Lyra

It was late when I set my feet on the house, late than my usual time to arrive here. Tiptoe moved near the stairs towards my room on the second floor of the house.

The light of the living room was still shining brightly. My siblings Viola, Owen, and dada were having some conversations. I couldn’t hear everything correctly, dada and Owen were soft-spoken people, but Viola was sore in nature. It’s child’s play for her to turn into livid in seconds, and, genuinely, I was scared of her most. The boss bitch businesswoman inside her was always ready to attack the surrounding people with facts.

The estrangement that we two shared was seldom confidential. Everyone in this house was well-aware of the abhor that she carried for me. From a young age, I saw the loath in her eyes. The way she did not once forget to remind me of her genuine feeling towards me was a just pleasure for her, and torture for me.

Viola often lived in New York as she worked in the Manhattan McCoy office. I seldom saw her. Maybe a week or a month in a year, and that was acceptable. Even listening or taking her jest was okay. I was fine with everything that she offered me from childhood; I took every sour comment that broke my tender heart into pieces.

Every time she threw away my dolls, tore my color books, or broke my crayons, she even destroyed my princess dresses multiple times. It wounded me so painfully that little Lyra felt so much pain inside that she used to sleep every night with tears. Every time Viola bullied me, I lost something from myself.

First, I tried to protect my belongings from her. I would fight, but a fifteen-year-old Viola was taller and stronger than a ten-year-old Lyra. The more I battled, the more she became aggressive, wrathful, but the most painful thing was there was no one who would stop her. Sometimes I thought I was invisible to everyone, they didn’t feel the trouble of hassle went through for me.

Maybe I wasn’t good enough for anyone’s affection.

So, I stopped fighting.

When Viola failed to get a reaction from me, she stopped, and that night I slept with a smile, but the next morning was a nightmare. The death of our mother changed everything in the McCoy household, so did the person who used to live in these four walls.

My only savior and companion was my brother, Owen. He protected me, every time I needed him, he was there extending his hands towards me. The only one who loved me and adored me.

I was about to elope in my room, but the name that fell from Viola’s roar halted me at the halfway point. Nathan Hall. I was sure of hearing this name.

Why would Viola or anyone of my family discuss Halls?

The hate and everything were here, and that’s highly graphic in this house, mostly among my older brother Brian and Viola. These two vowed to abolish everything the hall owned and wrecked every single one who was related to the Richard Hall. This was too much for me and Owen. We typically stayed away from the mess.

We didn’t see any advantage or point to this hate. Whatever happened between dada and Richard Hall, I didn’t know why we needed to carry that with us when clearly dada moved on in his life a decade ago.

I slowly got near the living room where everyone was busy having a serious conversation and tried to hear what they were saying. Thankfully, Viola’s loudness gave away everything to me.

“That man is on the rage to demolish us, dada. We need to take charge to protect ourselves, otherwise, we will be on the road in no time.” Viola screeched. The frustration was supremely clear in her voice.

“What do you want to do now? Is there something you want to do rather than kill the man?” Owen questioned gently.

“Let’s make it an accident,” Viola answered.

The shock wave washed over my torso. I couldn’t believe what was coming out of her mouth. Killing a person, Nathan. She was all prepared, otherwise, she would have never recommended such things in the first place.

“You are out of your mind,” Owen shouted this time. “What the hell is wrong with your sanities?”

“We are losing clients, Owen. Our share has hit the lowest on the market for three weeks in a row now. There are false reports about us in the media. The fire in the office, losing documents of our confidential projects, all the computers of our drama got hacked, and, furthermore, he threatened Brian to crush us on the dirt. The board of directors is on our necks, and any time soon they can announce to change the CEO, then the power would be out of our hands. If they replaced Brian, we would be nothing, brother. Just a puppet in our own company.”

