“I’m Alya!” she chirped. “I ran into Alina a few days ago and she brought me to your house.” Jason eyed her with suspicion. “Why did you convince my niece to let you stay in my house?” he demanded. “Where’s your home? Why aren’t you living there? Where’s your guardian?” “I don’t have a home,” the girl simply shrugged. Jason was not sure if the woman was lying or plain naive.  “How did you end up at my party?” he questioned her. “And…” To Alya’s surprise, he grabbed her hands to check something but she jerked her wrists away. Jason briefly glimpsed some burn marks on them which he did no

Jason bought rice cakes, tomato flavored instant noodles and braised tofu from a store nearby. He asked the cashier to heat them up before striding over to his car to hand them to Alya who was sitting inside. She was excited to get her hands on the food and immediately began to chow down on the noodles with a plastic fork.   “Don’t you dare spill anything on the car’s floor!” he warned.   “I won’t!” she promised and slowed down to eat carefully. He sighed and drove off.    “Will you recognize those men?” he asked. “The ones who killed Sheila?”   “I can!” she replied. “If they come in front of me, I can recognize them.”   Jason pondered over her words.

“Wow!” Alya exclaimed, her eyes widening in awe as she stared at the skyscraper in front of her. The building was the tallest one she had ever seen and she craned her neck to see the top but all she saw was that the building disappeared into the clouds. Alina stood next to her, snickering while David only sighed. He had followed Jason’s instructions and brought them shopping at one of the malls Jason owned. All throughout the ride, Alya had pointed at places and asked him about them which was quite an arduous task. The girl was excited about every little thing as if she had seen them for the first time. She was even about to jump into a manhole to check what it was but David and Alina had to pull her away with great difficulty. Alya was now staring at all the high fashioned people who were entering the mall. She gap

Jason pulled back, making Stephenie purr. They were only beginning to deepen their kiss when Jason felt his heart go cold. It was not simply an emotion nor a brief, fleeting feeling. He literally felt that his heart had become cold to the point that his chest was beginning to cool.  “What happened?” Stephenie asked seductively. She ran a finger up his arm. “Why did you pull out? You wanna go someplace more private?” “No, it’s not that…” Jason frowned at the phenomenon that had occurred. This was unusual. He had never heard of the heart becoming icy like this and even if it did, the feeling should have killed him. Instead, the coolness in his chest was increasing as if it was literally turning him into ice. He clutched his

“I’ll give you all a moment alone,” Maxwell’s Secretary said and backed away from the room. Jason’s mouth gaped open but before he could say anything, Maxwell pushed his grandson out of the way and studied Alina very carefully. He peered at her carefully. The little girl stared back at him. She had the same jet black hair as Jason and her eyes were the same shape as Jason’s… “Grandfather, it’s not what you think-” Jason began but Maxwell turned around and to everyone’s surprise, began to beat his grandson with the walking stick. “OW!” Jason protested as he dodge the old man’s attacks. “What the hell are you doing you old man?”