A Caged Songbird's Escape: Into the Arms of a Predator novel Chapter 280

Not only Elissa, but Lorraine was also taken aback.

Was the old matriarch seriously suggesting that she go and convince Rowan to agree to this marriage?

Elissa feigned confusion. “Marriage is a big deal, Grandma. That’s your concern, not mine. I’m younger than him—it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to bring it up.”

Knowing Rowan’s temperament, if he didn’t want to marry someone, no one could force his hand.

Besides, Elissa was well aware that the old matriarch had only come to her because she’d run out of options. That meant Rowan must have refused, and refused thoroughly.

She had no intention of walking straight into that hornet’s nest.

Matriarch Paige Murphy narrowed her clouded eyes, irritation plainly written across her face. She let out a cold laugh. “So now you’ve got someone backing you, you think you’re all grown up? After everything I’ve done for you all these years…”

“Grandma—”

Elissa didn’t want to make a scene and complicate things for herself, so she softened her tone, pretending to be earnest yet helpless. “It’s true that Rowan and I get along a little better than we used to, but you know what he’s like. When he left me behind all those years ago, he didn’t show a shred of mercy. There’s no way he’d go back to doting on me like before.”

“To him, I’m just a passing amusement—here one day, gone the next. I don’t even take his kindness seriously. Should you?”

Just as Elissa finished, Rowan strode into Murphy Manor and was about to enter the dining room when he caught her words—delivered with such sincerity it stopped him in his tracks.

His expression darkened almost instantly.

Meanwhile, Elissa heard a noise outside the door. She glanced over her shoulder, only to see one of the old woman’s stray cats darting past.

Her words, however, seemed to have struck a chord with Matriarch Paige Murphy, though the woman wasn’t about to back down now that she’d called Elissa here. “Regardless, just try. Bring it up with him when you get the chance.”

Desperate times called for desperate measures, after all.

Who knew? Maybe that hardheaded boy would listen to this girl for once.

Elissa lowered her lashes and nodded meekly. “All right. I’ll find a chance to mention it.”

With her goal achieved, Matriarch Murphy, for once, let her off the hook.

Lorraine hadn’t expected Elissa—so obedient in front of the matriarch—to be so blunt in private.

She stared at Elissa for a long moment, then suddenly smiled. “You really are… a lot like him.”

So alike.

Both of them, at their core, simply didn’t care much about anything.

The difference was, one had the privilege to live that way, while the other, forced to rely on others, could only pay lip service and play along.

Elissa didn’t quite know how to respond. She pressed her lips together. “It’s getting late. I should be going.”

Tanya Foster was coming back, and she needed to get up early to pick her up at the airport.

She had just turned to leave when Lorraine, sounding as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, spoke up behind her. “Elissa, I know very well that he’ll never marry me.”

“He’s in love with someone else, and I’m not that person.”