Chapter 114 Secrets
Kian
“How is that every plan to win back that stone-hearted woman has failed woefully—” I bit into my burger, reaching for the can of soda at the same time as I popped it open.
I didn’t care that I was making a mess. I have been starving for hours. Mikaelson Williams has made it his life goal to frustrate me. While he always acted like he was only following dad’s instructions, I knew he was doing this out of his personal vendetta against me just because I fucked his bitch years back.
What was her name again? Sana? Serena?
The cold fizz slid down my throat—heaven—as I darted my eyes to Jaden who picked up a fry and tossed it in his mouth. “No answer?” I waited till he finished chewing.
Jaden’s eyes locked on mine. I could see that tiny flicker of tiredness in them.
He drew in a long breath. “Two factors are involved here. Your uncle—”
A low growl rumbled from my chest. I didn’t want to hear about him.
“—and the second factor, Miss Verena Carson isn’t in love with you anymore,”
My heart slowed to a stop as her words about being ‘madly in love’ with my uncle replayed in my head.
Nah. I wasn’t having any of that.
Surveys show that people who leave long-term relationships or marriages rarely move on quickly. While a few managed in three months, most took one to three years to completely heal.
And in the worst scenario—six years.
Verena, however, moved on in one single night and everyone expected me to believe that? No. It only happened because she wanted to hurt me back as I did.
So no, she wasn’t in love with him. She was only being manipulated by my uncle and that was the reason, she believed she was in love.
“I knew I fell out of love but she didn’t fall out of…”
Jaden cut in, staring into my eyes. “What makes you believe that she also didn’t fall out of love and only remained with you because she wanted to work on your marriage? I mean, that explains why she moved on quickly. You disrespected her and she decided she was done,”
My stomach tightened as his words resounded through my head. Was Verena just clinging to the marriage then?
I shook my head, shoving the thoughts to the back of my mind. “Well, it doesn’t matter. How is she faring?”
“Good,”
I was relieved. At least, she had moved on from the whole ‘Emily’ nonsense.
I downed the rest of my soda, a frustrated groan slipping from my mouth. I was so close to winning her back until everything went wrong and now, all I did was sit behind my desk sorting hundreds of files.
I didn’t even have space to breathe and if there was one thing I hated the most, it was the feeling of being suffocated.
I tossed my head back, staring into nothing. “I almost got her back, Jaden. I still can’t believe that shit failed,”
“And it will keep failing…”
My eyes snapped to Jaden, brows furrowing in confusion. “Wait, what is that supposed to mean?”
Jaden sighed, rising to his feet as he dumped the empty carton and crushed can in the trash before he turned to face me.
“We have been neglecting the one problem that keeps getting in the way. Mr. Daxton Cooper,”
I sat upright, crossing one leg over the other as I stared intently at him. “How so?”
“With Mr. Cooper in the picture, every plan will fail and always fail until we do something about him. We need to drive a wedge between them and in that way, Verena will gravitate towards you naturally,”
A dark excitement curled from the hollow of my stomach as I leaned forward. “You mean we should target the obstacle this time?”
Jaden gave a curt nod. “Yes,”
A smirk pulled at the corner of my mouth. “How?”
“By doing the one thing we didn’t do before. Looking into him. His past. To check if he has dirty secrets. A mistress? A secret child that he is keeping away from Verena. A man like him isn’t clean,”
The flame of hope that ignited in my heart vanished just as swiftly as it came. As much as I would really love to target my uncle, I knew digging dirt on him wasn’t going to be easy.
He was the type not to leave any traces.
Uncle Daxton was a master of secrecy. He only revealed what he wanted the world to see. The type to feed people crumbs just to keep their mouths shut.
“I don’t think that will be possible. I honestly don’t know. I just want to be reinstated as the CEO, kick that idiot out, and find ways to make Verena forgive me,”
Dad.
It was about time I visited that old man.
He’s refused to speak to me since that altercation we had in the office.
