1 : Anonymous Call

"We have a long list of deals to settle among us sweetheart," an anonymous caller on the other side of the phone speaked with a husky and intimidating voice.

"Excuse me?" Alissa was caught off guard as she wasn't even a single bit prepared for the call she was currently on.

For a brief moment of time there was no response from the other side which made Alissa think undoubtedly that perhaps it was a prank call.

She let out a momentary sigh.

"Hello? Excuse me?" She said looking out for a response from the other side. "Are you there?" She asked once more in a polite voice but she was pissed enough to end the call. Although her actions abruplty stopped when the person on the other side had an outburst of unusual laugh.

"Hahaha," his loud laughter sent shivers down Alissa's spine and provoked her to ask a question, "Are you the one who sent me this letter?" She glanced at the letter that had just arrived and sat on her table.

Everything about that one letter seemed wrong, but she had an instant thought that maybe he was the guy who would've sent it.

The laughter was loud and piercing enough to intimidate her. Though she was well aware of her voice sounding meek and timid when she asked the question, still she couldn't force herself to get the right question for the man across.

But after all she needed the answer to the kind of stupid prank the man was trying to pull on her. A strange man at that.

She was once again greeted with a brisk and rough silence when he just stopped without answering her question but this time she wouldn't dare to cut and end the call for she quickly got up, grabbed and looked for the cutter to open the envelope that was laying there on the table in front of her.

She waited for his answer as she held the phone between her shoulder and ears, and was trying to figure out a way to open the envelope quickly. And then suddenly his calm yet sharp voice said -

"Open it, open if if you haven't opened the envelope yet Alissa Evans, and respond to it when you meet me at the Boraza Inn.. " The man continued to speak with an edgy voice "Make sure you make it there by five o' clock today if you want to keep living on your peaceful life." He warned her and abruptly ended the call.

"Huh? What?" Alissa thought to herself as she was left there like a fool. She was dumbfounded by this stranger she had a call with.

While the confusion took place of the fear on her face, she unfolded the folded letter after removing it from the white coloured envelope. She read through it with a quick glance maybe trying to find some keywords to understand the situation she suddenly found herself in. 

Though there wasn't much written in the letter, the man's edgy voice and dreadful warning echoed inside her ears forcing her to read through the letter carefully.

"What is all this about?" She questioned herself as she kept skimming through the letter and rapidly reading it till the end to desperately find an answer to her question.

"Boraza Inn?" A doubt suddenly creeped in her mind and she once again, with full concentration, decided to read through the letter.

This time word by word and sentence by sentence .

It was nothing but a few sentences written with a hurried handwriting. Hurried enough to mess up up letters in some sentences but still she had no option but to read through the letter thoroughly. 

"You remember that accident eight years ago, don't you?" The first sentence of the letter expanded and unfolded in front of her eyes as she gathered her courage to read. But she was shocked to see someone mentioning that one thing from the past - a secret that she worked so hard to hide, a mistake she was never given a chance to clear her name for.

The event, which now was mentioned so suddenly that it not only caught her offguard, but touched her weakest spot, knowingly or unknowingly.

Her heart clenched with fear but she continued reading the letter. "I know you remember, there is no way you would forget about it. After all, she was your best friend wasn't she?" She shuddered and a tear rolled down her cheek as she could not help but agree that she indeed remembered everything very clearly even after eight years from when the accident happened. Or rather she couldn't forget that accident how much ever she tried to do.

It was like she was cursed to remember every detail about that incident, thus making her unsure - "Are tears rolling down my cheeks because I feel sad for her or am I selfish enough to be scared for my own self." Alissa questioned herself as she took a deep breath.

She looked up at the ceiling for a couple of moments throwing her head back on the couch and sighed. Then went back to reading the letter again.

"There are people who want you to pay for your mistakes, so if you want to keep living your peaceful life, then come and meet me at the Boraza Inn by five o' clock today."

It was sudden for sure, but the letter that was sent to her anonymously, clearly had much more going on behind the scene. So much more that she could never imagine. 

A sense of urgency creeped in as she had to go there at the inn by hook or crook. Like a sudden rush of feelings too over her and washing over the fear inside her heart.

They say that - 'When one door closes, universe opens another door for you.'

 And as for Alissa, she had to believe in this quote now that she sat in the middle of her apartment on the couch with the bottles of beer scattered around the floor.

She glanced around her room and took a deep breath, "Another door you say?" She mumbled to herself as she got up from her place with a sarcastic smile on her face and threw the letter on the table. 

"If there truly is another door that would open up for me, shall I consider this letter as that door?" She mumbled to herself and wiped the tears off her cheeks.

"In these ten days, I have seen the worst days, the lowest point of my life. I lost my job and my father is on the brink of death," She shrug her shoulder as she looked down on the crumpled up letter she threw - "But if all this had the slightest hope to change then I will be stubborn enough to grab it." She gathered all her courage and decided to pay a visit to the person who was so glad as to invite her.

She cleaned the beer bottles which were lying on the floor and chose a decent dress from her wardrobe for the occasion. But as she roamed around the house, suddenly her gaze fell on the mirror on her dressing table. 

"Huh?" She couldn't help but stop in front of it for a moment.

Her heart ached as she looked at her own face in the mirror. Her eyes had sunk deep due to all the crying and her eye bags were more than just evident. Her lips were dry from all the alcohol she had consumed and her hair was a mess.

"This is me?" She was dumbfounded at the image of herself she saw in front of her and found it hilarious. She would rather laugh than cry about the person she had become in the time period of mere ten days, or so she thought and she had an outburst of laugh.

She laughed for sometime.

But then she stopped laughing and took a good look at herself once again.

"I, Alissa Evans, was the lead fashion designers for the Paris Fashion Week and within a single moment my job was snatched away from me." She looked in her own eyes through her reflection. "Who would do this to me? Why would anyone do this to me?" She pondered over all the doubts that came to her mind.

"Did the person who just call me, actually know about the accident? How much does he know?" All the questions kept hovering over her mind. "And if he actually knows, then was he the one who snatched away my job and spoiled my reputation? Is he helping the Jones?" 

She asked herself multiple questions over and over again, and moreover they were indeed some logical questions that came to her.

She had a gut feeling that someone definitely had the malicious intentions behind her sudden demotion and disruption of her career. She was keen on finding who was the one.

"But who?" That one single question was supposed to keep her pestred for a long time. 

She chose a red dress and prepared her black heels to go along with the outfit. 

"Boraza Inn? Accident eight years ago? This anonymous letter?" She calculated the occurrence of events, "I don't think it is just a mere coincidence." She painted her lips red with her crimson red lipstick and was ready to face the storm that had come knocking on her door.