The Illegitimate Heir

Chapter 7

He had served this family for as long as he had lived.

Cleaned up after Daniel because his mother believed he needed it to build character.

Tried for years to please his father by doing the things the staff should do, because Patricia believed that's the only way his father would fully accept them.

He catered to his mother's every whim because she had always drummed it into his head that his existence dragged her down in life.

Every single time Daniel messed up, he was forced to take the blame because Patricia believed it was what he owed Daniel.

Though he did well in school and could have gotten into Ivy League schools, he was forced to follow Daniel to the only school that would accept him.

Richard's pride wouldn't let him buy his son's way into a top college.

So Adrian had been made to forfeit his own Ivy League acceptance to follow Daniel to Mottimer, where Daniel lived like a king and Adrian like his servant, even while topping his class.

Yet when they graduated, Richard had easily handed the position of a director to Daniel, while he told Adrian he should start from the lower level to build his way up.

Daniel's first task as the director was to get Adrian into a fitting lower-level job.

Daniel had handed him cleaning tools and told him to be the best cleaner in the company if he wanted a promotion.

That was when Adrian had had enough and would have left if not for Patricia's accident.

In the past two years, he had hardly had good sleep or even eaten properly while trying to juggle his never-ending shift at work with caring for Patricia, even while cleaning up Daniel's mess that could have harmed the company.

And Richard thought he had been doing nothing?

The urge to spill it all out, lash out at his father and see if any other emotion than disgust would cross his hardened face was so tempting to Adrian.

Yet he knew it would make no difference.

Nothing he did for years had changed anything.

He was done trying.

In a resigned tone, he said, “You are right. I do nothing around here. Are you not afraid that the allied misses will feel wronged for being connected to me? Better to give this gold to your son. The useful one.”

“Why, you ungrateful brat.” Hardly ruffled, Richard sure looked disturbed as he shook his finger at Adrian.

“Ungrateful. Yes, I am sure there is a lot I need to be grateful for in this family. If that's all, Father, I really would like to leave now. Doing nothing requires a lot of time, after all.”

Realising he was losing control, Richard schooled his features back into hardened rock as he stood and declared, “You know the consequence of defying me. You know what will happen to your mother.”

Adrian almost laughed as Richard whipped out the same threat again.

The one he had used to keep him back when he once tried to leave the family as a teenager.

“If you leave this family and make a mockery of us, I will make sure your mother never gets what she wanted the most. Her name will never enter the family register, and even in death, she will never get to be in our ancestral home. I will make sure she knows all her efforts were a waste because of you.”

Knowing how desperate his mother wanted to be fully accepted as a Cross, those words had struck fear into his young heart then.

Any time he tried to step out of line after that, his father only needed to remind him and he would swallow back his anger and do as he was told.

Not this time.

Adrian looked towards the stairs as he thought of the woman who had just been wheeled through.

He had to accept it. She would never see him. Nothing he did would ever matter to her.

He could break down mountains for her and it wouldn't compare to a sneering look from her stepson.

Adrian was done trying.

“Is that all?” He raised his brow at Richard, not missing the flicker of surprise. “Go ahead, Father. I would like to see how you explain it to your circle why you toss out a woman who has been your bedmate for over two decades.”

Not caring about being filial again, he turned and headed towards his room.

It was more like a storage room carved from the back of the stairs for whatever reason before Patricia decided that Adrian's presence on Daniel's floor was disturbing her stepson.

She had had him sent there before college and it's the same room he returned to after college.

“A cleaner doesn't need much room anyway,” had been Patricia's logic.

Adrian was almost at the base of the stairs when Richard's voice froze him.

“Don't you want to know where Dahlia is?”

Adrian swung around like a top as he gaped at his father. "You... you've heard of her whereabouts? You know where she is?”

Dahlia. The only kind presence he had had in his life. Until she vanished eleven years ago.

“I would have thought you would show some sincerity in asking that. I suppose that is expecting too much from you.”

Something on his father's confident face made horror bloom in Adrian's chest.

“You knew? You have known all along?”

Richard neither confirmed nor denied it as he adjusted his cuffs, saying, “Do as you are told, and you will know. Defy me and you will never get the answer to that question.”

Fury thumped in messy waves through Adrian.

He clenched his fist tightly, the sharp bite of his nails against his palm anchoring him from doing something he would regret later.

The barely concealed smug look on Richard's face was not helping matters as he asked, “Are we clear?”