all the wrong reasons Episode 29

🌸ALL THE WRONG REASONS🌸
🌹EPISODE TWENTY-NINE🌹

Adrienne walked beside Jin Starck into the lavish
mansion he called his home. Yuan and Jill trailed behind
them.
“You still live with your parents?” Adrienne asked.
“In this house, yes,” he replied. “But I have
ap@rtments of my own. This is a ten-be-droom house. It gets
a little lonely for Mom sometimes so I make it a point to
spend time here to keep her company. She doesn’t work for
our hotels. She spends a lot of time in her study. Writing.”
Jin was greeted by their butler in French. He gave
instructions to take Yuan and Jill to one of the waiting rooms
and serve them refreshments.
Then he turned to Adrienne. “Follow me.”
They ascended the stairs to the second level of the
house. Adrienne couldn’t help admiring how elegant and
luxurious the house appeared. Never in her wildest dreams
did she imagine that someb©dy related to her could live in a
house like this.
They stopped in front of the room, situated in the
corner. Jin took a de-ep breath and stared at her.
“Are you re-ady?” he asked.
“I don’t think I will ever be,” she replied truthfully.
Her brother reached down and squee-zed her hand.
“She is wonderful, Adrienne. You have no idea.”
Adrienne nodded. “Let’s go.”
Jin gave her one last smile and then he opened the
door.
The room they entered in was hu-ge. She saw the four
walls covered in shelves, all full of books. The room almost
looked like a libr@ry. At the far end of the room was a hu-ge oak desk with a white Macintosh computer and stacks of
paper.
Jin pu-ll-ed her towards the desk, where a woman sat,
staring intently at the computer screen.
She said something in French to Jin, without looking up
from her screen.
“English, Mom,” Jin requested. “We have a guest from
America.”
The woman looked up from her screen. “Oh. I’m sorry.
I expected you twenty-four hours ago. You didn’t show up
and left no word. And now, you’re disturbing my battle
scene.”
Adrienne walked slower than Jin and hid behind his
back.
“I doubt this can wait, Mom,” Jin maintained, as he
stopped in front of their mother’s desk.
Finally, the woman peeled her eyes away from the
computer screen to look up at his son. She immediately
noticed Adrienne behind Jin’s back, uncertain of what she
would do or say.
No one will ever be re-ady to meet their real mother
ten hours after learning about her. Adrienne’s heart
pounded loudly against her che-st.
“Jin Adrien Starck!” the woman exclaimed. “Are you
telling me that I’m going to be a grandmother soon?”
Adrienne blinked back for a second. Then she heard
Jin laugh.
“I’m only twenty-three, Mom. And I’m not the first one
in line to give you grandkids. I’m not your first-born,
remember?”
Adrienne immediately saw the sadness that crossed
the woman’s face. “Well…” she sighed sadly. “Maybe you
should then introduce me to your lady guest. I thought I searching for her all her life. The woman whose words she
lost herself to during those hours when she re-ad her novels.
The woman she didn’t even know was her birth mother.
Ariana looked at Adrienne curiously. Her eyes
narrowed, as if she was trying to figure out what was so
familiar about her.
As Adrienne stared at the woman in front of her, she
could see how Jin thought she looked familiar that first night
they met. Her hair was the exact color as hers, even with
the red highlights in them. Her eyes…exactly the same
green of hers. She was older and looked more confident
than herself. But Adrienne could see herself in this woman…
the way she never saw herself in the mother she’d known all
her life.
“Mom…” Jin said softly. “I’d like you to meet…
Adrienne.” Jin paused for a second. “Actually, we’ve been
calling her Andrea for years.”
Andrea?
In a second, her mother’s eyes wi-de-ned. Recognition
and realization finally crossed her face, as if she finally
found the final piece of the puzzle she’s been trying to solve
for decades.
“Adrienne…” she whispered. Then she stared at her
son, “Our Andrea?”
Hearing her say those words brou-ght tears to
Adrienne’s eyes. She heard the love in her voice…just by
saying the name of her child. And she realized she’s been
waiting all her life to hear the mother she’s known say her
name the way this woman did just then.
“I have three DNA results that says she is,” Jin
disclosed.
Adrienne heard her mother g-asp and put her hands on
her mouth. Tears spilled from her eyes. Immediately, she
moved from her desk and in a few seconds, Adrienne felt
her arms around her. She was almost hysterical,
hyperventilating as she hu-gged her.
taught you better manners.”