“That doesn’t mean we kill someone. Even if that happened, the problems would be here. The damages are done. No point talking about this kind of rubbish stuff now, Viola. We need to concentrate on the business more. That’s the only way we can survive from the director’s wrath. Killing Nathan is not a solution, it is an additional hazard.” Owen explained.

The quietness of the room awakened the horror inside me, goosebumps made me cold.

I have never known about all this. I saw the news and heard some from Owen, but I never knew it was all Nathan’s work or that he was the one behind all this. Why on the earth would he do such things to my family and help me in the first place?

It wasn’t as if today was the first time we met; we met at least three times as I remember, but the math in his account was different. He saved me all three times. Oddly, I never got the chance to thank him. Every time he came as white smoke, he helped me and disappeared into the darkness without giving me enough time to talk or do something.

If he was after my family, then it was clear that I was on his target list, too. I was just a pawn in his game, no surprise. Why would anyone in his right mind declare the marriage in front of the world? To ruin them, an easy way to maltreated the foes, straightforwardly cross the threshold of the family, and then took everything down.

A very well-played game, Mr. Nathan Hall.

“Stop. Both of you. We are not doing anything illegal, Viola. Stop acting like a member of a mafia. The way you are shouting and what is coming out of your mouth are the opposite of what you are. Don’t be so much in rage that you can’t get up from that, you can’t come out of that mud.” After an infinitesimal pause, dada spoke again. “Go to bed. It’s late.”

I ran to my room and locked the door, threw my bag on the couch that is near the window and corner of my room, and sat on the edge of my king-size bed with my legs curled under my mid-length pale pink tulle skirt with the lights on.

“Why was he doing something like this?” I whispered as my eyes found the full moon in the gloomy night sky. “Is he using me, too? Am I that easy?”

“Yes, you are.” My brain smiled.

I was too tired today, working in the restaurant for eleven hours and then the great humiliation that I went through in front of the whole of Chicago, lying to the world and Nathan’s family and now knowing the truth about my fake-fiancee took an adverse effect on my body and mind.

I lie down on my back on the bed like a paper doll with no control over the body. I kept looking at the ceiling and thinking about everything I heard or did today. Each one of them was surreal.

First and foremost, why did I go to the nightclub? I didn’t like Jacob, whom I met a week ago when he came to our restaurants with some of his friends, and at the end of the night, he invited me for a drink. When I saw him outside my workplace with a wide smile, I felt uncomfortable. The moment he told me, he saw me in the kitchen and felt something; it was awkward, and I wanted to run away from him. And when he invited me, I refused politely and left the place.

That was the right thing to do. I did that until Penelope got this information.

She found the entire thing amusing and, over the top of excitement, bought out a silly dare that I had to go to the club and had to spend at least three hours there.

And like a fool, I followed the game and ended up being humiliated. Whatever happened today was whacky if I looked into this more closely. No one would believe such stuff could take place in the real world, perhaps in the fairytale where everything is possible, where a poor girl got her happy ending after endangers but not in this world.

It would be great to have some kind of magic in life, a little touch of fate, a bit of love would make a perfect life.

I shut my eyes to stop daydreaming; I was a hopeless romantic, and it was hard not to think all this when I was alone with an empty head.

“This is the sixth time we met.” Nathan’s voice undid my eyes.

“How is that possible?” I sighed.

This new piece of information was messing with my head, and I didn’t know why I was thinking so much about this. Perhaps we met, and I didn’t remember it was unnecessary to have every detail of the people I came across.

“Mayhap I saw him but didn’t have a good recollection about that,” I whispered into the darkness.

I shook my head and put my face on the pillow to cast off this unsettling feeling. What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I thinking about the man who is on the verge of destroying my family?

I closed my eyes and tried to shut the brain that was running thousands of miles for answers. I needed to talk to Nathan.

Tomorrow, in the morning, the first thing I was scheduled to do was talking to the man in the hot seat and break all the things that happened between us tonight.

With this determination, I fell into the deception of sleep only if I knew tomorrow was written to be worse than this long night.