Chapter 14
Mother-Daughter Reunion
Only then did Li Junyu finally put the girl down expressionlessly.
Ruan Mengmeng had not even steadied her footing when the man’s deep and mesmerizing voice hurried her from behind. “Go inside.”
He was standing right behind her, both his hands pressed against the door.
This way, he stealthily trapped the girl between his arms.
Ruan Mengmeng was so embarra.s.sed that she turned red to the roots of her ears.
She was usually bold and brash, but in truth, aside from her childhood friend Mu Jingxing, she had never really interacted with guys before.
If she kept dawdling here, she might start acting even weirder. With that in mind, she pushed the door open herself and walked in.
Beyond the door was an extravagant European-style bedroom.
The grand and heavy curtain drapes blocked all light out of the room.
The crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling was not illuminated, either.
The only lighting in the room came from a pair of small wall lamps on either side of the bed.
A middle-aged man with a straight back sat next to the bed, looking at the person lying in it.
At the same time, there seemed to be a woman sleeping on the large and magnificent bed in the middle of the room.
Ruan Mengmeng approached it, one step at a time, growing closer and closer.
The closer she was, the better she could see.
“Beep-beep, beep-beep…” She suddenly heard the beeping from the medical machinery.
That was when she finally saw how many tubes were sticking out of the woman’s body.
In her memories, her mother had a face as beautiful as an angel’s.
All her life, she had heard many people say she looked just like her mother.
However, Ruan Mengmeng knew that she was not even half as beautiful as her mother was.
Now, the woman lying ill on the bed was deathly pale and horribly weak, not a trace of rosiness to be found anywhere on her face.
Even so, she was still quietly gorgeous.
She was like a rose that was wilting after its full bloom. Although it was no longer as breathtaking as when it was in its prime, it was still beautiful in a broken sort of way.
The woman on the bed was Chen Qingzhi!
That was her mother, who should have died a long time ago!
“Mengmeng… Is it you, Mengmeng?” The woman on the bed had been fast asleep. She had not stirred, even though the middle-aged man next to her whispered a constant stream of pa.s.sionate words into her ear.
When she heard the door open, however, when she heard Ruan Mengmeng’s footsteps approaching, she actually opened her eyes for once.
The disease had robbed her almond-shaped eyes of their initial shine, but the instant she saw Ruan Mengmeng, her eyes lit up with an intense gleam.
“Mengmeng… It’s really you… You’re finally willing to meet me… Oh, you’ve grown, you’ve grown so much…”
The woman’s pretty brows locked tightly together, pearl-like tears falling from her eyes in an instant.
Ruan Mengmeng thought she could harden her heart, but the instant she saw those tears falling like a broken string of pearls, all of her defenses fell apart.
Her heart instantly softened into putty.
She lunged forth and hugged Chen Qingzhi, even remembering to carefully control her strength and avoid all the tubes stuck in Chen Qingzhi’s body.
“Mom… Sob… Sob…”
Ruan Mengmeng cried like a helpless little child.
Li Junyu stood at the door, coolly watching this warm and touching mother-daughter reunion.
He remembered that stubborn little girl who had bitten her bottom lip in the study earlier, her tears pooling in her eyes but never truly falling.
At that thought, his pitch-black eyes slowly grew darker.
After a while, the mother and daughter finally stopped crying and calmed down.
That was when the middle-aged man who had been standing by the bed and watching them with a warm gaze finally spoke.
“Nice to meet you, Mengmeng. I’m Li Yaoyang, and you can call me Uncle Li from now on. Your mother didn’t mean to abandon you back then. She tried to drown herself in the ocean, but we just happened to save her with our yacht. Your father hurt her very deeply back then, and he even made her depressed. It took her a long time to recover from that pain.
“After that, when she wanted to return to look for you two, she realized that your older sister was already very independent, and she cared for you perfectly well too. Since the two of you were living happily, she was worried that her sudden return would disrupt your peaceful lives. That was why she knew it was too much to want to meet you, even though she’d been so ill all these years…”