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.
“3 plates of the sunny morning, one plate of pancakes with maple syrup, three cups of cappuccino for table three.” Nadia, one of our waitresses, read the order out loud.“1 egg and toast, pancakes with fried bacon, chicken burritos, and a cup of latte.” Jasmin, another waitress, read her order.The mornings were the laid-back time of the entire day in our kitchen. Lunch was busy compared to breakfast. Most office workers came here for lunch, couples, ladies in their middle age, but dinner was the attraction. We started our preparation around 5 and normally our first guest arrived by 6:30. All ages of people came to our place as it was a family place.The room on the first floor was just a hall where all the tables and chairs were arranged. Our kitchen was placed on this floor. Most tables are for four people or two. It booked three booths in the corner on this floor while the second floor was for only families.
I walked into ‘Aspiration’ the gaming club that I owned. I would like to call it instead of cassino the way other people pronounced the name as if it was a disease. But in the end, they all came here to enjoy their night. Hypocrisy was everywhere, and now they hid behind million-dollar suits and shoes.Those cranky old men whom we met at the meetings behaved as if they knew everything about business and the world. We are older; we had seen the world; we knew better than the younger generation, but in everyday life, they were the most fucked up. If you looked at their life, you would know how fucked up human relationships can be.So here was a piece of free advice, never, not even accidentally, heed any attention when they gave you a reality check. Trust me, you would be content, lived a good life without these bullshits.It was a little after 10 at the night. Mostly I liked to be home after spending my day in the office with me
“Did you talk to him?” Penny asked me on the phone as I set my left foot inside the house.“No.”“What are you doing, McCoy? What are you waiting for? I am telling Veronica is going to steal your fiancé. You need to polish your game plan. Otherwise, Veronica would have the ultimate laugh while you standalone.” The woman was hyped-up all day, repeating the same song again and again and exasperating me to a point where very soon I was turning into a murderer. And she was my first victim.I closed my eyes shut and bit my lips with my upper teeth. Penny was nagging for precisely twelve hours now. In the restaurants, she would come into the kitchen every thirty-minute and asked me if I called him or not. Whenever I shook my head or replied skeptically, she would gaze at me as if I was a criminal who was hiding from the law.At this point, this woman was harassing me, and I was thinking about issuing a restriction lett
“Why are we here?” Lyra opened her mouth after maintaining forty-three minutes of silence. At some time during our car ride, I started to think she lost her voice due to shock.The moment her head hit the hard wooden floor, my heart dropped out in that second. Lyra and I had some unfinished business to do after what happened two nights ago. I wanted to sit and talk to her about what did she think about the whole situation.Announcing our wedding wasn’t my intention, but at the time, that’s all I could have thought of, and I didn’t hesitate to go forward and save her from the hole where she slipped accidentally.That night, with Jacob, wasn’t her fault. Nothing about that night was her fault, but she was the one on the row of punishment that hyped me up, and I couldn’t hold myself. Before knowing my mind, I walked to her and made the stupid announcement.I watched her from the shadow for a lo
Present“Hello, are you listening to me?” She asked me with a frown. “What are you thinking?”“Eager to know what’s going on in my head, sweetheart,” I smirked.“No, thanks.” She blushed and lowered her head.“What kind of ring do you want?” I asked her while cutting the pancakes with a knife. “Cushion cut, oval, round, pear, heart, princess, radiant. What about the stone? Diamond, ruby, gold, sapphire, we can get whatever you want.”Lyra stared at me, dumbfounded. She didn’t say a word, nor did her expression give away to me, so I could understand what was going through her mind.“Did anybody ever tell you before that you needed a doctor?” She sighed and gazed at me with compassion. “You need help, dear. Try to talk to a doctor.”At first, I thought she was making fun of me, but
After I woke up from the nap, he was nowhere to find; I was alone in his bedroom. A grey comforter was wrapping all over my body. The blinds were down, so the sun lights were blocked. When I first entered this room, the room was all bright and full of sunlight, so I believed Nathan put them down after I fell into sleep. I got out of bed and went to the bathroom to wash my face, and made myself presentable. I found my bag on the sofa near the window; I took the bag with me. It was an effortless task to locate the bathroom, as there were only two doors inside the room.When I opened the first one, it was a walk-in closet. He furnished the entire room with wooden cupboards where Nathan’s clothes were neatly arranged. One cabinet for his white shirts, another for his suits, besides that one for all the color shirts. The drawers were locked, but it wasn’t a tough job to estimate that clothes were there, too.In the middle of the room, ther
I walked into my parents’ house after dropping Lyra at her house a little after 9.I texted my brother Luke on the way, telling him to meet me here urgently. Things needed to be done tonight. I didn’t know that things would take a turn. After Brian walked into my office, the fear that I saw in Lyra’s eye was evident how scared she was. I was clueless about the relationship dynamite was between the McCoy siblings, but seeing the terror in Lyra, it was confirmed it wasn’t sweet and home-like at all.My mother was in the living room watching some movies while my father was nowhere near possible in his study room. He wasn’t needed in here, anyway. I sat on the couch and leaned on the back of the couch and closed my eyes to think how everything was turning in precisely the way I wanted.The moment Lyra told Brian that we were engaged, honestly, it shook the hell out of me. I didn’t presume even in my dream th
I walked into my parents’ house after dropping Lyra at her house a little after 9.I texted my brother Luke on the way, telling him to meet me here urgently as certain things needed to be done tonight. Didn’t know that things would take a turn after Brian walked into my office. I was myself. When I was, his eyes were fizzling with anger that gave me a demonic pleasure. I was messing with his head and business for a long time now, did everything in my power to ruin his reputation and the company that he built with his blood, sweat, and tears. And trust me, I was having a crap load of fun by messing with him.I was ready to fight, but something told me from the inside to play cool the situation to see where provocation took Brian, as expected, this hot-headed man was a failure. I wanted to give him the good news about Lyra being here, in the bathroom exactly a door away from us, but it was already full of spitefulness. The reason behind