My Perfect Lady 119 A Factor Unknown To Them All

How much more was the woman going to toy with his brain?

Simon Hunter laughed out loud, his voice echoing eerily through the dead of the night.

Oh, she was the best challenge of his life.

There were times when she was even better than the son she had bore him.

Of course, Jimmy wasn't half as brilliant as her when it came to messing with his brain. At least his boy, he could understand. Though part of him knew he had inherited his mother's stupidity. And wildness.

And the face.

Oh, the face. That was what he could never forgive.

Simon laughed again.

The wind was getting colder, and it chilled him to his bones every time it brushed against his skin. The old man glanced around himself, at the greenery that spread all around him. His eyes glazed, and for a second, he froze.

The green… the too much green.

He had done it all for her.

Shrugging forcefully, he lay back in his chair.

Tonight, it wasn't about him anymore. Everybody else was involved too.

The final report of his investigation on Miya had arrived. And it was exactly what he had predicted it would be.

Why, fate couldn't leave him alone for too long now, could it?

It had to be Eshni again, to wreak havoc in his life. And Miya had to be involved.

Sighing, the Chairman roughly tousled his hair.

Just minutes before, he had been in his own library, watching Miya's boy sleep. It had already brought back a thousand memories to him. And then, the reports had arrived. It was as if something was planning against him, ready to catch him in his most vulnerable state. When he was on an emotional high, unable to even think straight.

Simon cursed.

When Miya had held his hand and saved him from falling off the tree, that was what had first roused his curiosity about the girl. He had liked the look in her eyes – they had spoken of a warrior's heart. He had initially planned to look into her background because he knew Jimmy had married a pauper. But that event had made him hopeful.

He had then simply tapped into the information that Park and his wife had gathered on Miya. Of course, he never relied on work done by someone else. So, he had handed over the investigation to a team of his own as well.

That, and the simple reason that Simon trusted his own judgment more than written words. Information could be forged, facts altered and screwed.

He had been involved with the dark side of the world more times than he could count. And he knew a killer when he looked at one.

The girl wasn't one of them.

The minute he had read Charlie's report, that said Miya had burnt that a.s.sh*le Tao, his interest had been piqued. He could have bet on it right then, that there was more to the story. Two hours later, he had been proven correct.

And another profound realization had dawned on him when he had concentrated on the name of the village to which she belonged.

Lang.

Memory hadn't struck Simon at once, but he had been quick to realize their connection anyhow. This was the same girl he had met twenty two years ago, when he had stopped by Lang trying to look for Eshni.

She was the one who had taught him how to climb a f***ing tree. And he had bestowed to her one of his best skills. There was no mistake about it.

The realization had left him astounded in that moment, especially when he had recalled that the girl had told him her name too, back then.

She had said it was 'Miya'.

Simon had been so guilty, he had immediately wanted to make amends. He owed a lot to his chance meeting with the girl all those years ago, after all. And while his team gathered and reported bits and pieces of information on her to him, he had stumbled upon her love for the possum Mochi.

He had done what he had thought was plausible then.

He had had no idea though, of how deep Miya's connection to his family actually was. And she was a factor unknown to them all – even herself.

Simon's mind immediately fell back to Eshni.

The June of 1996, when Eshni had announced with death in her eyes that she was pregnant.

"It's a girl," she had said.

Simon Hunter himself had frozen.

For as long as he could remember, he and Eshni had never been stable in their relations.h.i.+p. Relations.h.i.+p… he wasn't even sure that was what they had had. A mutual longing, a terrible love and the inability to coexist, at best. They could only ever have destroyed each other when they remained together.

They did that anyway, in their own time.

She left, time and again. And he didn't stay for her. But he never could let go too. He had chased her from the shadows for long, and more than once he had lost track.

But those words, all those years ago sometimes still rung in his brain.

Simon had been afraid to father a girl. He had been happy when it was a boy – Jimmy – because he could train a son. Be as ruthless, as demanding as his own father was. But when Eshni was pregnant with a girl, he had felt strangely afraid. His own relations.h.i.+p with Jim had been dysfunctional, and he knew in his gut that Eshni wouldn't stay, even after their second child.

He had been afraid because it hadn't felt right, for someone like him to be responsible for a female child. He wasn't even sure he was right in his bias – but he knew he would again screw up. Why, he hadn't even been able to handle the only girl he had liked. Jimmy was a mess, and Eshni had been standing before him. She was telling him news that should have made them both joyful.

And yet, they had both frozen on spot, not uttering a single word. They couldn't even look at each other without feeling cold.

Soon after that, Eshni had left.

He had chased her again, this time because he was worried sick. That woman never cared for herself when she ran off to the wild. And then, while still on his search, he had met Miya.

Simon sighed deeply.

His head had begun to hurt, and for just a second, his body felt weak. The wind was too cold against his skin, and he felt his years go by too fast, too soon. He was already an old man now, and yet he still had a lot to do. Not a moment of rest for him.

Not when Jimmy Hunter himself was thirty one, and ready to go down the same path as his father. To make the same f***ing mistake. Love the same d.a.m.ned sort of woman.

Jim had dropped his investigation on Miya. Else, he would have noted the pattern.

Simon breathed deeply.

He could never even have imagined how screwed up things would get with just one condition of his – to get his son married. He had done it so that history wouldn't repeat itself – that Jimmy could be settled safely.

That had been part of his intention anyway.

To secure the Hunter Corporation, finally with Jim's marriage and an heir.

Because to this date, his company was under threat.

Eshni…

Despite their heated, rocking relations.h.i.+p, she had never agreed to settle with Simon. They had never stood before a G.o.d and said the holy words… their vows. They could have gone their separate ways, but for him, there simply couldn't have been anyone else.

n.o.body knew. And he lived with the burden alone.

Jimmy and Zaila –

Both his children were b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.