Jin pu-ll-ed Adrienne and made her step forward. She
stood face to face now with the woman…who’s been “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Ariana cried. “My baby! My
baby!”
Adrienne couldn’t help crying, too. She put her own
arms around the mother she never knew existed until a few
hours beforehand.
Ariana pu-ll-ed away and stared at her. She cu-mpped her
face in her hands and whispered, “I thought I had lost you
forever. I thought I would never see you again.”
Adrienne bit herl-ip. She couldn’t stop crying. She held
her mother’s hands in hers.
“Where were you all these years? Was your father
good to you? Did you have a good life? Where did you grow
up? Did he give you everything you nee-ded? Did he take
good care of you?”
Adrienne didn’t know which question to answer first.
And even if she did, she couldn’t find her voice. She just
kept crying, finally feeling for the first time in her life the
motherly affection she craved all her life.
“She lived in Boston. Your ex changed his name, his
identity and hers so we wouldn’t find them. He changed her
name from Andrea Blanc to Adrienne Miller,” Jin answered
for her. “If by good life, you meant did she have a roof over
her head or food to eat, or was she taken care of whenever
she got sick, or was she s-ent to the university to finish a
degree, then yes. She did. She was.” Jin paused for a
moment and then he added, “But if you mean did she have
a mother who loved her and took care of her the way you
would have? No. She didn’t.”
Ariana bit herl-ip and looked at Adrienne
apologetically. She hu-gged Adrienne again, as if she was
trying to erase all the pain that her separation from her
birth mother had caused her.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Ariana whispered to her. “I am so
sorry. None of this was your fault. None of this would have
happened if I made the right choices from the beginning. I
shouldn’t have trusted your father. I am so sorry, my baby.”
Adrienne cried like a little girl. She felt the comfort,
security and love that her mother’s embr@ce provided her.
Now, more than ever, she wished she’d have felt her
embr@ces whenever she got wounded or hurt all those years
when she was growing up.
“I-it’s not your fault,” she whispered. She pu-ll-ed away
from her mother and looked into her eyes. “We cannot
recover those years that were stolen from us. But I’m so
glad I was still given a chance to meet you now.”
Her mother nodded and k!$$£d her forehead. “Yes, my
baby. I never thought I would have the chance to see you
again. But thank God your brother found you. A couple of
weeks ago, he said he had a lead on you. I didn’t really think
that it would be so soon. I thought this day wouldn’t come
at all. I have loved you all my life. And until now, I thought I
would never get a chance to say that to you at all.”
Her mother pu-ll-ed away from her, took her hand and
led her to the couches. They sat beside each other. Then
she turned to Jin. “Have someb©dy bring something to eat
and drink here. Adrienne and I have a lot to talk about. Then
have dinner prepared. We’re all dining together.”
Jin nodded. Adrienne looked at him and smiled in spite
of the tears rolling down her cheeks. She gave her brother a
smile.
Jin turned to his mother and spoke to her in French.
Her mother nodded. Then Jin smiled at his sister one last
time and turned to leave the room.
Ariana turned back to Adrienne and once again
to-uched her cheek, tears brimming her eyes. “I thought I
would never see you again.”
Adrienne let out a small whimper. Then she said, “I…
never knew you existed until after Jin c@m£ to find me in
Boston.”
“He erased me from your life,” her mother said
soberly.
Adrienne took a de-ep breath and told her mother
everything that her father did and how she grew up all these
years.
They must have talked for hours. Her mother couldn’t
stop crying and cursing at the same time. Adrienne
un-derstood how she felt. She felt exactly the same. They
were both just victims of her father’s lies and treachery. She
didn’t tell her much about how the mother she’s known all
her life had treated her. She figured that could be saved for
later. Right now, her father’s obvious deception seemed
alre-ady too much to bear.
“When you were a baby, I wanted to name you
Adrienne,” her mother divulged. “Your father knew I has
half-French. I didn’t tell him though…that I had a family
obligation I wanted to escape. My father…bless his soul…
was a tyrant. What he said…must be done. He arranged for
me to marry Pierre. I didn’t want to. Then I met your father
and fell in love with him. He thought Adrienne was too
French, and named you Andrea instead.” Her mother looked
at her, “Then he changed your name to Adrienne? I would
never have thought he would use that name. He was so
much against it when you were born.”
“Were you ever married to my father?”
My mother shook her head. “No. We lived together.
We didn’t have enough money. I was writing but it wasn’t
enough. Your father had just started his career and we
struggled.”
