Chapter 148
“What is going on here?” The man repeated his words when no one spoke, his gaze trailing to Elara, who looked away immediately.
Heather, who hadn’t expected the man to appear here, immediately pulled his hand down before evening his appearance.
“It’s an honor to meet you here, General Thomas,” Heather said, and Elara quirked his brows.
So this man was here to meet her grandfather?
Thomas looked least fazed.
“That’s not the answer to my question.” He pressed, his eyes still cold and unapproachable.
Heather looked at Elara and cleared his throat. Since he had been working out of the country, he didn’t really know much about what was happening here, especially in his family.
Thus, he didn’t know that Elara had already divorced his son and was also a lead singer in the nation’s most anticipated drama.
“It’s nothing, sir. Please don’t bother yourself with such measly matters,” Heather still tried to bury the matter, thinking he was saving his family’s reputation.
“You raised his hand on this lady over here.
It doesn’t seem like ’nothing’ to me. I heard from my subordinate that you are here to meet me. I don’t meet people who bully others,” Thomas said, deliberately keeping things anonymous since he wanted to know the entire truth.
Heather took a deep breath as if he couldn’t pretend anymore and was left with no choice but to reveal everything.
“I can’t help it anymore. This girl here is actually my daughter-in-law, and she happened to be having some trouble with my son. So to rebel, she stole the important vase I brought as a gift for you. Then she insulted my family. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like this, but—” Heather let the sentence trail off.
Thomas looked at Elara, who looked down, ashamed, not because she was in the wrong but because she was embarrassed that she had suffered all this drama for three years.
“And what do you have to say in this, Elara?” Thomas asked.
Heather was about to ask Thomas why he was asking such a question when he froze in his place.
Wait. How did he know Elara’s name?
“Sir, you know her name?” Heather asked.
Thomas looked at his man before he nodded at Elara.
“Sir, you forgot the vase in the room. I have been looking for you.” Mr. Timothy walked to them with the gift in his hand, completely unaware of what was going on.
Heather looked at the perfectly intact gift in his subordinate’s hand before his gaze shifted to Elara.
Naturally, he should’ve apologized, but it didn’t run in the Lloyd family’s men. He cleared his throat.
“If you were innocent, why didn’t you say anything?” Heather instead accused Elara of not saying anything earlier, and the girl suppressed her urge to roll her eyes.
Thomas extended his hand, and Heather looked at it, confused.
“Sir?” He asked.
“The gift. It was for me, wasn’t it?” Thomas asked.
Heather quickly nodded and grabbed the vase from Timothy’s hand. He gave the gift to Thomas with utmost care, who looked at Elara and extended his hand to her.
Elara arched her brows and grabbed the vase by its neck as if it didn’t matter much. She looked at it before looking up, her steel-like gaze meeting Heather’s.
Without a second thought, she let go of the vase.
Heather gasped loudly as the sound of the vase shattering into hundreds of pieces echoed in the corridor.
“You!” He raised his voice but stopped himself in front of Thomas.
“You gave it to me. Now what I do with it after that shouldn’t concern you, right?” Thomas asked.
Heather wanted to argue, but couldn’t, knowing all too well the man before him wasn’t someone he should trifle with.
“Go and have some snacks. I’ll be there,” Thomas said to Elara before he turned to Heather.
“We can’t have this meeting. I already have a scheduled meeting with her,” Thomas pointed to Elara.
Heather’s pupils dilated.
How could this even be possible? Elara was just a country bumpkin with no background or value, as a matter of fact. Why would a man like Thomas have a meeting with her? And how could he give her more importance than Lloyd? Heather wondered.
He looked up to ask if Thomas could make some time for him, but something else caught his eye.
Andrew came rushing forward, his eyes panicked as he looked around.
Heather furrowed his brows. Could it be that Elara caused a problem at home, and his son was here to pick her up? This was a good chance to get rid of Elara, who had already ruined his image before Mr. Thomas.
“Andrew,” Heather raised his voice and waved at his son to catch his attention.
Andrew looked at him and rushed to where he was standing, his gaze briefly landing on Thomas, stopping at Elara.
He remembered seeing Elara enter the same car as Thomas in front of the registrar’s office.
His gaze then turned to the broken pieces of the vase, and he tried to understand what was going on.
“Andrew, you are here to take your wife, right? You can take her away,” Heather emphasized on the fact that Elara was his daughter-in-law and he had a say in who she would meet with, so Thomas would give more importance to him.
But what Thomas said next caught him entirely off guard.
“After what I saw earlier, do you think I would let my granddaughter go with just anyone?” Thomas asked.
Heather, who was about to reason with the man, stopped when the words finally sank in.
What did he say? Granddaughter?
Andrew’s phone rang at the same time, and he picked up.
“Andrew, something has happened to Carla. She didn’t return home right after the shoot, as she had said she was going to. The driver said someone kidnapped her, but her phone was active, so we tracked her with the help of Jason, but she is not well. Something has happened to her. And she says it’s Elara who did it to her,” Beatrice said from the other side.
Andrew, who was listening to what Beatrice had to say, looked at Elara; the way her sharp eyes looked back at him was challenging, and he couldn’t help but wonder what was going on around him anymore.
Elara was nothing like how they knew her from the past four years. In fact, they didn’t know her at all.
“I am coming,” Andrew said on the phone, swallowing hard.