Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 209: The daughter of his enemy

Chapter 209: The daughter of his enemy

Putting the news about his uncle aside, Neil decided to focus on the more important matters at hand.

"I want all the media companies who’d published those lies about Mia brought down," Neil said to James, "Every single one of them, including the TalkWave Productions where she worked before."

After Neil finished giving out his final orders on what needed to be done, he couldn’t wait to return back to Mia and sort out their unnecessary argument about Rayne Wallace, he hated to be the reason of her mood getting ruined right on the day she’d just regained consciousness.

With the current little complications of her pregnancy, Neil wouldn’t want to add to her mental health issues with his temperament, she needed all the love and care from him instead of his anger, and storming out of her room in rage was definitely not the way he should go about caring for her.

With those thoughts and with everything already being said, he stood up and prepared to leave, but Liam stopped him by saying, "I’d like to talk to you in private, Neil." He said, "James please take Lilly back with you and drop her at home, I have a few things to discuss with Neil."

James didn’t argue and nodded in acknowledgement and he left the room to give the two space. After the door closed behind him, Liam’s expression turned serious.

"Do you remember the investigation you asked my men to do on Elizabeth Harrison’s background before you were sent to prison?" He said, shoving his hand into his pocket and retrieving a folded envelope, "Well, they finally got something about the deceased woman."

Neil had almost forgotten about that after all his years in prison. And now that the topic was back, his curiousity was piqued as he took the envelope from Liam to see what was inside. Opening the envelope and taking out the content inside, Neil’s hands stilled. How could this be possible? He wondered, holding up a photograph he’d taken out of the envelope. It was a photo of a woman he recognized in the past.

"That’s Elizabeth Harrison," Liam informed upon noticing his friend’s dumbstruck expression.

"Are you sure this is Elizabeth Harrison’s photo?" Neil asked, staring at the photograph in disbelief. He recognized the woman so well because she was the only person who’d always come looking for Mia whenever she was at their estate, he’d not known her as Mia’s mother but her nanny; and his little friend had made sure to always call her by the name Nanny Eliza, not mother. So how come she was her mother now?

"Yep, I am sure. We even dug into her background which had been challenging because someone had buried everything away. She once worked as a nanny at a residence in Mirage Mesa, though the family’s name has been wiped away, but you wouldn’t believe what we found. Take a look at the other photograph in the envelope," Liam said eager to share this unexpected revelation with his friend.

Neil quickly picked up the other photograph that had been laying face down on the table. Turning it around and seeing the people in it, his heart momentarily ceased beating, and his breath caught short in his lungs in dread and disbelief. His hand shook as he stared down at the four people in the photograph, one of whom was none other than Kelvin Rodrigo, followed by the nanny holding the younger Mia between her parted legs. Then...

"No way!" Neil thought, refusing to believe what he was seeing in the photograph.

Ella, the woman he’d sworn to kill as a boy, was standing beside Kelvin Rodrigo and the nanny. His hands automatically tightened around the photograph until his knuckles turned white, and his grey eyes darkened.

Ella was Mia’s real mother, which also made it clear that Kelvin Rodrigo was her father and the man who’d deprived him of a home and parents, who’d taken the life of his precious mother and killed his father.

Looking at Ella’s smiling face in the photograph only reminded him of all the hate he’d tried to bury away in his heart. It reminded him of all the nights he’d spent in the streets of Mirage Mesa begging for food; all the days of punishment he’d endured at his uncle’s hands, all because of Ella and Kelvin Rodrigo. All the rage and hate he’d tried to forget came back like a flood of boiling blood in his veins, turning his breath labored.

In Neil’s shaking hands, the photograph trembled, a physical sign of the emotional tempest raging within him. Ella’s smile in the photograph mocked him, a twisted reminder of his past torment. The memories flooded back, overwhelming him with a potent mix of anger, sorrow, and betrayal.

Each line etched on Ella’s face felt like a scar on his soul, a testament to the pain she had caused not just him but his family.

