Stjålet
Norwegian for Stolen.
Adrienne walked beside Jin Starck into the lavish mansion he called his home. Yuan and Jill trailed behind them.
“You still live with your parents?” Adrienne asked.
“In this house, yes,” he replied. “But I have apartments of my own. This is a ten-bedroom house. It gets a little lonely for Mom sometimes so I make it a point to spend time here to keep her company. She doesn’t work for our hotels. She spends a lot of time in her study. Writing.”
Jin was greeted by their butler in French. He gave instructions to take Yuan and Jill to one of the waiting rooms and serve them refreshments.
Then he turned to Adrienne. “Follow me.”
They ascended the stairs to the second level of the house. Adrienne couldn’t help admiring how elegant and luxurious the house appeared. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that somebody related to her could live in a house like this.
They stopped in front of the room, situated in the corner. Jin took a deep breath and stared at her.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“I don’t think I will ever be,” she replied truthfully.
Her brother reached down and squeezed her hand. “She is wonderful, Adrienne. You have no idea.”
Adrienne nodded. “Let’s go.”
Jin gave her one last smile and then he opened the door.
The room they entered in was huge. She saw the four walls covered in shelves, all full of books. The room almost looked like a library. At the far end of the room was a huge oak desk with a white Macintosh computer and stacks of paper.
Jin pulled her towards the desk, where a woman sat, staring intently at the computer screen.
She said something in French to Jin, without looking up from her screen.
“English, Mom,” Jin requested. “We have a guest from America.”
The woman looked up from her screen. “Oh. I’m sorry. I expected you twenty-four hours ago. You didn’t show up and left no word. And now, you’re disturbing my battle scene.”
Adrienne walked slower than Jin and hid behind his back.
“I doubt this can wait, Mom,” Jin maintained, as he stopped in front of their mother’s desk.
Finally, the woman peeled her eyes away from the computer screen to look up at his son. She immediately noticed Adrienne behind Jin’s back, uncertain of what she would do or say.
No one will ever be ready to meet their real mother ten hours after learning about her. Adrienne’s heart pounded loudly against her chest.
“Jin Adrien Starck!” the woman exclaimed. “Are you telling me that I’m going to be a grandmother soon?”
Adrienne blinked back for a second. Then she heard Jin laugh.
“I’m only twenty-three, Mom. And I’m not the first one in line to give you grandkids. I’m not your first-born, remember?”
Adrienne immediately saw the sadness that crossed the woman’s face. “Well…” she sighed sadly. “Maybe you should then introduce me to your lady guest. I thought I taught you better manners.”
Jin pulled Adrienne and made her step forward. She stood face to face now with the woman…who’s been searching for her all her life. The woman whose words she lost herself to during those hours when she read her novels. The woman she didn’t even know was her birth mother.
Ariana looked at Adrienne curiously. Her eyes narrowed, as if she was trying to figure out what was so familiar about her.
As Adrienne stared at the woman in front of her, she could see how Jin thought she looked familiar that first night they met. Her hair was the exact color as hers, even with the red highlights in them. Her eyes…exactly the same green of hers. She was older and looked more confident than herself. But Adrienne could see herself in this woman…the way she never saw herself in the mother she’d known all her life.
“Mom…” Jin said softly. “I’d like you to meet… Adrienne.” Jin paused for a second. “Actually, we’ve been calling her Andrea for years.”
Andrea?
In a second, her mother’s eyes widened. Recognition and realization finally crossed her face, as if she finally found the final piece of the puzzle she’s been trying to solve for decades.
“Adrienne…” she whispered. Then she stared at her son, “Our Andrea?”
Hearing her say those words brought tears to Adrienne’s eyes. She heard the love in her voice…just by saying the name of her child. And she realized she’s been waiting all her life to hear the mother she’s known say her name the way this woman did just then.
“I have three DNA results that says she is,” Jin disclosed.
Adrienne heard her mother gasp and put her hands on her mouth. Tears spilled from her eyes. Immediately, she moved from her desk and in a few seconds, Adrienne felt her arms around her. She was almost hysterical, hyperventilating as she hugged her.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Ariana cried. “My baby! My baby!”
