Chapter 108: Not idle
Daisy had taken a shower and gotten changed and she had just gone to wake Angel up when there were tapping sounds on the glass. When Daisy checked, she realized that it was the pair of parrots who were tapping the glass with their beaks.
She was confused about how to let them in because she had noticed that the huge floor to ceiling glass registered Ryle’s biometrics the last time. However, when she went there, the glass opened immediately, apparently functioning like a sensor. The parrots fluttered inside and settled on the extension of golden branches from the monotone coloured walls.
’Did he remove the lock before he left?’ Daisy wondered and checked her phone.
There was no reply to her text that she sent to Ryle in the morning.
Daisy stared at the phone for a minute or two before she turned her internet connection off and connected it again. But the result was the same. Ryle had not replied to her text.
And it left a bad taste in her mouth for some indescribable reason.
Daisy’s attention was taken off from her unreplied text when she felt a little ball throwing herself in her arms.
In the matter of few hours, the room seemed to have turned upside down and by the time Angel woke up, she was greeted by the sight of a huge cat plush toy by her left side and two parrots sitting on the table and bickering with each other.
’’Mommy...’’ she rolled on the bed a couple of times before throwing her chubby little arms around Daisy’s waist and bumping her face on her back.
’’Someone is awake?" Daisy threw her phone to the side and moved her arms behind her to grab the little girl and pull her into her arms.
By the time the mother and daughter got ready and walked out of the Master Bedroom, Daisy realized the people who were there to fix the things in the room had not left yet. Instead, they were all gathered in front of the room right next to the master bedroom.
Daisy asked Aunty Lu the same question when she reached downstairs.
And the woman told her that it was all because of Ryle’s arrangements. He was getting the storeroom remodelled as a bedroom.
Daisy looked up at the door where people had gathered.
She had always been a person who liked to stay on her guards. Even a small act of kindness or consideration would make her think that the other person had some motive of their own.
She saw Ryle from the same lens for a long period of time. She thought behind his every action or words, there was a motive that he disguised.
But the more stubborn he was in her way of perceiving things, the more powerful he seemed to be in shattering her beliefs down.
Perhaps because the little one heard the constant mention of Ryle, she swung her calf in Daisy’s arms and started looking around the house, ’’Raeeel... Raeeel? Mommy Raeeel...’’
Daisy blinked and looked at her, ’’Say uncle.’’
’’Raeeel..’’
’’Uncle.’’
When she could not do anything about her mother’s stern gaze, she pouted and turned her round face to the side, eyes welling up with indignant tears.
Daisy felt a headache, ’’Okay. Call him whatever you want,’’ The more Angel was growing up, the more her obedient girl traits were going. The little girl had learnt to play cute. Anytime, she was refused for something, she would look at people with tears welling up in her eyes.
And even though Daisy could still be stern in the beginning of her act but gradually, she also could not bear to reprimand the little girl.
Aunty Lu was amused by the mother-daughter theatrics.
Their days passed by rather peacefully in Ryle’s mansion. Angel had plenty of people to play with her and she could not be happier. The little girl even seemed to have come with some tricks of her own. Every time she got a chance, she would get people to give her strawberries or candies secretly with her limpid eyes and innocent words.
In fact, Daisy had even caught many of the secret guards, moving in the house with candies in their pocket while Aunty Lu would sneak in a a decent amount of strawberries when she went to the supermarket. And they were all defenseless against the little girl.
Daisy asked them to not be fooled by her but still they would sneak in some things of her liking while playing with her. But since the quantity was justified, Daisy did not say anything. It was not like her little girl would listen to her.
A week passed since Ryle had left. There were no texts from him and there was not even a reply to the text that she had dropped for him on the first day he left.
And it finally started sinking in her that maybe the conversation between them in the kitchen, that she thought went rather went well did not go well with him. And perhaps... he was angry.
Daisy was unsure if it was because she had been seeing him everywhere in her every day life recently that his absence made her feel unsettled. That familiar face, that playful smile... everything that she once found annoying, was now making her think of him.
She instinctively touched her neck. The marks had mostly faded but everytime she saw them in the bathroom mirror, she would feel a need surging inside her.
"Mommy...’’
Little Angel came running towards her with her short legs and climbed on the couch, with one hand on Daisy’s knee and the other on the couch.
Daisy pulled the little girl and made her sit on her lap before she looked at the laptop that was placed in front of her, on the coffee table.
During this time, she had not been entirely idle either. Instead, she had been looking into things that had transpired recently, both the first incident in Shanghai and the second assassination attempt in her place.
Her first lead was the poison that was smeared on the dart that the boat skipper had aimed at Ryle but even though the poison of a death skipper was not ordinary but it was not rare to the point that one could not find it. It was impossible to track it’s accurate sources given the amount that people sold it in, all over the world.
