"You know what? You have a point." She couldn’t believe it had flown over her head. "But I don’t think he was targeting . I just happened to be the weapon he needed." She sighed when it made sense.
"Do you want to go back to Gabe?" He asked, knowing she wanted to speak to him more than anyone. She wanted to, but she shook her head. Mina was probably still there. She thought it best to simply send Mina a text ssage and let her know she should put their contact numbers on speed dial and give them a call if she needed them to get her out of there. She didn’t ask where she wanted to go, it was already clear that she wouldn’t want to be on her own. It was best if they spent the night at his place.
His guess was right, because they arrived to find a crying Angel who wouldn’t accept any toy Mabella tried to offer.
"Avery, you’re finally here." She was relieved to see them while Avery blazed through the room and picked her son up.
"Baby, what happened?" She patted his back gently and asked Mabella, "Did sothing happen?"
"I told him you guys would be back within the hour. As soon as the hour passed and he couldn’t see any sign of you, he beca restless and started crying." Mabella explained in detail. "He may seem like a harmless cute little boy but his resolve is stronger than diamond. Phew, I’m tired." She yawned.
"Thank you." Avery found it funny although Mabella did look like she would drop on the floor for a nap if she was allowed to.
"Would you like to spend the night? It’s already late." Damon offered.
Mabella wanted to say no but she quickly realized Avery was staying, she smiled. "Of course! I can’t wait to watch Paw Patrol with my nephew for the hundredth ti. Angel, do you want to watch sothing fun with ?"
Angel wasn’t entirely willing to go with his aunt for fear that his mother would once again vanish, but when he saw Avery take off his coat and hang it on the coat rack, he excitedly ran after his aunt.
"He loves his shows a lot." Damon remarked at his son’s disappearing back.
"Just like his parents loves their movies." She added with a giggle.
The couple soon freshened up and curled in bed, with her in his arms. He didn’t try to make a move on her, only stroking her skin in gentle caresses. She fell asleep soon after her head hit the pillow.
_____
She had managed to sleep through the night but as soon as she woke up, she wanted to have a word with Gabriel.
"You better have a good reason to wake up so late at night." He croaked into the phone when she called. "Oh, it’s morning. Do you need anything, sis?"
"I need to talk to you and you know it." She called out his pretense. He already knew she would want to get the entire story from him after only finding partial truths from the papers in their childhood ho.
"Do you want to co over?" He asked, probably knowing she was no longer willing to be in his house until she knew everything. He had thought Bryce would not succeed in sowing discord between them but he had won.
When she agreed, he rushed over within half an hour. "I heard I was needed here." He announced his presence as soon as he arrived. When he saw Angel playing with his favorite firefighters truck on the carpet, he rolled his sleeves and sat on the carpet to play with him. "Hey Angel, I have many toys you will love. Do you want to bring them over next ti?" He asked.
Avery watched his antics and when Angel willingly offered Gabriel one of his toys so they would play together, she realized what he was doing.
"Stop finding excuses to be allowed to co back. If you are using my son to make call you back, you need to learn when to stop."
He stood up with a grin to mask his hurt, only for Angel to tug on his pants and offer him his military-design plane as a bribe so they would play together.
He grabbed the chance to tease Avery. "See? My nephew doesn’t have brothers or friends to play with. So when his dad is busy making money for the family, he needs his uncle to play with him.
Avery massaged the space between her brows. "Enough. Stop stalling." She took the plane from Angel. "Baby, Gabe and I need to talk. Can you play by yourself for a while?"
He nodded, and she sighed in relief as she led Gabriel to the garden where she knew there were servants not too far away. She had made sure to check the surveillance caras before he arrived, and she couldn’t believe she was suddenly so suspicious of the man she had thought was her family for all these years. But if he was not her family, who was he? She wondered, and asked about that as soon as they sat on the lounge chairs.
"You claid to have done an ancestry test that proved we have the sa ancestors." She called him out for lying.
He didn’t say a word, silently admitting he had lied.
"Why did you lie?" She questioned him.
He stood up and took her hand, making her scream and go on the defense. She reached for the gun in her waist and when he stepped back with a laugh, she realized he was toying with her yet again.
He sat down. "That’s why I didn’t want to tell you the truth. If I did that before, you would think of it as sothing normal and it would never have raised your concern. But since you know I’m not your brother, you thought my getting close to you was a threat to your life." He didn’t wait for her to deny it before he called her out on it. "You still have your hand at your waist, reaching for your probably fully loaded gun."
"I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to think. My brother is suddenly not my brother. How am I supposed to take it?" She placed the gun on the table, but only because it was the unloaded one. She still couldn’t trust him. What if Gabriel Vaillant was actually her brother or half brother, but the DNA match ca back as 0% because the man before her was an impostor?
"Don’t give those eyes, okay? Do you rember that Saturday when our parents attended a banquet and, out of curiosity, we broke a water tap and it sent water soaking both of us from head to toe?"
She stopped breathing montarily. If this man was an impostor, he would find out such details about Gabriel to convince her. However, he had chosen the wrong ’mory’. "That’s not exactly what happened, is it? A broken tap?"
He laughed. "Of course not. You fell into the Wilsons’ fishpond trying to pet a fish. I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking. You could have gotten yourself killed and you knew you would get in trouble if our parents knew so you begged not to tell them. However, there was no way to explain the wet clothes so I broke a tap and made up this story for you."
She blinked away the emotions threatening to surface.
"Don’t look at like I’m an impostor, silly. I’m still . Just with tons of secrets revealed." He rubbed her cheek the sa way he would in the past to console her whenever she was bullied. There was no way an impostor would know that.
"Then whose son are you?"
"My parents died." He broke out of the blue as though it was so kind of joke but when she saw his expression, she knew he was serious.
"Well, at least my mother did. I don’t know anything about my father."
"There was no adoption docunt. That, and the fact that I saw mother’s pictures while she was pregnant."
He let out a sigh. Since he had already started it, he might as well tell her everything. "Alia was indeed pregnant. However, her child was still born."
She knew where this was heading and she didn’t think it made sense. "If her child was still born, why did she take another child ho?"
"She had to secure her status in the Vaillant family. If her child died, her position was no longer secure. Bryce was obsessed with having a son so when she overheard the nurses talking about a boy whose mother had died giving birth, she thanked the heavens for the chance and took ho as her own."
So that was why despite him not being part of the Vaillant family, he could pass off as one of them and no one seed to have known for a while.
"Alia once forgot to hide my dical file and Bryce found it. That’s how he found out by my blood type that I couldn’t be his son. The DNA test proved him right."
"That’s why he hated you." She finally understood. "That’s why he was disappointed in you. When he said you didn’t turn out to be the son he was excited to have..."
"He ant I was not his son at all. He couldn’t wait to get rid of ever since he found out and while he never got the chance to do so in the past, he finally did it."
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