Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 307 - 45

Chapter 307: Chapter 45

Rayne hesitatingly took the album, taking a deep breath as she wasn’t ready to see Liam’s face again.

But then she needed to find reasons to forgive him. Thus, she opened it. Her eyes flickered at the first photograph in the album. It was a photograph of Liam, baby Liam wrapped in a bundle of clothes, his eyes so tiny with his hands clenched in fists against his face.

The baby was so cute Rayne’s hands moved against her will and traced the photo.

She flipped to the next photograph and it was Liam when he was a toddler, held by a woman who looked Chinese in every way, even her attire. As she was looking at the photographs, she heard Oriana begin to speak.

"Liam was born in China. After his mother realized she was pregnant, she left and went back to her country without telling our father. She intended to raise him without letting him know about the Thompsons.

"However, Mrs. Ling Yetan was a woman of limited means who could hardly feed herself, not to mention a child. She moved to a little hut in a village in China and gave birth to Liam there.

"Despite the fact that she had nothing, she loved her child dearly. She didn’t let father know about Liam until he was seven years old. Mrs. Ling Yetan contacted Father when she got so sick she couldn’t afford to treat herself. She knew she was going to die but needed someone to look after her son."

Oriana paused for a moment to see if Rayne was following. She realized she was, and her expression had softened.

"What happened then?" Rayne asked when Oriana fell silent.

"Ling Yetan died on the day my father’s men arrived in China to take Liam back. When they got to the hut, they were met with young Liam clutching tightly to his mother’s body, crying for her to wake up and not leave him behind. From what I’ve heard, Liam was so terrified of my father’s bodyguards he peed himself when he was trying to fight them off."

"Back then, he wasn’t called Liam but Ling Feng. He could only speak a little English. When he was brought back to the Thompson house, he was a quiet kid who kept to himself all the time. He rarely ate or spoke. My sister and I would try so hard to make him play with us, but he would lock his door whenever he heard us coming towards his room. Sometimes he would cry and yell at our father in Chinese to take him back home."

Rayne tried to imagine what the young Liam must have gone through being brought to a country he knew nothing about. And her resentment faded a little bit. "How did he manage to cope?" she asked quietly.

Oriana smiled. "We taught him how to cope. Whenever he cursed at our father and blamed him for Ling Yetan’s death, he ended up getting punished by being locked in his room without any food. But we would sneak in with food to give him."

"At first, he would act like he didn’t care about the food or our presence, but the moment we left, he would wolf down the food and empty the plates, until some days came when he didn’t even care about our presence and would eat in front of us. Little by little, he began to try to communicate with us. I remember his first sentence to us was ’Nǐmen shì wǒ de jiěmèi, duì ma?’ (You two are my sisters, right?) but we didn’t understand what he meant then until we looked it up and said yes."

"He began to be free around us, and we gave him the name Liam. We started going to the same school and protecting him from bullies. Do you know why he was sent to the military in his teenage years?"

Rayne shook her head.

"Because he was so attached to us he began to act like a girl. He played only with our toys and also started to try on makeup and dresses. Flip to the middle of the album and see what I’m talking about."

Rayne quickly flipped the album and burst out laughing, her first genuine laughter in months. In the photograph was a teenage Liam with his two sisters. He was in a pink dress with a mask of makeup on his face. The image was both endearing and amusing: Liam, with a pouty face, wore the dress with exaggerated grace while his sisters stood beside him, both laughing and beaming with pride at their creation.

"When Father caught him doing that one day, he got so mad and said his own flesh and blood would never be gay. He yelled at everyone that day, and the next day dragged Liam to the military and limited his time with us. Father even went as far as to tell General David Wayner to make sure Liam got the hardest training that will straighten him into a man. Liam was never gay, he spent most of his time with us that dressing up like us was his own way of relating with us on a deeper level, but father never saw the real Liam."

"Liam spent most of his years in camp while only attending weekend schools. Even though he never said it, Liam still resented father for what he’d put him through and for his mother’s death. If you get to know him personally, he is the kindest and softest man in the world..."

Rayne’s expression softened further as she tried to imagine the young Liam’s struggles and the challenges he faced. Her resentment faded even more and all she felt was... nothing. "I can’t believe he went through all that," she said softly.

Oriana nodded. "Liam’s had a tough life, but he’s strong. He’s had to be. And he’s carried a lot of burdens, including the guilt over our step-brother’s death, which had led him into promising to take full responsibility of Alvin’s children."

Rayne’s heart ached as she thought about Liam’s past. She looked at the photo album, her fingers lingering on the images of a young boy who had endured so much. She realized that understanding Liam’s past was a step toward forgiving him and healing her own wounds.

