Chapter 54.2

Chapter 54.2

The hotel staff member smiled politely as he wheeled in the cart and set down the tray on the table.

“Oh, but I didn’t order room service…”

“Pardon? One moment please, ma’am. May I use the phone to verify?”

The staff member, looking more flustered than Miran, asked courteously. She nodded. He picked up the phone to check the order.

“The order was placed around five this morning for one Korean breakfast to be delivered at ten AM, and it’s been paid for already.”

“What? But I never—”

Miran stopped mid-denial. Had Andre ordered this for her?

“…Oh. I guess he did. Th-thank you,” she managed, choking back tears.

As Miran bowed her head, about to cry, the staff member gave an awkward smile and wheeled the cart out, almost fleeing from the suite.

Looking down at the meticulously prepared Korean breakfast, Miran buried her face in her hands.

“If you were going to be this sweet, hic, you could have at least woken me up to say goodbye…”

Salty tears dripped down her cheeks as she stared at the steaming bowl of seaweed soup and congee.

—

[Master Andre!]

A husky voice with a thick Brooklyn accent called out Andre’s childhood title just as he exited JFK’s arrival hall. Andre raised his hand slightly upon spotting a familiar face waving a chauffeur’s cap in the center of the crowded barricade.

It was Enzo Rossi, the Lafayette family’s driver. An Italian immigrant, he was among the staff his mother had brought from the Lowell household when she married. The veteran driver, who knew New York’s streets as well as any yellow cab driver, was now sixty-four and planned to retire to Florida next year.

Enzo, stout and energetic, pushed through the crowd and embraced Andre, patting his back. Andre bent slightly to accommodate him.

[Enzo. You haven’t changed. How have you been?]

[Welcome home, Master Andre! I’ve been well, but you don’t know how long we’ve all waited for you to return home.]

Master Andre.

It was a title used for noble sons before they came of age. Though it had been over a decade since he reached adulthood, the Lafayette residence staff still used this familiar form of address. In their subconscious, Andre seemed frozen at eighteen, when he left for military academy.

To them, his father, Marquis Charles de Lafayette, was merely a guest who stayed in New York for no more than a month or two each year before returning to France without attachment. So after his mother’s passing, the staff had essentially been maintaining a house without a master.

On the drive to Manhattan with Enzo at the wheel, Andre closed his eyes briefly. Though tired, sleep wouldn’t come. Instead, what appeared before him was Miran’s sleeping face just before he left the hotel.

A bitter smile crossed his lips.

‘She asked me to wake her before I left.’

Not waking Miran wasn’t for her sake. Andre didn’t trust himself to leave that room while comforting a crying woman. Though she thought she hid it well, he had witnessed several times how her nose would redden as she forced back tears.

‘If I had woken her to say goodbye… she would have cried.’

That’s why he deliberately exhausted her throughout the night. She was healthy and had good stamina. Though she held out quite well against him, as expected, she fell into a deep sleep around dawn.

He wondered how Miran had reacted when she found the note and envelope on the bedside table this morning. The envelope he left behind was meant as some small compensation for the acting career he had disrupted.

Though he wasn’t sure of the exact wages for a bit-part actress, he had carefully calculated what he considered a reasonable amount to compensate for the opportunities she’d lost through this incident. That somewhat eased his guilt. However—

‘I hadn’t planned to leave my address.’

He let out a small sigh.

‘Letters should be harmless enough. She’ll probably stop after sending two or three without getting a response.’

No. On second thought, giving Miran his address was a rational decision. If any changes occurred to her body after his departure, he needed to know.