The mansion that had been filled with people in the morning was oddly silent now, as those who had been working were all gone.
June pulled her bag along.
"I always love it whenever you leave Amie speechless."
Chris could tell she did. Her eyes twinkled with excitement at those moments, and she reminded him more of her mother.
Serena also had that strange twinkle in her eyes whenever she was up to something.
"I bet she’s curious right now. It feels good to know something she has no idea about."
Chris opened the door for her, and she got into the car.
He also turned to get into the driver’s seat.
June expected one or two guards to join them, based on what Chris had said, but soon, Chris drove off.
"Isn’t the guard coming with us anymore?"
Chris spared her a glance.
"You’ve so much to learn, little sister. The guards will be taking a different car from us, and they will be at a distance so as not to create awareness."
June frowned.
Her father was also a mafia leader, but he hadn’t required this sort of security.
Well, judging from her father’s house and wealth, he wasn’t as successful as this.
She settled herself in the seat, and when they passed the house beside theirs, she noticed there was activity going on there too.
Different people moved in and out of the building.
It was a replica of what the Vassari mansion had been like during the day.
"Look at that house. They are also refurbishing it. They must have been inspired by us."
Chris frowned at the house.
He knew they were an old couple and were currently tight on cash.
So, how could they have gotten the money?
But he didn’t say that to June. He nodded.
"Maybe it’s that time of the year."
He drove past the building in no time.
The car was silent.
A sort of silence that was punctuated only by their breathing.
Yet, in Chris’s mind, there was something he wanted to do so badly.
He spared a glance at June, and it felt like she was starting to get bored as her gaze remained outside, probably counting the houses or cars they passed.
"June?" Chris started.
June turned her head towards his direction.
"What?"
Chris doubted if he should ask her the question, but the curiosity he felt was more than the anxiety running within him.
"Can I ask you something silly?"
June frowned.
The look on his face said whatever he had to ask was definitely not something silly. Yet, she nodded.
His gaze remained on the road as he focused on where he was going.
June had been trying to see if she could identify the guards’ car, but it was a fruitless mission as they had perfectly blended themselves with the rest of the cars moving around them.
But she knew they must be very close.
"I’m sorry if the question I am about to ask brings back bad memories, but I just want to understand the dynamics of your relationship perfectly."
"Okay."
"Can you tell me more about you and Amie?"
June felt a sinking feeling in her.
If it wasn’t Chris who had asked, she would have ignored the person and focused her attention on something else entirely.
"You want to know more about Amie and me?"
Chris nodded before adding, "But it’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it now."
June thought there was no perfect time to tell him about them.
If she could, she would prefer not to talk about them at all.
"Fine, if that’s what you want. Let me start from the beginning."
Chris’s ears became more attentive. Though he was not looking at her, he could hear her settling herself better on the seat.
"As you already know, Amie is my sister."
Chris nodded.
"She might look older than me, but Amie is my younger sister. My half-sister. We lived together with our father and my stepmother throughout my childhood and the early stages of adulthood."
"She has a mother," Chris interrupted her story.
June eyed him.
"Of course. You didn’t think Father gave birth to her all by himself?"
"No. No," he confirmed. "I actually thought her mother was dead."
"Did she say that?" June asked.
"No," he confirmed. "But after realizing she wasn’t Mother’s real daughter, I assumed it. The way she acts with Mother, it was as if she never had a mother in her life."
June laughed.
"Trust me. That was all a lie. Her mother is very much alive. She’s probably at the house in Kansas."
Chris frowned, his brow furrowed in deep thought.
"Then wouldn’t it be nice if we invited her to the introduction party too?"
"It will be. I’d love to see the look on her face then."
"There’s no way she could deny her own mother in public."
June nodded.
Thanks to the chat, she was unable to think about what might happen when she went to the hospital.
"So?" Chris asked.
"Yeah. Our life was quite simple then. I was Father’s abandoned daughter while Amie was the golden daughter." A frown etched across her face. "You know, then I used to wonder what I had done to Father. I asked why I deserved the way he treated me. And sometimes, I questioned the fact that maybe he wasn’t my biological father. I was just some child dropped off at his door to be taken care of."
She stopped.
Her gaze returned to the window, and Chris’s hand tightened around the steering wheel.
To think Chris had claimed to take care of Mother’s daughter. It was the reason she had signed a major deal with him.
Yet, he had ended up messing up the deal.
"If you don’t want to talk about it, you can stop."
June shook her head.
"It’s fine."
In fact, it was better.
Having bottled all those feelings inside her for years, it was a great thing to finally talk about them.
"At home, I worked with the maids. I was practically one of the maids. People barely knew I was Father’s daughter. To the public, he had just one daughter. Only those close to the family knew."
Chris’s hand was getting tighter on the wheel, and it was starting to turn red. His face was hard, and he had started going above the normal speed.
June held tightly to her seat.
"I think I should stop for now."
"Continue," Chris said in a strange tone.
But June shook her head.
They were going to the hospital to visit a patient. It wouldn’t be nice if they ended up as the people on the hospital beds.
No one needed to tell her this was how Chris was feeling. It was obvious.
"I think you need to calm down first. I can always tell you the rest of the story sometime later."
"I’m sorry," Chris apologized.
He was probably coming back to his senses as he released the accelerator a bit, and the car moved at a normal speed again.
"This doesn’t normally happen to me, but I let my emotions control me."
June stared at him.
"It’s okay."
She knew it was all for her.
He had been angry because of her. It showed how much he cared about her.
Back at her father’s mansion, none of the guards or maids had dared step in for her. They were all too scared to help her whenever her father was unleashing his punishment on her, but she could tell that if Chris had been there, he would have.
Slowly, she placed her hand on his.
"I’m fine now."
She forced a smile.
"I don’t let the past bother me anymore. I’m happy with who I am now."
Chris looked at her, and a small smile took over his face.
"I’m glad we found you."
"I am too."
The car finally pulled in front of a big hospital.
At the same time their car was parking, June could see other cars also parking.
She was still determined to fish out the guards’ car but had again failed woefully.
The hospital was big.
Bigger than every hospital she had used, even the one she was currently using for her antenatal care.
In this sort of hospital, it was very easy to get lost.
She got down from the car and looked at all the cars parked there.
It should be difficult for anyone to attack them in a place with this number of people.
But Chris wasn’t thinking about that at all.
His mind was on the short story June had told him, and he couldn’t pinpoint the best way to punish Samir after hearing what he had done to her.
The sky was already getting dark, and June could tell it was night already.
"Let’s go."
June nodded, following behind Chris.
Unlike the outside, the inside of the hospital was well organized. Everyone was seated or standing in the place where they would be attended to.
Chris didn’t join those standing but moved to the section where there was nobody.
He stopped at the counter and muttered,
"Vassari."
The woman behind the desk looked up instantly and bowed her head. She gave him a direction.
June sighed and followed him.
This is it.