“Why did you separate?”
My mother took a de-ep breath. “Because your father
was too proud,” she stated. “I decided to be honest with
him. He found out that I was an heiress. He was nothing. He
couldn’t accept that. It made him feel small. It got into his
head. Plus, money remained difficult. He was hot-headed.”
Her mother sighed. “Then I found out that my father had
become very ill, and I couldn’t take the guilt. In the middle of it all, we just…decided to go our separate ways. It wasn’t
an ugly fight. We just both decided to give up.
“I went back to France. Upon my return, my father set
everything into motion. He wanted me to marry Pierre as
soon as possible. I was still heartbroken about leaving you. I
know it was a mistake. And it’s not a valid reason, but I
wanted to fix everything here first. My father was dying…all
my life, he’d provided for me. The only thing he asked in
return was for me to marry Pierre so our company would
become p@rt of Starck Corporation.
“Then I finally met Pierre. He was the exact opposite
of what I thought he was. He was very level-headed. I was
heartbroken with your father and torn ap@rt about losing
you. I didn’t know how to tell my father about you. And
surprisingly, I found myself confiding in Pierre. And when I
thought he would surely reject me for my past, he still
accepted me and promised to help me bring you back from
the States. He was the one who told my father about you.
He told my father that he didn’t care. He would still have me
and would raise you as his own.”
She looked at Adrienne wearily. “My…father wasn’t
plea-sed to know I alre-ady lived with someb©dy in the
States…he thought at first that he had delivered…
‘damaged goods’ to Pierre and he felt embarr@$$ed. But
Pierre said he didn’t care. We bec@m£ the best of friends.
Soon, I fell in love with that wonderful man. He did for me
what your father didn’t. He bec@m£ my friend. He fought for
me. He stood up for me. He was my only ally during those
times.
“When Pierre told my father I had a daughter, he
wanted to meet you.” Her mother sighed and looked at
Adrienne for a minute. Then she smiled bitterly. “In his last
days, he accepted you…and wanted you to be returned to
our family. But… your father had disappeared. You both
vanished.” Tears rolled down her mother’s cheeks. “I would
never forgive your father for stealing you. You have a destiny here in France. He took that away from you. He
prevented you from claiming what is rightfully yours. I put
down Andrea Blanc in your birth papers. You didn’t even
carry his name. He changed your identity…to keep you
away from me.” With a grave look on her face, she said, “He
will pay for this!”
Tears rolled down Adrienne’s cheeks. She felt her
mother’s pain, and her anger towards her father. Anyb©dy
would feel that way. Even she. She felt like her father stole
the most important thing a person could have—an identity.
“He must have been so angry at me. When I returned
to the States, Pierre c@m£ with me. I felt he was jealous of
Pierre. He also knew he couldn’t do anything about it. He
knew Pierre was my fiancé by an arranged marriage.” Her
mother sighed.
“But…maybe during that time we met him to give him
money so he would have means to take care of you for a
couple of months while I fix my life and my rift with my
Dad…he saw that Pierre had become more than a for-ced
fiancé. During that time, we were really together. Not
because my father wanted me to. But because I was falling
for him. I think I hurt your father. And his way of hurting me
back…was to take away the most important thing in my life
—you.”
Her mother looked at her apologetically. “Oh,
sweetheart. I am so sorry. I am sorry you suffered for this.
This was my fault. And your father’s revenge. What your
father did has no valid reason, no excuse. But you shouldn’t
have been the one to pay. I am so sorry, child.” Her mother
reached out and gave her a ti-ght hu-g. They both cried in
each other’s arms.
Then her mother pu-ll-ed away from her. “It’s okay,
baby. You’re home now. And I promise to make it all up to
you. Your father is going to pay for the difficult life he put
you throu-gh.”
Adrienne shook her head. “Mom…he’s still my father.”
“No father could stomach depriving his child of the life
she deserved. Just because of what? Jealousy? Revenge?
Anger? None of those are reasons enough for him to take
you away from me.”
Adrienne knew it wasn’t time to argue about this.
Right now, she couldn’t defend her Dad. She was also mad
at him for doing what he did. Especially for…letting her
stepmother and stepsister crush her and break her spirit.
Jin c@m£ back to the room and announced that dinner
would begin shortly.
“Where is your father?” her mother asked Jin.
“He just got in,” Jin replied. “I ensured that Adrienne’s
friends come dine with us, too. I figured all this hoopla will
be much easier for Adrienne to handle if she had her best
friends to keep her company.”
