Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 160: No other can replace her

Chapter 160: No other can replace her

"What about her husband?" She asked cautiously.

At that question, his face took on that masklike look—carefully blank, deliberately expressionless, with dangerously darkened eyes, and it made her extremely uneasy whenever he did that.

"I don’t know." After a prolonged moment of silence, he added, "He killed my parents and got away with the crime. When I was boy, I’d only seen Ella once in our house when she was talking to my mom about something, but I never knew her family background nor her husband’s because the damned man was a shady bastard who made sure to clean up his tracks."

Neil fell silent again as he recalled all the years he’d spent trying to look for the bastard, if only he’d been smart enough as a twelve years old to investigate more into Ella’s background before her husband had cleared up their history in Mirage Mesa, he wouldn’t have spent all of his life searching for the man. Despite all of his hard work, he’d only been able to get one suspect as his family’s killer; Kevin Rodrigo, but he had no evidence to back up his claim, and now that he was a wanted criminal, his chances of ever getting to know if Kelvin was his enemy was so slim.

"Was that why you’d been going after the Da Kroll and destroying all of their shady business for years?" Mia asked, trying not to look as curious and sympathetic as she felt.

"But yet I never found him," he said with a shrug.

"What are you going to do if you were to find him?" She asked, knowing and feeling that everything he’d said, the subject of the man responsible for his parents death was the most painful.

"If I were ever to find him..." He trailed off as a slow, wicked smirk appeared on his face, "I’d do the same thing he did to my family, and if he had his own family, I’d make sure they all suffer the fate I’d suffered because of him."

For some reasons, even though Mia had no idea who this man was, and even though she felt that he deserved whatever Neil planned to do to him, she couldn’t help but feel an unknown fear seep into her bones, it’s chills travelled down her stomach making her suddenly nauseous and anxious. She couldn’t pinpoint the strange feeling, but it made her so uncomfortable to know that he’d planned to ruined the man and his family. And she knew from the cold, blank look on his face that he wasn’t joking about anything he’d said about ruining the family.

However, she had to know for sure. She was understanding more about him with every passing moment. "What if he had children, will you...I mean will you burn them just like he’d done your parents?"

He fell silent. But then remembering the hurt he’d had to go through for years, the pain he’d had to suffer from David Wayner because he had no home to return to, Neil couldn’t careless if the man responsible for his parents deaths had children, he couldn’t sympathize with his enemy’s family when they’d deprived him of his. No matter the time that had passed, it wasn’t enough to soften his heart and take away his hatred towards the unknown man.

"No," he replied to her question with a voice that sounded so detached and blank without batting an eye, "I won’t burn them, I will make them so miserable they’d beg to be burned instead."

An unknown chill travelled down her spine at his words and her palm turned sweaty for no reason. She knew his hatred ran deep and if she were in his shoes she’d want nothing but revenge, but...why was she feeling like she was about to lose something if she didn’t convince him of not including an offspring of an enemy to a war that was waged by the father?

"But his family has nothing to do with your conflict with the father, you__"

"The fact that they are his family has everything to do with it, Mia. He never thought twice before killing all the innocent servants working in the Galverra estate because of his wife’s mistake, nor did he when burning my family, because of him, they never had a proper burial nor a grave to visit."

"But, Neil, you still can’t take your anger and hate on people who had nothing to do with this. If you can’t forgive the father, at least you could find it in your heart to forgive the family."

Those words from her somehow put her instantly beyond all limits of his tolerance, and his voice took on a chilling, deadly finality as he said. "Nobody," he said, "gets a chance of forgiveness from me, Mia. Ever."

"But—"

"Are you supporting my enemies or me?" He demanded coolly.

"No, I am not! I’m just saying__"

"Then that’s the end of this discussion, I don’t want to hear anymore from you!"

His voice had a dangerous edge, but Mia refused to back down, because her heart didn’t want her to. "I think you’re much more heartless like the other Galverra’s than you know."

"You’re pushing your luck, lady."

Mia flinched at the coldness in his voice and the ruthlessness in his eyes. Wordlessly, she got up and gathered their empty glasses and took them into the kitchen, displeased by this new side of him, the streak of ruthless finality that enabled him to hate and never forgive without a backward glance. She could understand if he’d let the hate be between him and the killer, but what has it got to do with the other innocent family members, who she didn’t know but yet was trying to support and save from a fate that was about to befall them if Neil Wayner was to go after them.

Nonetheless, the other part of him that broke her heart was the way he’d said it and the look on his face! When he’d first taken her against her will to this cabin, all his actions and words had been motivated by necessity and desperation, never unjustified harshness, and she’d understood that. But until these last few minutes—when she’d heard the menace in his voice and seen it on his face— she hadn’t been able to understand how anyone could possibly think Neil Wayner was cold-blooded enough to commit murder, but if other people had seen him this way, she could well imagine what they’d think.

