Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 314 - 52

Chapter 314: Chapter 52

Two bulky cops were stationed at the front Complex Apartment building entrance, and another one was standing on the sidewalk near the curb, apparently waiting for Liam, who by then was completely under siege from an army of reporters who had recognized him and were trying to get a statement from him.

The bulky cop at the curb shouldered his way through them to Liam when he saw that Liam and the other guy were having a hard time to escape the reporters.

"Come with me, Mr. Thompson, and don’t talk to anyone," he said; then he turned and began plowing a path toward the front entrance for them with his bulky shoulders.

Liam followed in his wake, his expression carefully neutral, while cameras tracked his progress and a barrage of shouted questions attacked him from every angle.

"Mr. Thompson, why are you here today?"

"Are you here because your nephew Milo is involved in this?"

Another reporter scored a direct hit, "Are you Ethan’s father?"

Liam ground his teeth against the urge to say, "Yes, I am!" He’d grown up in China wondering who his own father was and overhearing adults speculating about his origins behind his mother’s back. Some would even say his mother had gone abroad to be a rich man’s whore, and when she got pregnant with a child, she ran back with her disgrace to her father’s land.

Because of Rayne, his son was in the same humiliating position now, and the entire city of Zen was doing the speculating. The only thing that kept him from telling the reporters that he was Ethan’s father was fear that it might somehow put his son in more jeopardy.

One of the cops guarding the entrance reached for the glass door handle and shoved it open just enough for Liam, Dante, and the cop escorting them to squeeze past. It closed behind them, shutting out the uproar outside.

In comparison to that, the apartments fancy lobby with plush sofa seemed almost peaceful, but it was far from deserted.

Two long rows of tables had been set up on the far left of the lobby, and at least two dozen people were seated there, answering ringing phones that were obviously newly installed, their cords strung haphazardly across the floor.

It was like the Wallace entire staff had taken a home in the apartment lobby with none of the front desk staff minding.

A few restaurant employees were even keeping coffee cups filled and passing out sandwiches to the task force on the telephones, while other employees looked on in watchful silence, clearly hoping for some indication that one of the people on the phones was getting a good tip.

Ellison and the other two lawyers and dozen of men in black suits were sitting at a nearby lobby plush sofas with three duffle bags in front of them, openly eavesdropping on the people manning the telephones.

"Come this way," the cop told Liam, and three of the attorneys looked around sharply to check out the new arrival.

Liam nodded at them but continued following the cop, who seemed to be leading him toward an elevator, where two cops were standing guard at the entrance as if to keep watch on anyone going up.

The elevator took them to the top floor, and once they got there, the cop turned right, and headed down a long white plush hallway lined with a few doors. At the end of the long hallway, a long black doored room stood alone from all the rest in the hallway.

The cop gestured toward it, stopped, and stepped aside for Liam to pass. "Miss Wallace’s apartment is right over there," he said.

Liam glanced at Dante and told him in Mandrin to go back downstairs to the lobby, while he continued walking towards the door.

When Liam reached the apartment room, he had no difficulty recognizing the first two men he saw when he strode into the spacious apartment’s comfortable living room.

The same detectives who’d questioned him when he was a suspect in Alvin’s death and who’d showed him photographs of him in the islands with Rayne were standing in the kitchen area now, watching him.

Will Parker walked forward, held out his hand, and said with a grim smile, "I’m sorry we’re once again meeting under very difficult circumstances—"

Liam ignored his outstretched hand along with his implied sympathy. "Have you heard anything yet?"

When he said that he hadn’t, Liam turned around expecting to see Rayne somewhere in the living room, but when he didn’t see her, he turned back to Parker. "Where is she?" He asked bluntly.

Unfazed by Liam’s rudeness and lack of respect, Parker turned and gestured toward a hallway at the far end of the living room. "Ethan’s bedroom is the first door on the right," he said calmly. "Miss Wallace is in there."