“Of course,” their mother responded. “They are more
than welcome. And besides, I would be thankful to anyb©dy
who loved my daughter all the time that I wasn’t at her
side.”
They went to the first floor of the house and Jin and
her mother led her to the hu-ge dining room. There was a
long table in the middle of it with twenty seats.
Jill and Yuan alre-ady sat there and Adrienne
introduced them to her mother. After a few minutes, a
handsome man in his fifties entered the room. His hair was
darker than Jin’s and his eyes were aquamarine.
“Oh, we have guests,” he said, smiling. His smile was
warm and welcoming. Then he turned to her mother and
k!$$£d her lovingly on thel-ips.
“Pierre,” her mother began. “Jin just brou-ght me the
most wonderful surprise. I’d like you to meet her.” Ariana
pu-ll-ed her husband towards Adrienne.
Pierre Starck stood in front of her and took a good look
at her. He blinked back twice and, immediately, recognition
crossed his face. Without having to introduce them, he said,
“Andrea.”
Adrienne smiled at him shyly.
“But her name now is Adrienne. All the while, we were
looking for Andrea, when that’s not even her name.”
“How?” Pierre asked his wife.
“I will tell you all about it later.” Ariana whispered
Pierre looked at Adrienne again. “My God, you look
like your mother.”
“Jin found her,” her mother announced. “Now, she’s
finally here, Pierre.”
Pierre Starck smiled at his wife and hu-gged her. “Oh
sweetheart. I’m so happy for you. You’ve waited decades for
this.”
“I know.” Tears rolled down Ariana’s cheeks again.
“And you have patiently waited with me.”
Pierre Starck leaned forward and k!$$£d his wife once
again and then he turned to Adrienne. He gave her a hu-g
and then he said, “Welcome to the family, child.”
Tears welled up in Adrienne’s eyes and she felt
happiness surge throu-gh her. She saw that Pierre Starck
genuinely loved her mother and it was true what Jin said.
He’s accepted her existence even before they got married.
And had her own father allowed her to live with them, this
man would have treated her like a real daughter.
“Th-thank you, sir,” Adrienne said.
“Oh, child. I have been hiring pri-vate investigators in
the US to search for you for almost all your life. I think, now
that I have finally met you, you should call me Papa.”
Adrienne smiled shyly and nodded. “Thank you,
Papa.”
After dinner, Adrienne went with Jill and Yuan to the
Starck’s hu-ge garden at the back of the estate.
“Wow,” Yuan breathed. “Your family is really lovely.”
He couldn’t help the tears in his eyes, too.
Jill was also crying. “Adrienne, we know how much
you’ve wished to have a family that shows even just a little bit of affection for you. Now you do. This is some sort of a
miracle!”
“I know,” Adrienne admitted happily. “I mean…it’s still
too much to absorb at the moment, but I never ever
dreamed that some people would love me enough to
dedicate decades of their lives trying to find me…because
they felt that I belonged with them. It’s just…so surreal
considering I grew up feeling out of place with the family I
had then. I never felt like they accepted me. And now…I met
some people who turned out to be doing everything they
could just to make me one of their own.”
“If this happened to me…I don’t think I would be able
to forgive my father at all,” Yuan said.
Adrienne felt a sharp pain in her che-st again. Tears
welled up in her eyes and she stared down on the gr@$$ on
her feet. She shook her head. “What he did…maybe he
thought that was right. He didn’t want to lose me. But what
he did was wrong. I felt like he cheated me. He was being
selfish. My real mother loved me all these years, while I was
growing up thinking that motherly love didn’t exist for me at
all. Maybe I would be able to forgive him. But I nee-d time to
take all this in. I’m still angry at him. But yes, I think I would
forgive him. In time.”
“Your mother is Amanda Seville, Adrienne,” Jill
@$$erted, her voice said that she found that surreal.
“I know, right? Unbelievable.”
“Well, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree at all.
That’s where you got your talent. You always wondered how
no one in your family ever knew how to write.”
“Now, I don’t feel out of place at all. My mother loves
me. And I have a brother who genuinely cares about me,
too.”
“And he’s bloody hot!” Jill couldn’t help saying.
Adrienne narrowed her eyes on her friend. “He’s my
brother, Jill! How could you even talk like that about him in
front of me?”
Jill giggled. “And to think I thought at first that he was
interested in you. Well, he was. But not in the way I thought,
not ro-mantically. Just like you said.”
