Chapter 3
After we finished our noodles, Yancy gave me a ride back to my apartment complex. As I was about to get out, he held out his hand.
"Give me your phone," he said.
"Is this for the ride? I can send you the fare later," I asked, puzzled.
He tried to hold back a laugh, but couldn't help it and chuckled.
He said, "What do you even think about all day? I'm hooking your phone up to my home security system."
"Isn't that kind of crossing the line? We're not that close yet," I said, feeling a bit awkward.
I kept feeling like there was more to his words.
Yancy said, "I think we are. Didn't Charles put me in your care? So now you're basically my primary guardian, right?"
I blinked, totally thrown off.
He explained, "The security system has an alarm. If anything happens to me, it will notify my guardian.
"Charles used to be my primary guardian."
Yancy purposely dragged out his tone, making it sound almost teasing.
I said, "Of course, I am your guardian now. Who else could it be?"
I quickly handed over my phone with both hands.
As Yancy took my phone, his cool fingertips brushed against my palm, sending a tingling sensation through my whole body.
My heart skipped a beat.
It wasn't until he handed my phone back that I finally came back to my senses.
"Goodnight, Grace," Yancy said, his tone playful.
His intimate tone made me flee in panic.
After hooking up the security alarm, I finally got why Charles and Bonny's hangouts always ended up getting interrupted.
Yancy lived alone, so he had to take care of everything for Muffin by himself.
He was so allergic to cat fur that he'd just crash and fall asleep whenever his allergies flared up.
I had to dash over to rescue him every other day.
Luckily, Yancy wasn't totally heartless. Once he realized how much of a hassle it was for me to take the subway to his place, he set me up with a driver just to pick me up whenever he needed saving.
After a month of running back and forth like this, it finally hit me: if he could afford a driver, why couldn't he hire a housekeeper?
After he passed out at home again, I finally couldn't hold back and asked him, "Why don't you just hire a housekeeper?"
Yancy didn't say a word. He just leaned weakly against the headboard, his face ghostly pale.
The lamp by the bed threw a hazy shadow across his brow, making it impossible to tell what he was feeling.
The room was swallowed by an unsettling silence.
The wall clock ticked on, its hands landing on 8 o'clock.
I had a project deadline at 9, so I hurried to get up and rush back to work.
But just as I stood up, Yancy caught the hem of my shirt.
He murmured, "Don't go.
"I didn't mean to. I'll be more careful next time."
With the light behind him, Yancy kept his head down, his voice so low it sounded just like a lost kitten.
Feeling a bit bad for him, I reached out and patted his fluffy hair.
Work had been insane lately: the endless proposals were suffocating me. I shouldn't have been so harsh with him just now.
Truth was, I'd had a hunch for a while now.
Yancy was always alone in that massive villa. And Charles was this big-time CEO, but whenever something happened to Yancy, he'd come running himself, never delegating it to anyone else.
I guessed there was something Charles just couldn't bring himself to say.
"Sorry, I've just been really busy with work lately, so I..." I started to explain.
"No, really, it's on me," Yancy said, trying to take the blame.
I was about to apologize when Yancy suddenly lifted his head and stared straight at me.
His chest heaved, his eyes unreadable. He looked like he was finally ready to spill something big.
He said, "I used to have a housekeeper."
The room was steeped in deep darkness, with only a small lamp by the bed casting a soft, warm glow. In that faint light, Yancy finally opened up about his rough childhood.
Back then, the Sterling family had a live-in housekeeper.
Before Yancy's parents passed away, she seemed kind enough.
But when Yancy was just seven, a car accident took his parents away.
The Sterling family had built everything from the ground up, and after his parents were gone, all that wealth was left to Yancy.
An innocent kid, but that money painted a target on his back.
Overnight, Yancy became the jackpot all his broke relatives were drooling over.
Charles's family was a big family business, and they were neck-deep in their own inheritance mess. They helped out the Sterling family by handling those greedy relatives, but totally missed the housekeeper.
After Yancy's parents passed, that fifty-year-old housekeeper finally bared her fangs.
She wanted both his fortune and his pretty face.
For half a year, seven-year-old Yancy suffered abuse by the housekeeper, until Charles discovered it upon returning from abroad.
The housekeeper was sent to prison, but after that, Yancy shut everyone out. He wouldn't let a single soul set foot into his home ever again.