As soon as Jewel had arrived , she was sent out with my brother to have some lunch .
Jayjay kept looking back . His gaze asked me if I was going to be alright without him . I gave him a nod and a brave smile to encourage him to go and have something to eat .
Only me, Liam and Chairwoman were left behind in the room .
I sat on the sofa and Mrs. Anderson sat on a couch beside the window. Liam kept standing .
" Do you know the great depression time of our country ?," the chairwoman asked me .
I noded . I had some idea from reading history book in classes , though I had never been very fond of studies .
I knew that after the Great War between East and West nations , the tariffs and export taxes became high . Many people back at that time was leaving our country to live in the West .
Those who were left lost their jobs and farm lands and had a difficult time earning .
" I was born in a farmer's house ...my father passed away early from tuberculosis, I helped my mother and brothers for a while but since there was too many mouths to feed , my mother sent me to the capital with a neighborhood's woman . Here I started to work at restaurants at night and attended goverment schools in the morning.
After the war , when many people were leaving , I took over the restaurant I was working after the owner died . I graduated but there was no job for a woman of my background at that time . I put the restaurant on lease and went around looking to startup my own company. For a while , I was doing fine but eventually I could not keep up with the foreign companies around . The old money like Danes , Darwins , Reynolds would only deal with European companies back at that time .The others , and the banks - they were in debt themselves to support anyone. So the only option getting foreign help myself.
That was when I met him - Rupert Hunter , a foreign sponsor who was the only one supporting local companies and brands back then . It was something I considered as a destiny. For the first year , he was the one who helped me start Anderson Co. , it was mostly shared by shareholders personally chosen by him and I owned five percent shares .
I was a newbie , so having him help me around was something that made me grateful.He was the one who taught me to climb the ladder . Soon I was dating him even when I had no idea of his past or even his present.That was when Liam was born . So after that we got married.
For first few years Rupert was a wonderful father and a wonderful support to my career . For him , I was soon invited into circles only old money families were invited . Rupert considered that having an influential friend circle would be helpful for my son's future . So at the weekend, he was hanging around with you , Dane's family's princess. It was more like he was babysitting you back then .
They even arranged engagement between you two . But you were both really young ...too young to even understand what an engagement is . So I asked my ex husband to back down on that offer . But he , Rupert would not listen. He wanted absolute control over everything.
Since then , I started noticing things .The clothes we wear , the haircuts , our meals - everything was designed to his liking . When I asked him , he said that he was trying to wash away the filthy stains of my upbringing. I was ashamed of my background anyway , so I stupidly thought that he was helping me raise the kids better . But more I watched , the worse it started to look .
From the start he treated my children like they were some kind of dolls . Liam , he started liking the colours , food, people that his father told him to like - I became more and more worried cause it felt like he was just following whatever his father was saying ,and not really growing his own personality.
Mathilda , Rupert's close friend,she told me that that was how all the upper-class children are brought up . At Liam's seventh birthday, I bought him a puppy . For a while , he played well with it . Then one night I heard a gunshot .
We were living in Rupert's vacation house back at Italin then . It was already a foreign land . Worried I ran downstairs to find Butler's surrounding my son and my husband. Liam....he was holding a gun . I screamed at him to drop the gun..that - that it was a dangerous thing to hold . But he looked up at me with dead eyes and said ," Do not worry mother , I am done ."
I-I still remember the night . As my eyes adjusted to the surrounding, I realised Liam's puppy was lying on the yard , bloody and dead. And I knew that Liam had shot him .
Rupert was saying , how the puppy was a disturbance to Liam. . and Liam was agreeing on that .I knew my son , I knew how much he loved that dog . But Rupert ....he made Liam shot it . I was scared that my husband would eventually kill his humanity too .
So I took my children and ran away back to our country. But Rupert found us. Next time we left , he threatened me with the company. He said that either I could come back to him or go to jail for a fraud case that he had arranged for me . I agreed ....cause my children were so young. I did not want them under Rupert's care. I tried my best to protect Jewel and Liam . While Rupert reluctantly agreed to send Jewel to a boarding school, he would not let Liam out of his sight . He wanted his son to be exactly like him. At age of thirteen he was already going around with his father's friends , at bars and everywhere.
I could not do anything against my husband but I could not let go of my son. I reminded him again and again that he was his own person , that he could do whatever he wanted.
But the more Liam bent to my side , the more tortured he was by Rupert. He would be beaten like a dog , left in a forest with nothing but his underwear , drugged and taken to parties that Rupert had to attend cause apparantly some of my husband's friends loved having my son around . And I knew all too well what kind of Wolf's den it was .
I knew that I was going to lose my son at this rate very soon . So I had to come up with a plan ."