“So what are you going to do now?” Yuan asked. “Will
you live here in Paris?”
Adrienne sighed. “I don’t know. What I do know is that
I want to get to know my family a little bit more.”
“Yes. You deserve that,” Jill said. “Your stepmother and
your stepsister hated you. Now, it’s time you stay with the
mother and brother…including the stepfather…who felt that
your coming home today was a miracle.”
Her mother called them. It had gotten late and they
c@m£ from a long flight. Jill and Yuan stayed in two of the
guest rooms. Adrienne said goodnight to them. She wanted
to talk to her mother more, though. She felt like talking to
her for hours would still not suffice for getting to know her.
“This is your room, Adrienne,” her mother said,
opening the door of the room opposite Jin’s.
When they stepped into the hu-ge room, Adrienne
almost g-asped. The luxurious queen-sized be-d in the center
was covered in purple and pink be-dspre-ads, duvet and
pillows. The pillows in the center of the be-d had the letter A
embroidered in them. There was a desk and a shelf full of
books. A hu-ge couch and center table stood on a corner
opposite the be-d. Luxurious violet curtains cover the gl@$$
walls and doors that led to a hu-ge balcony. The walls were
adorned with beautiful, serene paintings on canv@$$.
“Wow,” Adrienne breathlessly stated. “This is so
beautiful.”
Her mother smiled. “I’m glad you like it. We decorated
this room as often as we could. The sheets and curtains get
washed and replaced every week.”
“Is this a guest be-droom or does someone actually
stay here?”
“This is not a guest room, Adrienne. We have been
decorating and keeping this room re-ady for years…hoping this day would come…that you would finally come home to
us.”
Adrienne found herself overwhelmed by emotions
once again. She never expected to hear what her mother
just said. She remembered her be-droom in Boston, the room
where she actually stayed in for years before she went to
college. Her be-d didn’t have sheets and all her stuff got put
in boxes, as if her supposed mother expected her never to
return at all. And now, here in this house, her real mother
made a room for her, kept it re-ady for the day when she
would finally return to her.
She turned to the paintings on the wall. Some of them
were abstract, painted in pastel colors, beautiful and
elegantly feminine to match the theme of the room. These
included a painting of a rainforest with a lagoon in the
center and exquisite wildflowers.
Adrienne thought that the paintings matched the
room so well that someone painted them for it…a room
meant for the princess in the family.
“Do you like the paintings?” Her mother asked,
noticing how she was admiring the canv@$$es on the wall.
Adrienne nodded. “They’re lovely.”
“Jin painted all of them,” her mother said proudly.
Adrienne stared at her mother. She couldn’t hide the
awe on her face.
“It’s his hobby,” her mother revealed. “He’s been
painting for this room since he was fifteen, hoping that one
day, his big sister would come home, see them… and
admire them the way you are doing now.”
Adrienne’s heart swelled. Her brother painted for her,
when he hasn’t even met her. Kimberly never even had nice
thoughts of her when she lived with her all her life.
As she stared back into the room, she couldn’t help
but wonder how it was possible that the Starcks have
managed to make her feel like she belonged to them in a
space of five hours, and the family she grew up with hadn’t made her feel accepted when she’d lived with them for over
twenty years.
An hour later, after she’d taken a shower in the hu-ge
elegant en-suite bathroom, she l@ydown on the luxurious
be-d that was always meant for her. She turned on her
phone. So much has happened, she forgot to turn her phone
back on after she took them from the police station.
She had notifications of missed calls from her father
and some from Justin.
She sighed. How she wished Justin was with her in this
longest day of her life. She missed him. She missed how she
confided in him all her pains, her thoughts, her dreams and
her ordeals. She wondered what he would say when he
found out how her life had turned a sudden three-sixty in
the space of sixteen hours.
Her heart pounded inside her che-st when she re-ad his
message to her: Where will you be in exactly forty days? Let
me answer that for you. In Italy. Changing your last name to
mine.
She smiled bitterly. All her life she was called Adrienne
Miller. But now she found out that it was a fake name. Her
legal name on her real birth docvments was Andrea Blanc. If
her mother had it her way, she would have been Adrienne
Blanc. If Pierre could have it his way, she was almost certain
he would change her name to Adrienne Starck.
Now that she knew who she really was, she’s confused
about which name was right for her to use.
But in her heart, at that moment, she knew what
name she would rather use out of all the options she had.
She would rather be Adrienne Adams.