Escaped My Ex, Got Snatched by His Rival - Chapter 497

Chapter 497: A joke
“Ariana.”

Ariana looked at the faces of an unfamiliar man and woman who were hugging her childlike self. They looked at her with a loving expression as they caressed her little self.

“Were you frightened? This is why I told you to not run around?” the woman said to her while rubbing the back of her head. “Now stop crying, you are alright.”

“That’s right,” said the man. “We will keep you safe from now on.”

“You nearly scared us. Disappearing like that, we thought we lost you, now don’t go anywhere without telling us. If we are not with you, you will be bullied —we will keep you safe.”

“You will always be safe.”

‘No,’ thought Ariana as she looked at the happy family.

She was never safe.

At that moment, she was feeling relieved over having parents that never even existed. She was feeling happy over a childhood that never even existed.

Holding onto someone whom she had never even met.

This –this must be a dream. And she must be losing her mind, because there was no way her life could be this beautiful.

She was simply chasing after a damned fantasy.

Ariana covered her face and sobbed.

Wake up, she told herself. Because no matter how harsh the reality was—that was where she belonged and…

“Ariana.”

A familiar voice along with the scent of musk and bergamot filled her nostrils.

He was there as well.

As flawed and disgusting as she was — Ariana wanted to be there for a bit longer.

The sound of birds chirping echoed in Ariana’s ears. She blinked her eyes after squeezing them lightly, she turned her head and looked at the glass doors that overlooked a balcony that must be more than a few hundred feet above the ground.

“…I should call Doctor Stoll,” Ariana muttered while lying on the bed. She had now started to hallucinate.

With a yawn, she turned to look at her left and found a bunch of people looking at her. Behind them stood Nicolai who was staring at her without blinking.

Wha –what the?

“After all that fuss, you are calling the name of Doctor Stoll?” Nicolai remarked with crossed hands.

“Shut up, Nicolai,” Mateo snapped at Nicolai. He turned to look at Ari and walked over to where she was lying. He reached out and cupped her cheek.

The second he touched her cheek, Ariana pulled away from him.

She warily eyed him and asked, “What’s going on? Why are you —here?”

What was she doing here? Where was this place?

Ari tried to sit up but Keon walked over to her. He lightly pushed her back down on the bed and said to her, “You need to rest a bit more, you are hurt.”

“What’s going on?” Ari, however, was not in the mood of lying down. She looked around the strange and unfamiliar room before asking, “Why am I here?” She paused and added, “I need to go back home.”

At that moment, all she wanted was to be in her own room with Timmy.

“Timmy…what happened to him?” She worriedly muttered. Her poor boy, who knows what those crazy people did to him?

“You are home,” said the woman who looked like her. As soon as Ari glanced at the woman, she had a faint nagging feeling at the back of her head. But she squashed it down.

“I don’t understand,” Ari blinked her eyes and slowly said, “This is not my home.” She only had a little apartment, which she could call her home, and she couldn’t do that anymore.

Why was it that everything that she wanted and desired was taken away from her?

“This is your home, where will you go if you do not stay here?” Kaylyn felt her heartache when she saw the lost look on Ariana’s face. Her poor daughter should have grown up without a worry but –

Kaylyn walked over to Ariana, who was sitting up on the bed and eyeing her with suspicions flooding in her eyes.

“I know this will come as a shock,” Kaylyn told Ariana. Her voice was soft and slow as she lowered it until it was only a bit above a whisper. “But don’t be agitated.”

“Why will I—”

“I am your mother,” Kaylyn said to Ariana with a trembling voice. It was a weird feeling; the two of them were once connected so closely that Kaylyn could tell what the child in her womb wanted.

And now, after so many years –they were like strangers. She did not know anything about her own daughter, while her daughter looked at her as if she were a stranger.

Ariana looked at the woman in front of her and, after a slight pause, said, “That’s impossible.”

She knew who this woman was–if she was not wrong, then this woman was Kaylyn Ashford.

What were the chances of her being the daughter of the Ashford family? Ariana, who had only suffered at the hands of her mother, dared not to think of such a possibility.

“If this is a joke, it’s a really cruel one,” Ariana said to the people in the room.

“This is not a joke,” Emil reasoned with Ariana. “Why don’t you believe us?”

“Will you?” Ariana asked back with a quiet voice. “I grew up with nothing but neglect in the hands of those whom I called my family. And then I found out…that I was not one of them. And now you are telling me all of a sudden that you are my –my family?” Her voice broke as she questioned in a whisper, “Then what about the sufferings that I went through?”

“You are telling me that I could have avoided all of that!?”

Why did she go through all of that if she had a family? One that could have protected her?

All along, after finding out that Mrs Harlow was not her mother, Ariana thought that her family had no other choice. That they might be in a situation where they couldn’t find her, but now what was she supposed to think?