The last thing Liam had expected to feel when he walked into Ethan’s bedroom and saw Rayne Wallace was a surge of pity, but pity was exactly what he felt.

She was sitting in a rocking chair next to what seemed to be Ethan’s bed with her eyes closed and her head tipped back, clutching a big blue flop-eared rabbit to her chest.

Her feet were bare, and one bare foot was curled beneath her, the other foot on the floor, gently pushing the rocker back and forth.

Other stuffed animals, all of them in seemingly perfect condition, were neatly lined up on the floor behind her, but the faded, scruffy rabbit in her arms looked as if it had been dragged behind a car...or dragged behind a little boy who’d taken it everywhere with him.

The bedroom itself had been designed to delight a child and inspire his imagination, Liam noticed as he looked around. Bright jungle murals covered the walls, with animals and colorful birds peeking out from tall grass and frolicking in the branches of lush trees that stretched up to and partway across the ceiling.

On the wall to his right, two rows of long shelves were mounted within a child’s reach and filled with several kinds of toys.

Trying to adjust to the reality of being in a room that belonged to a two-year-old son he’d never known existed, Liam gazed at the woman who’d conceived his son during an unforgettable night of lovemaking.

Clad in black pants and a sky blue turtleneck sweater, with her red hair loose around her shoulders and her russet eyelashes lying like curly fans on her unnaturally pale cheeks, she looked painfully lonely, totally defenseless, and very young...

But then, Rayne Wallace’s looks had always been deceptive, Liam reminded himself. The proof of her true nature, of her boundless arrogance and audacity, was all around him in the form of a room that belonged to a son he didn’t know, and who did not know him; a son she’d intended to deprive of all contact with his father—just the way Liam had been raised until he was seven and thrust into a new, scary world.

Those thoughts demolished Liam’s pity and toughened his tone as he announced his presence with two curt words. "Hello, Rayne."

Her entire body lurched in shock, her eyes snapped open, and she stared at him in utter disbelief; then she gave him a trembling smile and gazed at him with unabashed warmth, her wide emerald eyes shimmering with tears of gratitude and suppressed anguish.

"Thank you..." she whispered.

For one of the few times in his adult life, Liam couldn’t stay calm and logical. He stared at her, feeling uncertain and distracted.

With her wounded green eyes looking up at him and her curly red hair draped around her shoulders, Rayne Wallace reminded him of a heartbroken woman in a painting he’d seen in a museum, who was trying to smile through her tears while her entire family lay dead at her feet.

The same woman he was pitying now, Liam reminded himself bitterly, had played with his emotions on the island. She had taken him on a mental and physical roller-coaster ride, then left him standing on the shore like an idiotic lovesick schoolboy while she flew back to Zen with Max Everett.

Abruptly, Liam disengaged himself emotionally from her and from their past history, and focused solely on the present situation.

"What are you thanking me for?" he asked shortly.

Until that moment, Rayne had been content to remain in the rocking chair, letting what she thought was a dream unfold in front of her, but Liam’s curt tone hit her like a warning slap, jarring her into the reality of his presence and doing so with nerve-wracking suddenness.

Still clutching the rabbit, she stood up in order to more properly convey her respect and gratitude, and she answered his question by saying with earnest formality,

"Thank you for lending me the ransom money. I’ve given your lawyers an IOU and asked them to create a formal loan agreement. I said I’d put up my entire property as collateral and pay you back over thirty years—"

She broke off when she realized that the undeniably lenient repayment terms she was suggesting were making him so furious that his eyes were turning to a pool of ink and a muscle was beginning to tic in his jaw.

It hit her then that he could still change his mind about lending her the money, and she decided the sooner he left, the better, so long as he left his $1 billion behind. "I’ll pay you back in twenty years, maybe even less, with interest," she added quickly. "My restaurant is doing well; I’ll agree to any terms you want. Just tell your lawyers, and I’ll sign the loan papers."

