I Am An Illegitimate Child With A Legitimate Reason For Revenge-Chapter 37: It’s not pathetic

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Raymond waited for her response but she did not give one. She didn’t look angry either.

"I assume your meeting went well?" He asked, switching the topic and she snapped out of whatever it is that was going on in her head.

"Hm, it did." She answered. "And your meeting?"

"It went well."

Raymond was about to take a seat where Marco previously sat but she stopped him.

"Wait, not there." She said and got up. "Let’s sit somewhere else."

Raymond looked at her for a while and then nodded. He knew her reason so there was no need to ask.

They switched to a different table, far from the one she sat with Marco, right next to the window which had an amazing night view.

"It’s nice." She muttered, staring out the window and sipped on her wine.

"Is wine all you’ll be having tonight?" Raymond asked and she turned to see him eating merticulously. She looked down at her barely touched food and wondered for a bit.

"You know, a random thought flashed through my mind." She said but paused. "Oh, I shouldn’t be talking about this while we eat. It might spoil your appetite."

"It’s okay. Go on." He said and she nodded.

"I just thought, what would’ve happened to me if I had decided to move out on my own from my parent’s house and survive in this world alone? I surely wouldn’t have ended up the way I did in Marco’s hands and I might’ve gotten a few of my dreams achieved too." She paused, turning her gaze towards the night view once more. "I might’ve had little to no regrets if I had at least stood on my own the whole time but I just had to go on and run off with the one person who deceitfully whispered sweet nothingness to me." She smiled in an ironic way. "How pathetic of me."

Raymond listened to her and shook his head.

"It’s not pathetic." He said and she rolled her eyes towards him, her face still facing the nightview. "Just because a sunflower bears the name of the Sun, it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t want to take shelter from that same Sun once the heat gets too much."

He cut a piece of his steak and put it in his mouth, chewed then swallowed.

"But when it gets cold, that sunflower that ran away from the sun will wish, so dyingly to receive the warmth of the Sun it ran away from."

Ariel couldn’t get it at all. Then, he switched up.

"Humans are naturally greedy creatures. They’re greedy for things that they don’t have and they’re also greedy for things that they have. You, who had nothing, what’s so wrong in being greedy for a little love?"

Her eyes grew a bit and she gaped.

He did this before, consoling her, and in a really strange way at that. He always tried to make it seem like it was not her fault and from the way he spoke, it was like he was trying to help her heal a wound that he himself couldn’t heal and ended up with a covering alone. But it was still there.

"Just because you want a scar to heal, doesn’t mean it’ll heal right away, Ariel." He stated, bringing her mind back to those same words he told her a few weeks ago. "And since there’s a scar left from being wanting of love and betrayed too, all you have to do is try not to think of the pain. Eventually, it will fade."

"And if it doesn’t?" She asked and he paused.

"If you try all that you can and it still doesn’t fade, take it as a trophy." His lips curved lightly and he drank from his wine glass.

Ariel found herself gaping again, her eyes fixed solely on the existence that was sitting right in front of her. He was truly amazing. He had the looks, strength, power... He had everything.

"You... Why are you helping me?" She found herself asking and once again, he paused. He looked up at her. She was serious.

It didn’t look like a question she asked on a whim or a passing thought. She really wanted to know this.

"I know you said it was to help me get revenge and in return get your own revenge but there are a thousand people out there you could use who would benefit your plans better than me. Yet, you stick with me. No, rather, you let me stick with you. Why... Why are you helping me?" She asked and Raymond sighed.

"Do you want an honest answer?"

"Obviously."

"I found your situation pitiful." He said, dropped his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together, interlocking his fingers. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"Pitiful? Is that all?" She asked, not surprised hearing him call her pitiful since her condition when he saved her was not exactly ’neat’.

"I wanted to ignore you. Really, I wanted to just look the other way since you’re not the first one I’ve met who got caught up in one boyfriend drama or the other but I couldn’t. I looked at your profile, looked at your history, I couldn’t sit still while I knew ’you’ and ’I’ shared the same fate while growing up. You’re suffering the fate of being born out of wedlock." He explained but Ariel got confused.

She examined his words and caught on to the last bit.

"How did you know I was born out of wedlock? I don’t even know who my real parents are." She said.

"There’s something you don’t know, Ariel. You were not just an adopted child." Raymond said and it slowly started to make sense to her.

The reason they were so cruel, the reason they treated her like some sort of threatful existence, the reason why they made her so desperate for their affection...

"Don’t tell me..." she looked up. "I was the daughter of a very powerful and rich family and my inheritance as well as my late parents’ properties, all of it were stolen by those people." She concluded and Raymond blinked, dumbfoundedly.

Where on Earth did she get that conclusion? He almost laughed but held it in and shook his head.

"It’s not that, Ariel." He said and for some reason, she wanted to shrink in embarrassment.

"Ah, how did I end up with that conclusion?" She asked, blushing from the embarrassment.

Raymond cleared his throat, looking away. She was really comical. The atmosphere was really heavy and tense just now but she managed to lighten it up with her words.

"Please, aside from villainous acts, don’t learn anything from those books you read. They’re all fake." He said and she nodded, pouting to herself.

"They can be useful sometimes." She muttered.

"Anyway, back to what I was saying." Raymond said and the atmosphere deepened once more. "I don’t know anything about your birth mother so I can’t say you are completely wrong, but aside from that, the fact that there’s no information about her shows that she wasn’t that special, no offense."

"Don’t worry about it." She said and pursed her lips.

"You might not be a rich heiress that was taken in and harassed by them but rather, you are an illegitimate child."