More clearly than ever before, Mia realized that although they were intimate in bed, he still took her like a stranger. He didn’t like her enough to forgive and let go, and she also realized that not until he’d let go of his hatred, he’d never be able to love.

Mia walked into her room to get her sleeping clothes, she turned on the room’s light, and changed her clothes in the bathroom. She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that instead of immediately going to his room like she’d promised to spend every night with him until their time here was over, she sat down on her bed, lost in thought.

Several minutes later she heard the door of the room open and she jumped and jerked her head around as he walked in and said,

"This is a very unwise decision on your part, Mia. I suggest you reconsider it carefully."

He was standing causally in the doorway, his shoulder propped against the frame, arms crossed over his chest, his face impassive. But Mia had no idea what decision he was referring to, and although he still looked distant, he did not look or sound like the sinister predator he’d seemed in the dimly lit living room. She almost wondered if much of what had alarmed her about him had been a combined trick of her imagination and the firelight, or if she was overthinking everything.

Mia stood up and walked slowly toward him, uncertain, searching his face. "Is that supposed to be your idea of an apology?" She raised a brow.

He frowned, "I wasn’t aware I have anything to apologize for."

The arrogance of that was so typical of him that she almost laughed, but held back and instead crossed her arms against her chest and said, "Try out the word rude and see if that makes you aware."

"Was I rude? I didn’t mean to be. I warned you that the discussion was going to be extremely unpleasant for me, but you wanted to hear it anyway."

He looked as if he honestly felt that he was being unjustly accused of being rude, but she continued anyway. "I see," she said, stopping in front of him. "Then this is actually all my fault?"

"It must be. Whatever ’this’ is referring to because I have no idea what you’re referring to."

"You don’t know, is that it? You are completely unaware of the fact that your tone of voice to me in there was..." she searched for the right words and settled for something that didn’t quite fit, "...cold and callous and needlessly harsh."

He shrugged with an indifference that Mia suspected was partially feigned from the look in his silver eyes. He looked like he wanted to apologise but his ego was holding him back from doing so. Instead, he said, "You aren’t the first person to accuse me of being all those things and a lot more. I’ll submit to your judgment. I am cold, callous, and—"

"Harsh," Mia provided, bending her head, trying not to laugh at how ridiculous the whole debate sounded now. In the past Neil had gone out of his way to do everything for her without taking the credit, he’d sponsored her education and gotten her a priceless guitar, dresses, and now he’d risked his life to save her and he had wanted to die when he thought he’d failed. He was anything but cold and callous. Those other people had been wrong. Her laughter faded abruptly, and she felt an aching remorse for what she had said and what they had all said to make him believe he was what he wasn’t.

Neil on the other hand could not decide whether Mia had actually intended to retaliate against him for some imagined fight by sleeping in here alone when they’d agreed to share his room from now on, which was what had originally angered him when she’d left him sitting alone in the living room for twenty minutes. But now that she’d suddenly stopped laughing and was looking down, he had no idea what else he’d said and done to annoy her again.

"Harsh, I am." he agreed bluntly to her words, wishing she’d look up so he could get a good look at her face to know if she was angry at him for being harsh and unable to say out an apology.

"Neil?" she said to his chin. "The next time anyone tells you you’re any of those things, tell them to look much closer." She raised her eyes to his and said softly, "If they did, I think they’ll see a rare kind of nobility and an extraordinary gentleness."

Neil slowly uncrossed his arms, completely taken aback, feeling his heart turn over exactly the way it always did whenever she looked at him that way.

Mia continued to speak with a suppressed laugh, "I don’t mean to imply that you aren’t also frustrating, controlling, and arrogant, you understand—"

"But you like me anyway," he teased, brushing his knuckles over her flushed cheek, and absurdly relieved that she wasn’t mad at him for being him. "Despite all that." He added.

"Add vain to my list," she resorted, and he surprised her by pulling her tightly into his arms, wrapping her securely into his warmth.

"Mia," he whispered, bending his head to kiss her, "shut up and give me a kiss."

"And demanding, too!" she stated against his lips.

Neil started to laugh. She was the only woman who’d ever made him feel like laughing while wanting to kiss her all the time. "Remind me never again," he said, deciding to kiss her ear instead because it couldn’t move out from under his lips, "to go near another woman in the future!" He traced the curve of her ear with his tongue and she shivered, holding him close as she whispered another breathless summation of his character,

"And incredibly sensual...and very, very sexy..."

"On the other hand," he smilingly amended his earlier words, kissing her nape, "there is just no substitute for a woman like you, and no other can replace you."