In a last desperate effort to keep matters friendly and to show him gratitude and consideration while simultaneously persuading him to leave, Rayne said carefully, "You didn’t need to come here personally—although," she lied, "I’m glad you did. But there’s no reason for you to stay. You can’t do more than you already have. You should go back and rest at your place."

Enraged because she had the guts to stand there and treat him as if his kidnapped son’s welfare were none of his business, and that he had no right to be present or involved in anything except ’loaning’ the ransom money to her, Liam gave her a brief, frigid warning.

"Don’t push my buttons, Rayne. And don’t thank me and don’t dismiss me. You and I are going to have a very long, very unpleasant meeting with our attorneys present, just as soon as the boy is safely back here."

"Don’t call him ’the boy’," Rayne retorted fiercely. "He is your—"

"Why not?" Liam snapped. "You’ve made damned sure I couldn’t call him my son. Until today, I didn’t even know he existed."

"I took you off my birth-announcement list when you called me an immoral bitch!" Rayne flung back with blazing anger.

Her brief burst of anger faded as soon as she realized Ethan was still in the hands of some brutal strangers while she was arguing with someone like Liam. Through tears, she glared at Liam and fiercely whispered, "Go away! Get out of here and leave me alone!" Then she turned her back on him.

Liam watched, stunned, as she collapsed into the rocking chair, sobbing into the rabbit. "My baby is gone," she cried. "He’s gone. They took him away from me..."

Despite wanting to see her as a manipulative liar she was, Liam found himself trying to remember their past conversations and when he’d called her an ’immoral bitch’. He had pushed her out of his mind so completely that he had to focus to recall what he’d said to her in the past now.

And then he remembered their confrontation at the banquet clearly. His reaction now was the same as it was right after he walked away from her that night: disgust at losing control of his temper and letting Rayne Wallace get under his skin. The words he’d said were harsh but true, and her hiding their son from him only proved it more now.

However, realizing that she loved his son so deeply, despite her dislike for him and her deceit, made it hard for Liam to see her as entirely heartless and immoral. The sound of her sobbing also made it difficult for him to see himself as just a victim of her betrayal.

So, he turned his back on her and walked out of the room, just as she wanted him to do.

He could still hear her shattered weeping as he walked down the hall, but unlike Rayne, Liam refused to consider the possibility that his son would come to any harm or that he wouldn’t be safely returned tonight, when the ransom was paid.

Not once, since that morning, had the thought that he might never see his son alive slipped past his barriers.

The possibility was there, though, sinister and hideous—an evil specter crouching in the darkness at the edges of his mind. Despite all his money, power, and influential contacts, he couldn’t do one thing to help ensure the safety or the return of a little boy. His own son.

His jaw clenched with the effort it took to drive out the insidious thoughts and to shake free of the terrible dread trying to wrap its tentacles around his mind.

He wasn’t helpless. He had money and power, and knew how to use them.

He also had a plan; a simple, effective plan.

Last but not least, he was an expert at persuading criminals and greedy, desperate people.

Kidnappers were greedy and desperate. And so, when the kidnappers made their ransom call, Liam was going to calmly take that call, and instead of agreeing to pay their $1 billion ransom, he was going to offer them a much better deal: $2 billion.

One half would be paid at the first drop-off site they named; the second half would be taken to a second drop-off site of their choosing and handed over simultaneously while someone verified to him that his son was in sight and alive.

With his thoughts on that, Liam walked back into the living room, noticed that Will Parker was openly scrutinizing him, and decided he’d be better off waiting downstairs in the lobby until the time for the ransom call approached.

"I’m going to wait in the lobby," he said to Will as he started in the direction of the apartment’s door.

"That would be a mistake."

Surprise made Liam pause and turn toward him. "Why?"

"Because despite whatever Rayne said to you just now, you’re Ethan’s father. As his father, you have a right—and a responsibility—to be here and support his mother in this terrible time."

Liam hesitated, walked over to a chair, and sat down.

Follow current novels on freewe(b)novel.c(o)m