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LAURA
'Some kind of a family reconciliation going on here?'
From the entrance of the drawing room which overlooked the garden outside, a serious youthful boy entered with a monotonous expression. He was dressed in his comfortable clothes, not ready for visitors. His remained stuck on the young woman and the little girl close to her, seemingly clinging to the arm of this woman. Her daughter.
'Tony,' Maria breathed when he entered the room. 'This is Catherine Sharipov and her daughter, Laureline. Our good friend from college.'
'Hi,' he waved at the woman and fisted his hands again, not bothering to her reaction. He shot a look at his parents. 'What's going on?'
'She's here because she needs help,' Maria explained, his father remaining reticent and having a keen eye on the girl who hid her face behind her mother. 'A lot of help.'
A beat passed.
'Knocked up and forgotten? Or here for the cash?' Tony asked dryly, leaning onto a pillar with crossed arms. He wasn't too poignant about an estranged blonde and Russian-looking woman at their front door who his parents were receiving with open arms. Hell, he'd never heard of this woman ever.
'Tony!' His father hissed at him sternly and Catherine reached across the table to silence him with a gracious smile. 'Howard, it's okay.'
She met Tony's keen gaze with the same expression, a little teasing. 'What are the odds, am I right?' She joked. 'One day, you're at your home having pre-Christmas dinner and the next you're running for the hills from your devil-in-disguise father.'
The young boy couldn't help but sympathize. So this woman had to raise a child on her own in a house with misleading parents. Of course, he wasn't emotionally able to show off his sentiments, so he shrouded it with an apologetic look.
'Tony, why don't you take Laureline to the kitchen and grab her a bite while we work this out?'
The little girl was hesitant to leave her mother's side but with a quick whisper into her ears, she joined the young billionaire's side as he led her to the vast kitchen. Tony was reluctant to hang out with a kid, the weirdest part of this stupid day. Surprisingly enough, the girl wasn't the least bit intimidated to enter a kitchen that was ten times the size of her as she looked up to the large marble shelves, impressed. She wore a cotton dress which was a bit too big for her, her hair pulled into a messy braid and a tooth gap.
'So, kid,' he started. 'How old are you?'
She showed five painted fingers and one bent finger on the other. 'Five and a half.'
