Chapter 6

Vaillant residence.

"You are here." Avery's mother, Amelia, stated indifferently when her daughter was shown to the living room. It was almost as though she did not expect her, and Avery didn't care about her tone.

"Yes. It's amazing to know that you didn't expect me despite calling me over." She sat on the couch without waiting to be invited, knowing that no one would waste their time doing so anyway.

They were all in the living room and it couldn't be any more obvious that she was the one they were waiting for.

Her father waved her over. "Don't cause trouble. Come here."

Avery was yet to respond when her brother returned into the living room, with another guest in tow. It had to be Markus, out of all people. She looked at him with a sneer. "May I know what he's doing here?"

"We want to know that too." Her mother spoke tauntingly, then zeroed her gaze on her daughter. "And apart from that, we want to know why you didn't ever tell us that you have a son. All these years, Avery?"

Avery looked up at the man beside her brother, her lips twitching. What an idle fool. Did he have to tattle to the whole world about it?

She wanted to scold him but in the end chose not to, and instead averted her gaze to ignore him. She sat back opposite her mother and gently asked, "Mother, do you know that my company is going to win a deal?"

"Your company… congratulations." The woman said superficially, fumbling with her words. Avery smiled with a harrumph.

"So you know about it. I thought you didn't even know that I own a company."

"How could that be? You are so famous. Is there anyone who doesn't know about you?" She smiled awkwardly.

"Really? Then you should know what I majorly deal with, right?" Avery pushed, her eyes hiding the malice behind them.

"Avery, I'm too busy to pay attention to the details, but I know you're doing well." Came Amelia's strained answer, and she was obviously trying her best to get rid of this topic.

"Hey, do you have a magazine?" She called to a maid who had just brought her water. "Any business magazine, thank you."

When it was brought, Avery looked through the pages and opened one of them. "Here. Do you know who this woman is? You could have read. I guess you ignored it as soon as you realized that it was about me."

"Honey…"

Avery cut her off with a wave of her hand. "You don't know the primary thing about me. You've always been too busy to care. Why should I care to tell you anything, especially something of such importance?"

"How dare you speak to your mother like that?" Her father, Bryce, roared across the room, frowning at his daughter who was audacious enough to say such disrespectful things.

Avery's lips twitched to one side. "I'm starting to doubt if you really are my parents. I mean, the first person to suspect that a girl is pregnant is usually her mother, right? But you didn't even know it when my stomach grew so big that I couldn't hide it anymore. Until I made an excuse to leave. Do you remember why I left?"

Amelia couldn't answer her and swallowed, finding a way to change the topic but Avery beat her to it.

"Of course you don't know. You were too busy to hear what I said." She should have been happy to have told a lie and gotten away with it, but that was the younger version of her who cared about nothing but to get away. She had made up a lie to move out of her home and live on her own so she would have more opportunities to meet up with Dairon, and she had done the same thing to get away and hide because she had discovered that she was pregnant.

Now that she thought about it, the things that made her happy in the past had everything to do with being away from this duo who neither loved nor cared about her. Still, she pushed it. "Do you know which university I went to further my studies?"

"Why are we dwelling in the past? We are talking about the present now." Amelia had enough and snapped at her.

"And the present is this man." Avery pointed at Markus who was trying hard to make his presence less noticeable. Whoever told you that I wanted him?"

"This is not about your whims!" Bryce yelled, which would have made her shudder in fear in the past. However, she was not the naive young woman she was in the past. She didn't give any heed to his shouting.

She stood to face him head-on. "What you mean is, it's not about what I want but about what you want, right?"

"Don't be stubborn. This is about the family's interests." He tried a different approach, knowing that yelling would no longer work against her. "Let's sit down and have a talk, okay?"

"We can do that while standing. I'm more comfortable this way." She didn't make any move to sit, which made him and Amelia uncomfortable. It seemed as though she would walk out on them as soon as they said anything that displeased her in the slightest, which made it harder for them to speak up. Of course, they forgot that she would walk out if she wanted to, regardless of whether she was standing, sitting or lying on the couch.

"Honey, the company is in a crisis." Amelia started, trying to sound as gentle as possible. If Avery had not spent her time to understand them, she would have given in to whatever the older woman wanted without having any discussion about it.

She crossed her arms and looked down at her mother. "And how is that my business?"

"We need your help." Amelia ignored the sharp tone since they were the ones at a disadvantage this time.

"I see. How much money or what resources do you need? I will have my assistant send them if that will keep you from bothering me in future." She pretended not to understand what the couple was trying to get at.

The man frowned. "You know that's not what we mean, princess." He even used a nickname he had never used before. "How can you say that? You make it sound like we only want money from you now that you are successful in the business field."

Avery snickered inwardly. Of course, what they wanted was not money. What they wanted was for her to give up the life she had worked so hard for, in exchange for something that would only benefit the two of them.

"If not money, what do you want?" She asked impatiently.

"We need a business project that will make our company recover all the losses we made recently. We tried to negotiate with Le Blanc Group, but we couldn't get our hands on it. Luckily, Markus agreed to help us. His father holds a top management position in Le Blanc group. "

Avery laughed like she had heard the most ridiculous joke. "That's why you want me to marry Markus? Why didn't you talk to me about it? I would have had a talk with Henry Blanc."

"Henry Blanc?" The man was surprised.

"His cousin. The CEO of Le Blanc Group, who is one of the partners of Vaillant Telecommunications." Her explanation sounded like she was bluffing, because the couple had never thought of her as anything great. In their minds, there wasn't anything she could achieve, much less own a company that could make Henry Blanc interested in being a partner. They had found it unbelievable even when Markus told them that Avery was the CEO of one of the country's biggest companies, and they had not had the chance to actually look it up.

She shrugged when she saw that they didn't believe her. Forget it. "The man you want me to marry is not interested in being with a woman who has 'trash left behind by an irresponsible scumbag' with her." She finally talked about the topic they wanted to hear about, sarcastically repeating Markus' remark from a few days ago.

The man so badly wanted to die. He had wanted to forget about Avery's son since she was such a beautiful woman after all. Why did she have to bring up his comment?!

Amelia shuddered when she understood the implications. "Who is the father of the boy?" She asked.

Avery huffed. "You want me to send the boy away to his scumbag father, just so I can marry another man for your benefit?" How shameless could they get?

"That's not what your mother meant." Bryce glared at his wife discreetly and tried to placate Avery. "What we mean is, we can take care of our grandchild. Right, dear?"

Amelia nodded, and Avery laughed.

"If you cannot take care of your own child, how will you be able to take care of someone else's child?"

Before they could respond, she dropped a bomb. "I came here for one reason, and it has nothing to do with your company drama, I'm here to cut ties with the two of you." She slapped a document onto the table. "Henceforth you are no longer my parents and I am not your daughter."