidnapped."
"Kidnapped?" Alia’s eyebrows shot to the top of her forehead.
"That was how he returned to the Montgory household. Soone figured out that he was actually the Montgory heir and tried to adopt him just to return him. Charles Montgory tried looking for him for the first few months, after all, and everyone in Solara back then had already seen the reports."
"That’s how he returned ho?"
"Well, no," Ronan said, shrugging. "If I rember this correctly, I believe Matteo said the person failed. He was killed before he could bring Matteo to the Montgory mansion. He was then brought to a warehouse sowhere to be killed, most likely his stepmother’s doing."
Then, Ronan looked at Alia and asked, "Are you sure you don’t know any of this?"
"Matteo has never ntioned it," Alia said. She then confessed, "But Cherry said sothing similar last ti when I asked. She didn’t know much, though."
"I... see..." Ronan trailed off. He seed oddly quiet after, looking down at the floor, deep in thought.
"What happened after that?" Alia softly asked, pulling Ronan back from his thoughts. "How did he manage to escape? He was just a child back then."
Ronan jerked. His eyes found Alia’s and held her gaze for a long ti. A thousand unexplainable expressions flitted through his irises, and Alia suddenly felt a shiver of fear running down her spine. A soft throb started to fill her head, and she gritted her teeth hard.
"He was saved by an unlikely source," Ronan slowly said. "There was a girl he often played with at the orphanage. When she realized he had been ’adopted’, she tried to trail them. She eventually caught up to them at the warehouse near the port where he was held."
The throbbing in Alia’s head beca worse. She pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to drive the pain away. However, it didn’t subside even the slightest.
"Are you alright, Alia?" Ronan asked. "Maybe I should get the doctor―"
"No," she said, stopping Ronan. "No, I’m fine. What happened after that?"
"Well, I don’t know how she saved him," Ronan confessed. "All Matteo said was that she had managed to buy them so ti before the cops eventually arrived. Soone apparently saw them there and called the cops for trespassing, not knowing there were kidnapped children present."
A flashing mory suddenly shot through Alia’s head. She saw water around her and her body was plunged into a frigid cold. Everything was dark and felt bleak. Her throat clogged up and it felt difficult to breathe. No matter how she moved her arms around, she couldn’t seem to surface.
Everything around her seed to turn into a hum. She managed to pick up just one sentence that Ronan said, however.
"He nearly lost his life that night if it weren’t for the girl."
Alia’s lips parted, trying to breathe. However, oxygen refused to enter her lungs no matter how hard she tried. At least, not until she felt a warm hand on her shoulder.
"Alia? Alia! Breathe!"
When Alia blinked again, the image was gone and she was no longer in the water but back in the hospital. She breathed deeply in through her nostrils, the air filling her lungs before she heaved out. The mory was gone but she could still feel the cold around her.
She wrapped her arms around her body.
Everything was starting to piece itself together. Matteo said he knew her from long before he saved her from the club where Caleb and his friends were trying to humiliate her. Her father refused to divulge more information about the orphanage and was obviously hiding sothing. Then, this.
"Ronan," she said, "who is that girl?"
Ronan was silent. Alia turned, looking him dead in the eye. She couldn’t read his expression― it was oddly blank, just staring at her and watching her reaction.
"You said Matteo nearly died that night," she said. "What about her?"
"She went missing after that," Ronan said. "And Matteo was returned to the Montgory ho. He trained to beco the next leader of their business empire and wasn’t allowed a chance to return to the orphanage to visit. When he was old enough to venture out on his own, she was no longer there."
"Did she..."
"I think you know very well what happened to her after," Ronan said.
The wrinkles in between his eyebrows were deeply embedded in his skin, drawing thick lines that were further darkened by the shadows cast on his face.
"Matteo has been looking for you ever since," Ronan said, his words answering Alia’s question.
She closed her eyes before burying her head into her hands. The fog in her head had cleared, and all of a sudden, she realized why Matteo had always acted so intimately with her even though they had supposedly never t each other before.
The job offer, the honeyed gazes, the sweet words― it was all for a reason.
"He just never realized that you were always working at Paragon Luxe until that night he saw you on shift since you introduced yourself to him with a different na as children," Ronan continued. "After all this ti searching, it turns out you had always been hiding right under his nose."
Reviews
All reviews (0)