After that, it would be her death by a thousand cuts!
To him, leaving him with nothing but a divorce agreement and running away was a betrayal!
Even if there was no sentiment involved, they were still married! How could she run away without a word?
Furious was far from enough to describe his emotion just then.
However, two more weeks passed, and Stan still did not manage to get anything.
They had been searching everything they could about Abigail, but could not find any record of her having liaisons with a man.
“Nothing?”
Diarmuid asked as he stood in front of a window wall at his mansion.
His towering figure seemed to project coldness as he turned around.
“Nothing,” Stan admitted. “Be it med school or work, she never had a boyfriend.”
Diarmuid raised a brow, and simply presumed that Stan had slipped up. He had personally seen the morning after pills in that woman‘s bag. Why would she need that if she was not doing it with a man?
And she had ended up pregnant anyway!
What was it if she did not have a lover? Parthenogenesis?!
He suddenly chuckled coolly. “She‘s quite well–prepared, isn‘t she?”
Stan blinked, but soon understood what Diarmuid was getting at. “Are you suggesting that she had planned ahead and sabotaged any potential efforts to investigate her? Just like how she planned her escape?”
“Drag her back even if she‘s made it to another planet!” Diarmuid growled.
“Yes, sir.” Stan nodded––this was perhaps the most difficult task he had been assigned since he started working with Diarmuid.
Abigail was painting when she suddenly sneezed.
Rubbing her nose, she wondered if someone was talking about her–one of her strokes went sideways because of the sneeze too.
The portrait was almost done, but the failed stroke basically ruined the atmosphere of the entire painting, leaving her frowning and losing the mood to keep painting.
As she stepped out of the studio for a breath of fresh air, Sheryl arrived and draped a cardigan over her shoulders, asking, “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing.” Abigail shook her head.
“Get some rest if you’re tired,” Sheryl suggested.
Now, she was working as a cleaner for Abigail’s studio, making caring for her daughter easier.
After working in the night, they would both head home together by night.
It was a quiet life, but Abigail’s belly was swelling and becoming even more obvious.
Sheryl did the math in her head. “I guess the baby would be arriving on a cold day.”
It would be slightly past March, and the climate would hardly be warm.
Abigail looked down on her own belly with a tender gaze. “A cold day is fine too.”
She reveled in this quiet, uninteresting life… but she underestimated Diarmuid’s determination to find her.
Before she could even leave bed the next day, Sheryl arrived in her room with a panic showing on her face.
“What should we do about this, Abigail?”
Abigail was still feeling groggy and sat up in bed. “What’s wrong, Mom? What is it?”
“Look at this!” Sheryl exclaimed, passing her the newspaper she was holding.
Abigail frowned. “Who reads newspapers in this day and age?”
“Okay, phone it is!” Sheryl said, but fumbled and dropped her phone on the floor.
The sound seemed to clear Abigail’s head right then. She could tell that something serious, or her mother would not be panicking so much.
Picking up her phone, she tapped on her most frequently used news app to find a bounty notice with her photo posted on it.
It was not just on that app either–every popular app had such notices too!
“What should we do? You know how greedy people can be, and Diarmuid just posted a bounty of fifteen million dollars for any information anyone has on you! We can’t stay here any longer, can we?”
Abigail never expected Diarmuid to be crazy enough to post such an enormous bounty just to find her!
Yes, she had managed to escape him without leaving any trace that he could use to track her down, but he simply decided to appeal to human greed!
With networking being as advanced as it was, it would not be difficult to drag anyone out into the open with money and publicity!
“What should we do now? Should we leave?” Sheryl asked anxiously.
Even as she forced herself to stay cool, Abigail looked up at her, and said, “Calm down, Mom.”
“Why is he looking for you? Didn‘t you part ways with him amicably?” Sheryl asked in confusion then.
Rubbing her cheeks, Abigail admitted, “Actually, I ran away.” Sheryl was left speechless.
Still, she understood her daughter enough and soon realized that Abigail just wanted to get away from the marriage that was never hers.
After taking a moment to calm down, Sheryl said, “No, the world is big. There will always be refuge for us.”
Abigail, however, was not that optimistic–judging from present circumstances, she must have incensed Diarmuid, or he would not be going all out in his attempt to locate her.
In fact she could already imagine how things would turn out once she was captured.
She could not afford that–not when she was pregnant!
Getting out of bed, she said, “I‘m going out for a while.”
“Do be careful,” Sheryl reminded her.
Putting on some casual attire along with a baseball cap and a face mask, she headed to Lulu‘s precinct, but it turns out that she had left with a squad, and there was no telling when she would be back.
She then left the precinct and arrived at her studio, where a crowd was standing outside the door. Since many of her students and fellow instructors had seen her face, it was clear that they were all there for the bounty.
It seems that she really could not stay there now.
As she took a step back and was ready to leave, she inadvertently knocked into somebody.
She quickly apologized without looking up, but as she turned to leave, the person caught her wrist and asked, “What‘s with that getup? Afraid that Diarmuid Althoff would find you?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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