Pride and Promises ✔

Chapter 27

I moaned again as I took another sip from my cup. I could tell Adrian was getting irritated since I'd been doing the same thing for the last ten minutes. Whenever he tried to make me talk, I'd silence him, calling him a sadistic anti-chocolate man for not letting me enjoy my drink.

That brought us to our present, with me intentionally moaning loud at the taste of this insanely delicious hot chocolate while the devil sat beside me with narrowed eyes. His cup was still untouched and I was itching to steal it for myself. Would that really be stealing, though? I mean, the man clearly had no interest in drinking that.

I was enjoying this so much that I didn't realise my cup was empty until Adrian rudely pointed it out with his smirk. I gave him my infamous glare that said shut up and sit like a stuffed toy if you want to live. But the devil just smirked wider. Maybe he only played with deranged stuffed toys with only one side of the mouth turned up when he was a kid. That seemed like a plausible reason for his frequent smirks.

"You've wasted 17 minutes of my time, White. Talk. Now." He stated, tapping his expensive watch and I glared at him. Rude much?

I smirked and tsked at him. "I thought you'd last for twenty, at least. Tsk tsk. Remind me to never make a bet on you." I shook my head dramatically and sighed as I was awarded by his single eyebrow raise. Oh, how I hated his independent eyebrows!

I took a deep breath when I saw that there was no point delaying it any further. "My health is perfectly fine. At least I think it is fine now after..." I started but left off that sentence hanging. I didn't want to go through that memory lane again.

I shook my head again and continued. "I have a sister, Evangeline. Eva in short. She's almost nine years younger than me. My only sibling and the girl takes full advantage of that." I smiled fondly and chanced a glance at Adrian to gauge his reaction. No one in the business world knew about my family and I'd kept it that way. But I didn't see any surprise in his eyes.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You don't seem surprised, Stone. Did you know that I have a sister?" He looked startled for a moment but then shrugged. "I mean, it's a common thing. People have sisters. I have a sister. You have a sister. Why would I be surprised?"

I rolled my eyes at his explanation and continued. "Anyways, it's my sister who needs Dr. Marshall's treatment. She had an... accident that resulted in spinal cord injury. Her nerves are compressed which made her unable to move her legs. Dr. Marshall is performing a surgery to decompress the nerves and see if she'll be able to walk again."

I had every single detail of my sister's case engraved in my mind that one would think I was a licensed doctor with the amount of knowledge I had about the condition. I had read every book, surfed through every medical site and consulted every doctor out there about it. Dr. Marshall had come in like a ray of hope in my life and I was going to do everything to keep that hope alive. I was not going to think about the possibilities of failure.

I looked at Adrian to find a faraway look on his face. His eyes flickered with what looked like recognition for a fleeting moment before it was gone. "Eva..." He whispered the name to himself and ran his hand through his hair. "So that's why you chose the name for your company."

I nodded wordlessly. Eva was everything to me, the one person who didn't leave me. I didn't even need to think twice about the name of my company. It was for her, after all.

It was silent for a while and I began to get restless. I searched for something to say to end this depressive mood but then my eyes fell on Adrian's untouched cup. Seeing as he was still deep in thoughts, I slowly stretched my hand and took hold of it. He blinked at the sudden movement but it was too late. By the time he realised what was going on, I had already downed half of his cup.