Adrienne couldn’t help crying, too. She put her own arms around the mother she never knew existed until a few hours beforehand.
Ariana pulled away and stared at her. She cupped her face in her hands and whispered, “I thought I had lost you forever. I thought I would never see you again.”
Adrienne bit her lip. She couldn’t stop crying. She held her mother’s hands in hers.
“Where were you all these years? Was your father good to you? Did you have a good life? Where did you grow up? Did he give you everything you needed? Did he take good care of you?”
Adrienne didn’t know which question to answer first. And even if she did, she couldn’t find her voice. She just kept crying, finally feeling for the first time in her life the motherly affection she craved all her life.
“She lived in Boston. Your ex changed his name, his identity and hers so we wouldn’t find them. He changed her name from Andrea Blanc to Adrienne Miller,” Jin answered for her. “If by good life, you meant did she have a roof over her head or food to eat, or was she taken care of whenever she got sick, or was she sent to the university to finish a degree, then yes. She did. She was.” Jin paused for a moment and then he added, “But if you mean did she have a mother who loved her and took care of her the way you would have? No. She didn’t.”
Ariana bit her lip and looked at Adrienne apologetically. She hugged Adrienne again, as if she was trying to erase all the pain that her separation from her birth mother had caused her.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Ariana whispered to her. “I am so sorry. None of this was your fault. None of this would have happened if I made the right choices from the beginning. I shouldn’t have trusted your father. I am so sorry, my baby.”
Adrienne cried like a little girl. She felt the comfort, security and love that her mother’s embrace provided her. Now, more than ever, she wished she’d have felt her embraces whenever she got wounded or hurt all those years when she was growing up.
“I-it’s not your fault,” she whispered. She pulled away from her mother and looked into her eyes. “We cannot recover those years that were stolen from us. But I’m so glad I was still given a chance to meet you now.”
Her mother nodded and kissed her forehead. “Yes, my baby. I never thought I would have the chance to see you again. But thank God your brother found you. A couple of weeks ago, he said he had a lead on you. I didn’t really think that it would be so soon. I thought this day wouldn’t come at all. I have loved you all my life. And until now, I thought I would never get a chance to say that to you at all.”
Her mother pulled away from her, took her hand and led her to the couches. They sat beside each other. Then she turned to Jin. “Have somebody bring something to eat and drink here. Adrienne and I have a lot to talk about. Then have dinner prepared. We’re all dining together.”
Jin nodded. Adrienne looked at him and smiled in spite of the tears rolling down her cheeks. She gave her brother a smile.
Jin turned to his mother and spoke to her in French. Her mother nodded. Then Jin smiled at his sister one last time and turned to leave the room.
Ariana turned back to Adrienne and once again touched her cheek, tears brimming her eyes. “I thought I would never see you again.”
Adrienne let out a small whimper. Then she said, “I… never knew you existed until after Jin came to find me in Boston.”
“He erased me from your life,” her mother said soberly.
Adrienne took a deep breath and told her mother everything that her father did and how she grew up all these years.
They must have talked for hours. Her mother couldn’t stop crying and cursing at the same time. Adrienne understood how she felt. She felt exactly the same. They were both just victims of her father’s lies and treachery. She didn’t tell her much about how the mother she’s known all her life had treated her. She figured that could be saved for later. Right now, her father’s obvious deception seemed already too much to bear.
“When you were a baby, I wanted to name you Adrienne,” her mother divulged. “Your father knew I has half-French. I didn’t tell him though…that I had a family obligation I wanted to escape. My father…bless his soul…was a tyrant. What he said…must be done. He arranged for me to marry Pierre. I didn’t want to. Then I met your father and fell in love with him. He thought Adrienne was too French, and named you Andrea instead.” Her mother looked at her, “Then he changed your name to Adrienne? I would never have thought he would use that name. He was so much against it when you were born.”
“Were you ever married to my father?”
My mother shook her head. “No. We lived together. We didn’t have enough money. I was writing but it wasn’t enough. Your father had just started his career and we struggled.”
“Why did you separate?”