With a vague notion of trying to persuade Oriana to let her have a copy of a picture of Liam to show her child someday, Rayne reached for the other photo albums on the table. A sack of envelopes fell to the floor, and the files and photographs slipped out.

Rayne’s gaze followed the photographs on the floor.

The top photograph was a picture of Liam standing alone at the shoreline in Pineville, with the sun setting in the background. According to the date and time stamp in the lower right-hand corner, the photograph was taken at 6:45 PM. It was taken on the date she was supposed to meet him there at four o’clock.

Her hand shook as she picked it up and looked at the date and time again, unable to believe her eyes. "Oh, my God!" she whispered, looking from the photograph to the one that had been beneath it. That one was taken at 4:15 on the same day in the same place. "Oh, Lord!" she said again.

"Why are you upset about that shot? It was taken in Maranta by a spy who was tracking Liam’s movements," Oriana said with a small chuckle.

"I was supposed to be there," Rayne said, swiftly sliding the next photograph aside and then the ones beneath it. They were in chronological order. The first shot taken of Liam at the wharf that day was time-stamped 3:30 PM.

Not caring that Oriana would think her demented, she touched Liam’s picture as if she could smooth back a loose black lock near his temple. "You were there," she whispered achingly. "You were waiting there for me to come..."

There was no mistaking that date—she’d gotten pregnant in the predawn hours of that day.

Oriana straightened, taking in her flushed cheeks and overbright green eyes. "Can I get you a glass of water or something?"

Rayne started to laugh and ended up crying.

"You’re scaring me, Rayne," Oriana said.

Rayne went from crying to joyous laughter and stood up, wrapping Oriana in a quick, fierce hug with one arm, while she held the picture in her free hand.

"You have nothing to be scared about—unless you try to pry this photograph out of my hand," she warned with a beaming smile.

"I can’t let you take the photographs without his permission—"

"Yes, you can. He doesn’t have to know. It’s for his child to see someday."

When Oriana looked prepared to argue with her, Rayne explained why it meant so much to her. When she was finished, Oriana was convinced.

"Call me when you’d like to have dinner at the Wallace restaurant," Rayne said, "and I will see that you and your daughter have a meal fit for a queen."

"That sounds like a good bribe."

Rayne was so deliriously happy that she patted the arm of a woman she barely knew and smilingly said, "Not a bribe, a payoff." She picked up her bag and headed for the door, then she stopped in the middle of the foyer and turned back.

"Just out of curiosity, where did he go when he left Pineville?"

"He went directly to his plane and flew back here. Alvin’s body had been found that day, and Milo, our nephew, called him and pleaded with him to come straight home."

"The same nephew who later confessed to killing his father?"

Oriana nodded, her expression turning grim. "The very same crazy little psychopath who tricked the most strict judge in the juvenile court system and got off with a year in a psychiatric facility, followed by outpatient therapy, and three years probation for killing his father."

---

Outside the mansion, Rayne had to restrain the urge to throw her arms out wide and turn in slow, delighted circles. Liam had been waiting for her at the wharf. She wasn’t as naive now as she had been then, so she didn’t deceive herself into thinking he had been in love with her and waiting there to carry her away with him.

The fact that he was there at the wharf didn’t change the pretenses and secrets he’d built their brief relationship on.

He had pretended he wasn’t staying in Zen and refused to tell her where he was residing. He also didn’t mention he was going to relocate to another country. He had also sent her to break up with Max without admitting he knew Max and that he was the reason Jason had lost their family wealth.

But he had not intended for her to trot back to the hotel like an eager puppy only to find out that her master had checked out and vanished.

He had not been going to let that happen.

Maybe he had been waiting at the wharf just to say, "I’m sorry I’ve used you and hurt you—your boyfriend and brother were my real targets."

It didn’t matter why he’d been waiting there for her. It only mattered that he’d been there.

Lauren might have been right after all—while he was executing his plan to use her, he’d started to care for Rayne a little, maybe enough to want to watch the sunrise with her.

But his behavior at the banquet rather negated that last thought, so Rayne decided never to think about that awful night again.

In her heart, a little voice pleaded with her to find Liam and see if she could make whatever feeling he’d had for her grow deeper and stronger.

But then logic pointed out the futility of that. She was pregnant with his child, and what if Liam did not want anything to do with fatherhood when he could have many women at his knees?

No doubt he might feel that looking at his own child would bring back all the helplessness and pain of his own childhood.

Rayne felt an impulse to do real violence to everyone who had put a beautiful, black-haired, black-eyed little boy through a life of senseless misery.

"I would rather hold on to the belief that you loved me, but we couldn’t be together, than chase after you and find out you never genuinely cared, Liam. I will love you with all my heart, and I will take good care of our child for us. This will be my final goodbye to you. I have forgiven you."