“Tell him to leave my house. I don’t want to see that brat—” Dad snarled, a slight shudder rolling through me as I stood outside the door.
I could hear mum’s voice as she tried to calm him down. “Neil, please hear him out. You can’t keep shutting him out. He is our only child. He is still your son,”
Dad barked out a loud scoff. “Son?”
“The same boy who almost threw a punch at me? He disrespected me. He told me he had plans of knocking my teeth out,”
I could picture the grim look on mum’s face.
“Please let’s just let this slide and have lunch together. He’s learnt his mistake,”
I had sent gifts to my dad to appease him. He had rejected every single one of them.
I sucked in a deep breath, tipping my forehead against the door. “Dad, I’m sorry. I can’t even explain what happened that day. I think I was possessed—”
“You heard that? He’s blaming it on some non-existent demons. Not one accountability. You are the reason he turned out that way!”
This time, my mum snapped. “What! You are blaming me now?”
“Yes. I am because he has your temper,”
She shouted. “My own temper? I wasn’t even there and you are now shifting the blame to me. You know what, I don’t even care anymore! You two could trash it out however you like!”
I could hear the sound of her footsteps approaching as I quickly stepped back from the door. The moment the door opened, she glared daggers at me.
“And you too, how dare you hit your dad back?”
“I didn’t even hit him back and he did that first and—”
“Shut up! I don’t care. It is the same thing. You will go in there, apologize to your dad, and end this once and for all,”
After an hour of dropping to my knees and begging for his forgiveness and promising to become a better person, he finally spoke to me and now, we were having lunch together.
“Remember, you promised to be a better person and that includes letting Verena be—”
The former me would have argued but instead, I forced a smile because the last time I checked, I promised to become a better person and didn’t mention anything about Verena.
To get him off my back and get back in his good books, I nodded.
“I don’t understand why you keep messing with Daxton. Is it that you don’t understand how dangerous your uncle is? Everyone avoids crossing him but you,”
I forced another smile, pouring him wine. “I am a changed person now Dad and that part of me is in the past,”
Heck. I only wanted my position back.
His eyes narrowed on me, suspicion glinting in them. “Because I forgave you doesn’t mean that I trust you. To regain my trust, you need to get into a relationship, get married and your position will return to you,”
I froze.
I was growing tired of the same old tactics my parents used to bend me to their will, and this whole marriage nonsense was starting to fray my nerves.
No one pressured my uncle like this. If they had, he’d probably be married, raising kids, and too busy to even think about stealing someone else’s wife.
“Dad, can you just stop with the marriage talk? You don’t need to keep using it to keep me in line. And why am I the only one under pressure? My uncle’s almost forty and still not married…”
Mum chipped in. “Well, we aren’t his parents,”
Dad nodded. “And if my dad and his mum were still alive, he would have been pressured this way and—”
I didn’t listen to the rest of his words. What did he just say?
Mum seemed to have caught what he said as the fork stopped halfway to her mouth.
We both whipped our heads to him, eyes widening in shock. “His mum is dead!”
Dad paused, the color draining from his face like it just sank in that he said something that should have never left his mouth.
He blinked rapidly, reaching for the glass of water. “Did I say something like that?”
“Yes you did, Neil…so you mean…wait, if she is dead, why is it reported in the media that she is missing?”
The first time I ever heard about Uncle Daxton’s mother was when my own mum gossiped with her friends. They whispered about how she had gone missing when Daxton was just five—classic gossip masquerading as sympathy. They recounted how the story had made front-page news and how everyone speculated that the popular opera singer had abandoned her son and my grandpa to run off with a man.
Dad squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in his palm. “Daxton is going to kill me for this…” he groaned, his voice muffled. After a long pause, he lifted his head with a heavy sigh. “Look, this is a top family secret, but his mum is dead and the one responsible for her death is Daxton.”
My jaw dropped while Mum’s hands flew over her mouth.
By ‘responsible’, he meant he killed his mum? Interesting.
A wicked idea popped into my head and I smirked at it. I should probably text Jaden.