Should I Know Who You Are?

This is their first meeting. He is handsome, yes but that’s enough to make her kiss his ass. In truth she wants this weird rude man to leave her alone and go away, she glances at him bored, he is still there making no attempt to move, wonderful just wonderful right when she had found her flow in navigating these mountains of senseless papers,  this man decides to be the difficult obstacle of her day. 

His expression is stern, standing there waiting, waiting for her to realise her mistake and do as he had instructed but that never came, He isn't impressed. His verdict was instant, this was a rude entitled brat refusing to fall in line, the employees here at morrell corp were really something. He wasn’t budging. Neither is she. Neither apologizes, neither decides to step back and be the bigger person, both mirroring each other's cold glare without a trade of intimidation, their steady eye contact and silent battle lasted far too long.  The room becomes freezing.

The few employees who were also in the archives at that same time retrieving files for their various works had slowed down their pace to see what was going on and how it was going to play out. Realising who the battle was between, Employees panic. "Does she know who that is?" one of them whispers, Alara glances at their expressions clearly this man had some sort of status, she doesn't care, still staring him down with indignation. More employees’s whispers pipe up, poking their heads to get a better view 

"That's him..." one says 

"Why is he here?" another employee whispers looking confused 

"He's terrifying." an intern pipes up “hold on isn’t that Edward Ford?... He's here?... in person?” 

Suddenly she remembers that name from the files she read earlier containing a small news clipping, Edward Ford of the Ford's family, The youngest billionaire in the country and predicted to be the first person to reach 100 billion in assets. He is also the CEO of the conglomerate known as Ford Enterprises. Making him a huge asset to the morrell corp because he will be acquiring part of the company. Meaning he is richer than Alara's family. And much more dangerous, he seemed like a man who was ruthless and cold, giving off the air of someone who had never lost. Even with most of the key knowledge about him she was not going to bend. 

He asks,

"Do you know who I am?"

She replies, putting the papers away, barely sparing him another glance. 

"Should I?"

He stares at her for a long time, perhaps looking for a trace of deception, he steps forward close to her, a bit too close, close enough for her to smell his cologne, reaches above her head and retrieves a file, without saying another word he turns and walks away. No one can tell what he is thinking but they assume he is angry, everyone thinks she's finished, after all no one who had ever disrespected the cold man had ever gone unscathed. Employees start to exit the archive, their gazes over her range from panic, to pity, to even triumph. She ignores them, she has a mission to focus on, whatever this guy was going to do couldn’t be worse than what she had already been through, she would deal with it later.

Later that evening sitting in the biggest executives office that had been cleared out just for him, wearing reading glasses, his hair pushed back his blazer slung over the chair, he was hunched over reading what he considered to be relevant files, he took off his glasses and threw his head back in frustration, most of these were such a mess, it seemed like it would take forever to simply get it done, his gaze falls on a file he had not opened yet, he lazily flipped it open, holding the document to the light, before focusing on it properly, this one was different, he placed the document on flat on the table, putting his glasses back on as he read the file, He notices handwriting an elegant swirly style, the ink fresh like it was done very recently, maybe even today, he notices the margin notes, the meticulous corrections. His conclusion was simple, someone had quietly fixed six legal errors and made the entire file easy to read and understand. Compared to the stack of messes he had seen so far, this one stood out to him, it was rather impressive. Looking at the HR officer standing beside him that had been assigned to take care of him during his stay at the company he asked “who has been organising these files”, The HR officer replied, 

"Oh, that was the new employee we got in today. She is the  crazy daughter of the Morrell family, assigned to work in the archives. I believe you met her"

“Interesting” Edward says tapping his pen slowly against the file, “and what is her name” he asked with lazy curiosity 

“Oh… umm… right… Alara Morell”.

he repeated, tasting the name as though searching his memory for where he had heard it before.

The HR officer laughed awkwardly. "You probably don't want to remember her, sir. She's rather infamous around here, being the family disappointment and all". 

Edward didn't answer. Instead, he looked back down at the corrected document, flipping it with boredom. Every amendment to the document was precise, every legal reference was accurate, every correction improved the file without changing its meaning. It was not the work of someone incompetent. Certainly not the work of a woman everyone insisted was unstable. His fingers tapped the desk once. Twice. Three times. The HR officer in all his experience, could not read where this was going. 

Finally Edward looked up, making the HR officer jump a bit,  "Bring me every file she has touched today." The HR officer blinked. "...Sir?". Edward tilts his head, his tone even but an unmistakable command "Every file." The room fell silent.

"...Right away." The HR officer hurried out of the office. Edward leaned back in his chair, his grey eyes lingering on Alara's neat handwriting.

That annoying woman… She hadn't recognised him, She hadn't cared who he was, she didn’t even recognise that he could single handedly change the course of her life, he thought that was stupid of her. And yet… She had quietly accomplished more in one day than the previous archive staff members that came before her had managed to do in months.

A faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "...How annoying."

But for some reason...He wanted to see her again. The HR officer came in carrying a tall stack of boxes containing files. “File a report against her, for misconduct, a somewhat slap on the wrist for her rude behaviour towards me earlier, nothing too serious” absent-mindedly tracing his finger over her handwriting, he glanced at the HR officer  “behaviour like that cannot go unpunished”. The HR officer rushes out to do just that, he smirks coldly wondering how she would react. 

Meanwhile… sitting on the floor of the archives, no other employee has entered to take any new files or return any old ones which made sense since it was so close to the end of the day. Alara who had been organising files and rummaging through information for hours straight discovers something enormous. A confidential medical payment file in a yellow binder tucked at the very back of the shelf, seemingly long forgotten, this payment was made every month, Millions transferred to a private account and to a private obstetrician, the Patient name hidden well, Alara had tried to decipher who or maybe even decode the information but she couldn’t, who ever this belonged to, did not want this information found and had the ability to pay a lot to keep it that way, which meant she doesn't know whose pregnancy it is………… at least not Yet. She smiles.

"Oh?....... This just got very interesting."

Flipping through the file, she seemingly found nothing. She gets up about to put the yellow folder right back when a single folded photograph slipped from between the pages and landed at her feet. Her expression changed to one of curiosity as she  bent down and picked it up. Sitting right back on the floor she unfolds the picture carefully, taking care not to rip it. Looking at the picture, the smile disappeared from her face. "...Impossible." she whispered.

The photograph showed a pregnant woman, one she had never seen before,  leaving a private expensive looking clinic and standing beside this woman… Was her father. And holding the woman's hand… Was Diana.