The day could not have gone any better, Hamish thought, suppressing a smirk.He could have sworn that God or whoever was in charge of this shit show called life had a soft spot for him. He had spent weeks feeding Grant with intel, hoping the man with all his hate would make something of it. It turned out that all the man had to his name was that hate. Nothing more. Sad to say, the same applied to his brothers, Sean and Tate. Both were sorry excuses for adversaries. If it were him and not Kayla they had gone after, he would have crushed them before the week was over.All that incompetence and, at the end of the day, it was Ceneau who—even without intending to—threw the family into chaos. If Hamish could see his stepbrother, he could have hugged him.After the call from Mei saying that Kayla was being rushed to the hospital, the wedding guest list quickly morphed, becoming an entourage. The fleet of cars that had graced the wedding raced through the city towards the hospital. Once ag
Kayla woke in the hospital to the news of her pregnancy.She was groggy and tired and she felt as though she had been packed full of anaesthesia. She was attached to a electrocardiogram machine and it beeped. Her heart rate read on the screen in green lines. The room was wholly white like a field of nothingness. The smell of antiseptic permeated the air. Kayla detested hospitals. They smelled unnatural. Insipid and sterile to a fault.After the doctor left her, Rey slipped into the room quietly. He was still wearing his clothes from the wedding, but the hands were rolled up to his elbows. He crouched at the bedside."Hey," he said, hoarsely."Hey there,"He reached out and pushed her hair out of her face gently. His fingers brushed gently against her lips. "You scared me, Kayla," He said. "You had me worried there for a minute, slumping like that. I thought I was losing you."She leaned forward and put her forehead against his, then closed her eyes. Their hearts beat as one."I'm s
When the hospital discharged her later in the day, Lei was waiting to take her home.The Chairman had taken Reynolds to salvage what they could of the wedding and make arrangements for it to be held the next day. She must have dozed off as soon as they hit the road because she woke at home with Lei shaking her arm softly, whispering "Kayla," and she could not remember anything of the trip.Still groggy, she stumbled inside and pulled up short when she found his guard, Jovian, inside. He was cooking, his face calm. The man wore a black turtle neck that stuck to his body and his muscles stood out clearly under the thin, stretched fabric. He was a soldier, by all interpretations of the word, and he looked out of place in her whitewash, silverware kitchen."Ma'am," he said, pausing when he caught sight of her. If Lei was startled, she showed no sign of it. A peek in the pot showed her that he was making veggie garlic noodles.“You didn’t have to do this,” Kayla said.The man gave his v
Somehow Reynolds managed to rouse himself the next morning.After the wild ride in the shower the night before, they retreated to her room and made love again. Reynolds drifted to sleep hoping that he still had enough in him to make it to the wedding by dawn. However, when he woke up, Kayla was gone already, leaving traces of herself with him. Her scent hung in the air like a cloud of moistness. Jasmine and oil of lavender. Reynolds had made sure to place Jovian on her security detail, so he went with her alongside Lei. Knowing that Jovian was with Kayla, knowing what the man was capable of, made Reynolds a tad more comfortable with the idea of her her being around Sean, Tate and Hamish.Reynold sat on the side of her bed and rubbed a hand over his face to clear the last traces of sleep from his consciousness. He had spent most of the night out trying to undo the disaster Ceneau had made of his own wedding. He had managed to secure the venue and appease the priest, but it had tak
Grant Emerson was a shrewd man and he liked this about himself.He had also come to learn in the preceding weeks that Reynolds Sheen was a resourceful man too. Just as resourceful as he was. For days, he had planned how to take the man out quietly without drawing attention until Hamish, that impatient fool decided to rain on his parade with that damn ultimatum of his. The memory of Hamish's words were bile in his throat. 'We agreed that you would take him out, didn't we?' He reserved a special loathing for everything about the man. His tone, his manner of speech, his inflated ego, the way he looked at everyone else form the bridge of his nose as though he was somehow convinced he was a better person that all the rest of them. Grant hoped the day would come when the Johns conglomerate would lie in ruins. His job done, his final act would be to kill the man himself, just for the gratification he would get out of the act. He could almost see it.After the call, he made arrangements t
Reynolds knew he was doomed to die the instant he hit the water. It was not something he could ever escape.It was a distant concern, an out of body experience, this knowing, the way you know the sun would dip after twilight but fail to pay attention to its passing. Thoughts roared through his mind loudly. But they were not nearly as loud as the wind. The wind was a wild cat, roaring in his ears as he descended at a frightening velocity. 'What would happen to Kayla, to my child?' He thought. In those final seconds, as the weight of his descent made a javelin out of his body, all that he could think about was the fact that his child would grow up in a world where he would not get to be its father. How Kayla could lose everything she had gained. Tia, his sister. What would she do? What could she do? His mother, too. The memory of her flashed through his mind as he plunged, the wind tearing at him. Could his mother survive more pain? Could her heart take it. What would his family eve
Never minding how insufferable the man was, never minding his many faults, it was very unlike Jovian's boss to arrive at a function late. Reynolds Sheen was a punctual man. Perhaps, punctual to a fault. This Jovian knew well. He knew it like he knew the back of his hand, or the back streets through the city. He was on guard duty, as usual. But this time, the job came with extra weight to it. He was guarding Mrs Kayla. She had not started showing yet, being only a few weeks pregnant, but Jovian knew what was at stake. In the months to come, when she grew heavier and less capable of carrying out certain tasks, he would have to be ever present, watching over her like a mother hen. A eagle aware its eaglets can be prey too. Like the falcon of the air, keeping watch for danger. Even though he had trained half his life to protect and serve the Johns, the mother and her urnborn child were, to him, more than he had ever had to handle regardless of how simple and containable they seemed. M
Ceneau had spent most of the night with Mei Zhang, so the heaviness in his eyelids was not for want of sobriety, but rather for lack of sleep, which for him was a first. After the news of Kayla's pregnancy broke and he could finally exhale, he made his aide, Gaude, drive them across the city, a short distance away from the church to a restaurant he frequented whenever he was in the city. It was nothing grandeur, that place, and its clean simplicity made for a sort of magnificence, giving it an air of dignity. It also served as one of the city’s only places where he could dine without attracting attention, something he enjoyed doing. And this he’d shown to Mei, who seemed to love the place too. They’d spent most of the time going back and forth, getting to know each other. He found that he liked her a whole lot, but it was not because she admired him, but because she was, for the most part, a whole person. As whole as the child of a billionaire could be. A very distinctive feature