My mother took a deep breath. “Because your father was too proud,” she stated. “I decided to be honest with him. He found out that I was an heiress. He was nothing. He couldn’t accept that. It made him feel small. It got into his head. Plus, money remained difficult. He was hot-headed.” Her mother sighed. “Then I found out that my father had become very ill, and I couldn’t take the guilt. In the middle of it all, we just…decided to go our separate ways. It wasn’t an ugly fight. We just both decided to give up.
“I went back to France. Upon my return, my father set everything into motion. He wanted me to marry Pierre as soon as possible. I was still heartbroken about leaving you. I know it was a mistake. And it’s not a valid reason, but I wanted to fix everything here first. My father was dying…all my life, he’d provided for me. The only thing he asked in return was for me to marry Pierre so our company would become part of Starck Corporation.
“Then I finally met Pierre. He was the exact opposite of what I thought he was. He was very level-headed. I was heartbroken with your father and torn apart about losing you. I didn’t know how to tell my father about you. And surprisingly, I found myself confiding in Pierre. And when I thought he would surely reject me for my past, he still accepted me and promised to help me bring you back from the States. He was the one who told my father about you. He told my father that he didn’t care. He would still have me and would raise you as his own.”
She looked at Adrienne wearily. “My…father wasn’t pleased to know I already lived with somebody in the States…he thought at first that he had delivered… ‘damaged goods’ to Pierre and he felt embarrassed. But Pierre said he didn’t care. We became the best of friends. Soon, I fell in love with that wonderful man. He did for me what your father didn’t. He became my friend. He fought for me. He stood up for me. He was my only ally during those times.
“When Pierre told my father I had a daughter, he wanted to meet you.” Her mother sighed and looked at Adrienne for a minute. Then she smiled bitterly. “In his last days, he accepted you…and wanted you to be returned to our family. But… your father had disappeared. You both vanished.” Tears rolled down her mother’s cheeks. “I would never forgive your father for stealing you. You have a destiny here in France. He took that away from you. He prevented you from claiming what is rightfully yours. I put down Andrea Blanc in your birth papers. You didn’t even carry his name. He changed your identity…to keep you away from me.” With a grave look on her face, she said, “He will pay for this!”
Tears rolled down Adrienne’s cheeks. She felt her mother’s pain, and her anger towards her father. Anybody would feel that way. Even she. She felt like her father stole the most important thing a person could have—an identity.
“He must have been so angry at me. When I returned to the States, Pierre came with me. I felt he was jealous of Pierre. He also knew he couldn’t do anything about it. He knew Pierre was my fiancé by an arranged marriage.” Her mother sighed.
“But…maybe during that time we met him to give him money so he would have means to take care of you for a couple of months while I fix my life and my rift with my Dad…he saw that Pierre had become more than a forced fiancé. During that time, we were really together. Not because my father wanted me to. But because I was falling for him. I think I hurt your father. And his way of hurting me back…was to take away the most important thing in my life—you.”
Her mother looked at her apologetically. “Oh, sweetheart. I am so sorry. I am sorry you suffered for this. This was my fault. And your father’s revenge. What your father did has no valid reason, no excuse. But you shouldn’t have been the one to pay. I am so sorry, child.” Her mother reached out and gave her a tight hug. They both cried in each other’s arms.
Then her mother pulled away from her. “It’s okay, baby. You’re home now. And I promise to make it all up to you. Your father is going to pay for the difficult life he put you through.”
Adrienne shook her head. “Mom…he’s still my father.”
“No father could stomach depriving his child of the life she deserved. Just because of what? Jealousy? Revenge? Anger? None of those are reasons enough for him to take you away from me.”
Adrienne knew it wasn’t time to argue about this. Right now, she couldn’t defend her Dad. She was also mad at him for doing what he did. Especially for…letting her stepmother and stepsister crush her and break her spirit.
Jin came back to the room and announced that dinner would begin shortly.
“Where is your father?” her mother asked Jin.
“He just got in,” Jin replied. “I ensured that Adrienne’s friends come dine with us, too. I figured all this hoopla will be much easier for Adrienne to handle if she had her best friends to keep her company.”
