Chapter 6

SIMON’S POV

Hazel and I had unfinished business. Rest assured, it wasn’t anything shady, just unresolved tension after I rejected her confession five years ago, and her sudden disappearance ever since.

I was drunk. Fuck! And I messed up.

I wasn’t supposed to reject her in such a cruel way, but things happen and so did it happen.

When I woke up the following day and all the memories from the previous night came flooding back in handy, I wasted not as much as a second in rushing down to my father’s house, where I knew Hazel would always be.

On my way there, I had pictured what state she’d be in; heartbroken, shattered, dull.

But the least I expected was not meeting or seeing her anywhere.

For the first time in years, it awoke something or rather made something alive in me, dead.

“Piper,” I called, racing down the stairs in two steps, my eyes on my stepmother, who was busy with some telenovela series.

She ignored my call, but I could see she was afraid of me and my presence because when I drew closer, her shoulders tensed and her eyes moved inconsistently in their sockets.

I walked into the sitting room and stood in front of her, my broad shoulders blocking her view of the TV.

If only this woman knew how important it was for me to know the whereabouts of my stepsister, who disappeared after my rejection.

It wasn’t like I would’ve accepted her feelings for me. Hell! We are step siblings and related by marriage if not blood.

I loved Hosanna, my wife. The mother of Aurora and we were married, but why did I feel something missing inside of me as soon as I pushed the door to Hazel’s door open and was met with an empty room?

“What do you want from me ?” Piper stuttered, her eyes everywhere but on me.

“Where is Hazel?” I grind out, my voice rumbled out of my chest, even more than I expected it would.

“She left.”

Those two words were what Piper blurted out before she left the sitting room.

She left? To where? I had no idea.

I tried searching for her using my most intelligent hacker, Amos, but my stepsister did well by hiding herself where I or anyone else wouldn’t find her.

Fortunately for me and the whole world in general, my dad died and she returned for his funeral.

I shouldn’t feel even the slightest bit of happiness or aliveness within me when my dad died, but I did and I wasn’t a bit remorseful or regretful.

Hazel was back to Ireland after five years, and I wasn’t going to watch her leave just as she did five years ago.

Hazel remains in Ireland. With me, Simon Veneti, her stepbrother.

I’ve done things I wouldn’t do in my right state of mind. Things like coercing Piper indirectly to sell my father’s house and run far away with the money, so Hazel would be left stranded with no option.

‘Never say there’s no option because there’s always one.’ A smirk tugged at my lips at the thought of Hazel living with my and my daughter, Aurora in my empire.

It’d be so fucking good.

……….

“How am I expected to know the rules when no one told me about them?” Hazel muttered, stabbing the steak in front of her.

“I just said them and unless you’ve gone deaf, then you won’t have heard.” I replied, even before she could spit out her last word.

“I know you’re a challenging type. You hate to lose. Not to me or anyone else, but you’ve become even worse than I expected.” She shook her head, her lips slightly raised into a scoff.

“I never thought my stepsister who left five years ago without so much as a goodbye had expectations of me.”

As soon as those words got out of my mouth, her head jerked up and she threw a glare my way. Her hold on the fork tightened and for a second I thought the fork would smash into pieces, but it didn’t. Fortunately.

“Dad, why are you picking a fight with Aunt Hazel?” Aurora’s tiny voice cut through the air and immediately, we both stopped bickering at each other and turned to Aurora, plastering the widest smile we could muster.

“Darling, I wasn’t picking a fight with your Aunt,” I started, stretching my long hands towards her plate and helping her cut her steak into smaller sizes, which seemed to be the reason why she was listening to our bickering.

Aurora was finding it hard in cutting the steak to her desire, so as a frustrated five years old kid, she had no option other than to listen to the adults as they bickered amongst themselves.

And from what she has heard so far, she concluded I was picking a fight with Hazel.

Hazel, a cunny fox, bent down a little until she was on equal height with Aurora and whispered into my daughter’s ear. “Aurora, tell your dad to be nice to his sister who just arrived a few hours ago.”

She was trying to make Aurora her teammate, so they could both gang up against me.

“Dad,” Aurora drawled, glaring at me under her long lashes.

My daughter, I would gladly announce, is an epitome of beauty and I never for a second regret having her with Hosanna, her mother. “Be nice to Aunt Hazel, or she might leave our home soon and I wouldn’t want that.”

Aurora was getting attached to Hazel already. I guess she missed a motherly figure in her life.

“I’m not leaving, Aurora,” Hazel grazed her knuckles on Aurora’s chubby cheeks, staring at my daughter as if she were the most important person to her. The way a mother would look at her baby. “At least not for now.”

My hands tightened around the cutlery at her latter words and I swear, I almost snapped them into pieces.

I wasn’t going to let her leave. It might be petty and cheap of me, but I’d do everything and anything within my powers to make sure Hazel stays in Ireland with me. Even if it went against her wish.