Chapter 776: SHE WAS DONE WITH HER JOB
Anthony felt something was off. He seemed to have missed something and he believed it to be something important.
"I am sure that you two have one more daughter, right? What's her name? She's a quiet girl." Anthony was pretty sure it wasn't just Alia. "Yeah, you guys have two daughters," he mumbled. "Why didn't she come to this party to welcome her little sister?"
Everyone at the dining table fell silent when they heard this, they looked at each other, not knowing what to say. Even Lyle's younger sisters didn't dare to bring up the topic until now, if it wasn't Lyle or Amber who said it first.
"She's not at home." Lyle continued to eat awkwardly, as if nothing had happened, followed by the others, although Anthony was still staring at him suspiciously.
"She's out of town?" asked Anthony again curiously. He noticed the expression on Amber's face, his little sister and immediately realized that something was seriously wrong with the current situation.
"Yes, you can say that." Lyle mumbled the words again.
Meanwhile, Alia wanted to refute this, but Amber immediately looked at her, with a hidden message in her eyes, telling her not to interfere in this matter which made Alia lower her head and glare at her food instead.
Other than that, the dinner went pretty smoothly.
But as everyone proceeded to sit in the living room and watch some television broadcast while chatting about various things, Anthony realized something else was odd in the house and pulled Amber aside to ask her directly.
"What really happened to that other niece of mine?" asked Anthony.
"What do you mean?" Amber looked flustered when her brother confronted her about this. She tried to rejoin the others, but Anthony grabbed her arm so they could talk more quietly, away from the crowd.
"You know what I mean. Where is Kia really? Something happened to her?" asked Anthony in a low voice.
"Ah… Kia is out of town, she can't come, you heard from Lyle yourself, didn't you?" Amber repeated what Lyle said earlier, because she couldn't think of any other reason than that.
"You think I would believe that just like that?" asked Anthony with narrowed eyes. "You don't think I'll swallow that lie, do you?"
Amber looked panicky, she tried to calm down, but couldn't because Anthony knew when she was lying.
"So? What happened to my niece?" asked Anthony in a low voice. He was not very close to Amber's three children, but Kia was very quiet as a teenage girl. She always looked moody and seemed to have something in her heart, while Alia was always cheerful, even though she was sick and Daniel was like just any normal teenager.
However, because Anthony's time with them was short, he didn't know what was going on further and between the three of them, the memory of Kia was the one that left the strongest impression on him.
"I… I don't know…" said Amber. "She went out of town."
Anthony sighed. He had to be out of town in a week, but he knew something was wrong here. "Don't lie to me, Amber, you know I can tell when you're lying." Then he reached over to the table beside him and handed his cell phone to his sister. "Then call Kia, I want to say hello to her, after all I've met her brother and sister, it's not fair if I don't talk to her as well."
That was when Amber broke down crying, she covered her face with both hands and didn't stop crying. She had suppressed this feeling for a long time and didn't say anything to anyone because she didn't know what to say.
Lyle still insisted they weren't wrong by kicking Kia out of the house for what she did four years ago.
And because Amber didn't want to fight with her husband, she didn't dare to bring up this issue anymore, but as time went on, the regrets started eating her alive. She couldn't think clearly and after she thought about this better slowly.
Amber could see how they relied on Kia. They didn't purposely neglect her, they only let her be because they thought Kia was very good at taking care of herself as well as other people, so they never thought they were doing anything wrong, because their assumptions were; Kia was like that and she would be better off left alone.
On the other hand, Anthony then squatted in front of Amber and hugged his little sister. He tried to calm her down without saying anything. He had guessed that there was something odd about all of them when he mentioned Kia. free(w)ebnovel.com
Luckily they were in a different room and no one could hear Amber's cries, so they could talk better.
It was only after Amber's crying had subsided that she was able to tell what happened four years ago in a stuttering voice.
"Are you kidding me?" asked Anthony, his eyes turning cold after he heard that Kia was kicked out of the house because she was pregnant out of wedlock. "You didn't really do that, did you?"
Amber started crying again. "I didn't think she would actually leave…" she sobbed.
And that answer really surprised Anthony, he didn't expect all of that to really happen. He couldn't even find the right words to respond to what he had just heard.
"You're not serious about this, are you?" Anthony shook his head several times.
He saw Amber crying and left her like that until she calmed down, then he said what he wanted to say.
"You kicked her out of the house because she was pregnant? Then how about you?" asked Anthony coldly. "You married Lyle because you were pregnant even though mom and dad didn't approve of your relationship. But, did we kick you out of the house?"
Amber did conceive Daniel before their marriage and her parents only agreed to Lyle's proposal because of the reason she was pregnant. They got married when she was three months pregnant with Daniel. It was a small wedding ceremony attended by her family.
But, the point was; her family didn't kick her out like Amber and Lyle did to Kia.
"I didn't think you were someone like this, Amber," said Anthony, there was a hint of disgust in his voice and he looked at Amber with an uncomfortable look in his eyes.
Hearing that, Amber cried even more loudly, her guilt seemed to have eaten her alive and she couldn't lift her head anymore to look at her brother.
"What is it? Mom? Why are you crying?" Daniel suddenly came into the room and saw his mother crying on the floor with his uncle staring angrily at his mother.
Were they fighting? Without thinking, Daniel immediately went to his mother and hugged her.
"What is this?" asked Daniel in a slightly loud voice, he looked at Anthony with a questioning look in his eyes, but also annoyance.
Only, Anthony didn't say anything to him and didn't even respond. His eyes fell on Amber, as he said.
"If you don't want to find her, I will find her. She still has a family." And after saying that, he walked away from there, leaving Daniel trying to calm his mother down.
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"What did he do to make you want to persuade me like this?" Kia asked, squinting her eyes suspiciously when Keira very persistently asked her to go to the Tordoff family event tonight.
She was urging her to go to the salon, eager to help her with everything so she would be ready when Misha came to pick her up.
"What did he offer?" Kia looked at Keira probingly while bathing Mika, while Keira was standing in the doorway.
"Okay, okay, I'll admit it," Keira said as she raised her hands, giving up. "Misha said that he would bear all my wedding expenses."
Kia knew that Misha must have done something to get Keira to agree to persuade her like this, but she didn't expect that the madman would go to such lengths.
"All your wedding expenses?!" Kia shook her head as she didn't know what to say.
"A moment." Keira held out her hands. "If you think I'm selling you, you're wrong. I only agreed to persuade you to go to the party, but I didn't promise that you'll go for sure in the end. So whether you agree or not is up to you. I don't have the capacity to tell you what to do."
"Then, why are you trying so hard to persuade me?" Kia was still suspicious of Keira's original intentions.
"I just thought that you needed a change of atmosphere. Don't you want to try something new? Pamper yourself? I know that you've done everything for Mika, to the point where you don't care about yourself, but once in a while, you have to put yourself first too," Keira explained her point of view.
"So you think going to a party will make me feel a lot better? By experiencing a change of atmosphere?" Kia asked skeptically.
On the other hand, Keira sighed and crouched in the doorway. "Getting to enjoy free, expensive food and drinks and then staying in the best villa in town for a few nights doesn't sound so bad to me." Kira shrugged. "You don't have to agree if you don't want to, but I think you need a vacation every once in a while."
Keira then smiled and walked away, saying that she was done with her task and could accept Misha's help without feeling guilty.
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