“Of course,” their mother responded. “They are more than welcome. And besides, I would be thankful to anybody who loved my daughter all the time that I wasn’t at her side.”
They went to the first floor of the house and Jin and her mother led her to the huge dining room. There was a long table in the middle of it with twenty seats.
Jill and Yuan already sat there and Adrienne introduced them to her mother. After a few minutes, a handsome man in his fifties entered the room. His hair was darker than Jin’s and his eyes were aquamarine.
“Oh, we have guests,” he said, smiling. His smile was warm and welcoming. Then he turned to her mother and kissed her lovingly on the lips.
“Pierre,” her mother began. “Jin just brought me the most wonderful surprise. I’d like you to meet her.” Ariana pulled her husband towards Adrienne.
Pierre Starck stood in front of her and took a good look at her. He blinked back twice and, immediately, recognition crossed his face. Without having to introduce them, he said, “Andrea.”
Adrienne smiled at him shyly.
“But her name now is Adrienne. All the while, we were looking for Andrea, when that’s not even her name.”
“How?” Pierre asked his wife.
“I will tell you all about it later.” Ariana whispered
Pierre looked at Adrienne again. “My God, you look like your mother.”
“Jin found her,” her mother announced. “Now, she’s finally here, Pierre.”
Pierre Starck smiled at his wife and hugged her. “Oh sweetheart. I’m so happy for you. You’ve waited decades for this.”
“I know.” Tears rolled down Ariana’s cheeks again. “And you have patiently waited with me.”
Pierre Starck leaned forward and kissed his wife once again and then he turned to Adrienne. He gave her a hug and then he said, “Welcome to the family, child.”
Tears welled up in Adrienne’s eyes and she felt happiness surge through her. She saw that Pierre Starck genuinely loved her mother and it was true what Jin said. He’s accepted her existence even before they got married. And had her own father allowed her to live with them, this man would have treated her like a real daughter.
“Th-thank you, sir,” Adrienne said.
“Oh, child. I have been hiring private investigators in the US to search for you for almost all your life. I think, now that I have finally met you, you should call me Papa.”
Adrienne smiled shyly and nodded. “Thank you, Papa.”
After dinner, Adrienne went with Jill and Yuan to the Starck’s huge garden at the back of the estate.
“Wow,” Yuan breathed. “Your family is really lovely.” He couldn’t help the tears in his eyes, too.
Jill was also crying. “Adrienne, we know how much you’ve wished to have a family that shows even just a little bit of affection for you. Now you do. This is some sort of a miracle!”
“I know,” Adrienne admitted happily. “I mean…it’s still too much to absorb at the moment, but I never ever dreamed that some people would love me enough to dedicate decades of their lives trying to find me…because they felt that I belonged with them. It’s just…so surreal considering I grew up feeling out of place with the family I had then. I never felt like they accepted me. And now…I met some people who turned out to be doing everything they could just to make me one of their own.”
“If this happened to me…I don’t think I would be able to forgive my father at all,” Yuan said.
Adrienne felt a sharp pain in her chest again. Tears welled up in her eyes and she stared down on the grass on her feet. She shook her head. “What he did…maybe he thought that was right. He didn’t want to lose me. But what he did was wrong. I felt like he cheated me. He was being selfish. My real mother loved me all these years, while I was growing up thinking that motherly love didn’t exist for me at all. Maybe I would be able to forgive him. But I need time to take all this in. I’m still angry at him. But yes, I think I would forgive him. In time.”
“Your mother is Amanda Seville, Adrienne,” Jill asserted, her voice said that she found that surreal.
“I know, right? Unbelievable.”
“Well, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree at all. That’s where you got your talent. You always wondered how no one in your family ever knew how to write.”
“Now, I don’t feel out of place at all. My mother loves me. And I have a brother who genuinely cares about me, too.”
“And he’s bloody hot!” Jill couldn’t help saying.
Adrienne narrowed her eyes on her friend. “He’s my brother, Jill! How could you even talk like that about him in front of me?”
Jill giggled. “And to think I thought at first that he was interested in you. Well, he was. But not in the way I thought, not romantically. Just like you said.”