A humorless laughter escaped his lips as he ran his fingers through his hair, "You’re telling me that this son of a bitch and that little bitch are the real parents of the woman I love?" He asked Liam, unable to believe this information and refusing to accept the possibility of it being the truth. How could such cruel people be the parents of his generous, loving Mia?

And then it hit him; five years ago, after Mia had fallen unconscious on the stage of Ivy Grove and was admitted to a hospital, he’d requested the doctors there to conduct some scans on her to understand why some of her memories were lost. They had performed a FMRI on her.

A FMRI scan could detect abnormalities in brain function by measuring blood flow and activity levels in different regions of the brain. Despite the challenge of her being unconscious, they had successfully completed the scan. Back then, Neil had been desperate and curious to know why Mia didn’t recall their childhood, leading him to make her undergo the scan without her knowledge.

The scan results revealed irregular patterns of brain activity and areas of her brain showing signs of manipulation and tampering. It came as a shock to the doctor, an old acquaintance of Neil’s. The doctor had explained that with such abnormalities, Mia’s brain might function differently, causing her memory lapses.

"In such cases, she might dream and get triggered by little things of the past, but she’d never completely remember anything as the moment they come back to her, they’d disappear again if she were to sleep," the doctor had told him. "This is unusual and abnormal. It’s not a natural occurrence but something that has been done to her."

Nothing made sense to Neil at the time, unable to fathom who could have done such a thing to Mia. He kept it from her, fearing it might complicate things for her if he told her, and instead enlisted Liam’s help to investigate Elizabeth Harrison’s background. However, with his own legal troubles and subsequent imprisonment, he let go of everything, until now.

Now, knowing Mia’s connection to Kelvin Rodrigo and Ella, Neil was at a loss. He didn’t know what to do or what to believe anymore. The revelation shook him to his core, reopening wounds he had long tried to forget.

Did Kelvin Rodrigo do that to her memories? But why, if she was really his daughter? He recalled all the times Mia would come crying to him about her father hitting her mother, he should have known then that she was the daughter of the abusive man responsible for his misery. And despite the revelation that Mia could be Kelvin’s daughter, Neil’s heart refused to accept the possibility fully. He couldn’t reconcile the idea of loving Mia with the knowledge that she might be connected to the man who had caused him so much pain.

Deep down, Neil knew Kelvin Rodrigo was likely Mia’s real father and the perpetrator of his parents’ murder. However, his love for Mia clouded his judgment, preventing him from connecting the final dots that would lead to the truth. He cherished her too much to entertain the idea of losing her or loving her any less. He couldn’t imagine a life without her in it now that he knew the joy of having a woman he loved in his arms all day.

Before Mia came into his life, Neil had felt like an empty shell, driven solely by a thirst for revenge. But now, with the prospect of a future and a home with Mia and their child, that emptiness seemed to dissipate. However, the looming threat of losing it all and returning to his former miserable self cast a shadow over his newfound happiness.

As memories of his mother’s warmth and the horror of her death at the hands of Kelvin’s men flooded back to his mind, Neil was consumed by a mixture of numbness and hate. The warmth he had felt moments ago was replaced by a suffocating gray fog, enveloping his soul in despair. The truth about everything threatened to unravel the fragile semblance of happiness he had finally found.

Liam, who sat opposite Neil observed the despair etched on his face, his concern evident in his voice as he asked, "What do you plan to do now?"

Neil’s gaze turned distant as he grappled with the weight of his dilemma. "I have two choices," he replied, his voice devoid of its usual vitality. "Either I continue with Mia and ignore the fact that she’s the daughter of the very people I once swore to destroy, or I end our relationship and compel her to undergo an abortion, living with the knowledge that she’s not my lover but my enemy..." A cruel smile flickered across his lips as he met Liam’s gaze. "But you know me, Liam. Forgiveness isn’t in my nature, especially not for this. To move on and pretend ignorance would be a betrayal to my mother’s memory, and that...I can not do."