“So what are you going to do now?” Yuan asked. “Will you live here in Paris?”
Adrienne sighed. “I don’t know. What I do know is that I want to get to know my family a little bit more.”
“Yes. You deserve that,” Jill said. “Your stepmother and your stepsister hated you. Now, it’s time you stay with the mother and brother…including the stepfather…who felt that your coming home today was a miracle.”
Her mother called them. It had gotten late and they came from a long flight. Jill and Yuan stayed in two of the guest rooms. Adrienne said goodnight to them. She wanted to talk to her mother more, though. She felt like talking to her for hours would still not suffice for getting to know her.
“This is your room, Adrienne,” her mother said, opening the door of the room opposite Jin’s.
When they stepped into the huge room, Adrienne almost gasped. The luxurious queen-sized bed in the center was covered in purple and pink bedspreads, duvet and pillows. The pillows in the center of the bed had the letter A embroidered in them. There was a desk and a shelf full of books. A huge couch and center table stood on a corner opposite the bed. Luxurious violet curtains cover the glass walls and doors that led to a huge balcony. The walls were adorned with beautiful, serene paintings on canvass.
“Wow,” Adrienne breathlessly stated. “This is so beautiful.”
Her mother smiled. “I’m glad you like it. We decorated this room as often as we could. The sheets and curtains get washed and replaced every week.”
“Is this a guest bedroom or does someone actually stay here?”
“This is not a guest room, Adrienne. We have been decorating and keeping this room ready for years...hoping this day would come…that you would finally come home to us.”
Adrienne found herself overwhelmed by emotions once again. She never expected to hear what her mother just said. She remembered her bedroom in Boston, the room where she actually stayed in for years before she went to college. Her bed didn’t have sheets and all her stuff got put in boxes, as if her supposed mother expected her never to return at all. And now, here in this house, her real mother made a room for her, kept it ready for the day when she would finally return to her.
She turned to the paintings on the wall. Some of them were abstract, painted in pastel colors, beautiful and elegantly feminine to match the theme of the room. These included a painting of a rainforest with a lagoon in the center and exquisite wildflowers.
Adrienne thought that the paintings matched the room so well that someone painted them for it…a room meant for the princess in the family.
“Do you like the paintings?” Her mother asked, noticing how she was admiring the canvasses on the wall.
Adrienne nodded. “They’re lovely.”
“Jin painted all of them,” her mother said proudly.
Adrienne stared at her mother. She couldn’t hide the awe on her face.
“It’s his hobby,” her mother revealed. “He’s been painting for this room since he was fifteen, hoping that one day, his big sister would come home, see them… and admire them the way you are doing now.”
Adrienne’s heart swelled. Her brother painted for her, when he hasn’t even met her. Kimberly never even had nice thoughts of her when she lived with her all her life.
As she stared back into the room, she couldn’t help but wonder how it was possible that the Starcks have managed to make her feel like she belonged to them in a space of five hours, and the family she grew up with hadn’t made her feel accepted when she’d lived with them for over twenty years.
An hour later, after she’d taken a shower in the huge elegant en-suite bathroom, she lay down on the luxurious bed that was always meant for her. She turned on her phone. So much has happened, she forgot to turn her phone back on after she took them from the police station.
She had notifications of missed calls from her father and some from Justin.
She sighed. How she wished Justin was with her in this longest day of her life. She missed him. She missed how she confided in him all her pains, her thoughts, her dreams and her ordeals. She wondered what he would say when he found out how her life had turned a sudden three-sixty in the space of sixteen hours.
Her heart pounded inside her chest when she read his message to her: Where will you be in exactly forty days? Let me answer that for you. In Italy. Changing your last name to mine.
She smiled bitterly. All her life she was called Adrienne Miller. But now she found out that it was a fake name. Her legal name on her real birth documents was Andrea Blanc. If her mother had it her way, she would have been Adrienne Blanc. If Pierre could have it his way, she was almost certain he would change her name to Adrienne Starck.
Now that she knew who she really was, she’s confused about which name was right for her to use.
But in her heart, at that moment, she knew what name she would rather use out of all the options she had.
She would rather be Adrienne Adams.