Lei rushed to the ladies and closed the door. Nobody was in when she picked up his call.“Meet me at the city park,” he said, then hung up.Reynold returned to the bench he had sat on the last time he was there. The day was different; perhaps the peace he had always wanted was slowly becoming a reality. He took a deep sigh. Finally, he'd be able to vindicate Kayla.Lei stood from afar, watching Reynold sit there with his head raised and his eyes closed. Being a meditator wasn’t a habit that she had grown to know with him.“I am here,” she said.Reynold stood up and stretched a folder to her. "Here," he said.“What is this?”Reynold didn’t respond. She opened it, and it was evidence and proof of Grant's involvement in tax issues and the police warrant to arrest Grant's company.“How did you..."Reynold interrupted, "Tell Kayla about this and suggest that she make a PR blitz.”"Sure,” Lei said, “umm, this is …” Lei couldn’t even hide it any more. How did Reynold get hold of all this ki
Grant got into his car, filled with mixed reactions. There had to be a rational explanation for how she’s always a step ahead. Someone had to be helping her, and it had to be someone who knew both parties plans. Someone who knew about both his and her secrets.He started his car and took a deep breath. It had to be him, he concluded. It had got to be him. He’s the only person they have mutually. Hamish, that fucking snake, he must have been setting me up all this time.Jovian started his own car, too. He had parked a car about five cars away from him. Reyland's instructions were direct and clear: "He is at his tail”.Jovian’s face was beginning to sweat, his heartbeat was in a rush, and his hands were firmly gripping the wheel. “Follow him,” Jovian recalled what Reynold had told him. “He must have an insider, and that’s where you come in; get whoever is feeding him.” “Don’t ask why; don’t improvise; stick to the plan,” he said, a line he had recently learned from the internet. He sa
Grant Emerson stood in his office thousands of feet above the ground floor.He liked to be up there, with the rain clouds stretched out before him like floating cotton soaked in dye. In the city, the sun rarely ever burned bright, which meant that the skies were almost always one viscous shade of blue or the other. When he was there, standing so high up in the air, Grant felt like a god, like the people thousands of feet below him who looked to be the size of specks from such a great distance were just that: specks. It was a good feeling, this sense of divinity. It was all the more reason why he loathed Kayla and the Johns and the cunningness that ran in their blood like a taint. No other woman could have matched him like she had, move for move. For every inch he gained, he lost another. For every foothold he ceded to gain new ground, she claimed another. Grappling her was like grappling a chess grandmaster, like trying to take hold of a snake sliding in a barrel of butter.He walked
It was the first night in a long while since Kayla had slept so peacefully. There were no violent interruption; she did not wake up in the dark worried, wondering if her brothers had made another move on her while she slept. Even though she had never needed an alarm clock to rouse her from sleep, her body being one itself, she had an alarm clock on the bedside. It woke her now, cutting through the air with its shrill cry. Kayla slammed a palm down on the device and it responded with sweet, well deserved silence. She sat up in bed and looked around her room. It felt suddenly unfamiliar in the absence of Rey. He had slowly and surely embedded himself in her life without her even realizing it. While, previously, she used to look forward to waking up to the greeting of sunlight dotting her coloured blinds, now it was the smell of his cooking he missed. She could just picture him in the kitchen, apron strings tied around the width of his waist, his arms chiseled to sculptural beauty.
Lei waited outside the boardroom, watching the siblings settle in. Both arms locked behind her back, she stood guard, her spine straight as an arrow, eyes forward— just the way that they had taught her at the academy. Even through the glass doors, the John siblings dislike for each other was palpable. So corporeal, you could touch it. Hell, dislike seemed like an inadequate way to describe what they felt for each other.Sean was unbridled, roiling hate. Tate sat in his chair, curled up like a cottonmouth snake. She had learnt to fear the man—when he struck, he struck hard and fast. Hamish was as cold as ever, a portrait of their father the chairman. When they assigned her to Kayla, Lei was young, barely into her adolescence. The chairman arrived one day and she could still remember it: his slowly graying hair, the sunglasses. He stared down at her for seconds that bled into minutes and made her uncomfortable."This one," he had said to their commander and that was that. Her fate h
Lei watched understanding wash over Kayla's features. Then shock. Then doubt."Why? Why would you even do that?" Her boss asked, rising from her perch on the edge of her desk. In her heels, she towered above Lei who was kneeling."Your brothers made me do it. They wanted to force your hand and force you make a mess of the Zhang contract and cause the chairman to cut you out."Kayla looked at her with new eyes. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. "They succeeded, didn't they? They took the contract right out of my hands. With your help."Lei's heart had become a steady pounding in her chest. It beat wildly as if to compel her to pay heed to it.'Fear,' Lei thought. 'So this was what fear felt like.'After all these months, it was still a strange emotion to her. Fear was one of the first things that they beat out of you at the academy when you were young. If the commander found out you had a deep-seated fear of heights, he would see to it that you spent your nights patrolling the high
Sean was hungry for a fight.After the meeting they just had with their father, Tate could tell that the bulky man wanted to break something—whatever he could lay his hands on. Perhaps, pump his fist into the first face that he found obnoxious or clutch his own hair and scream. He could always tell when his brother was on the verge of doing something stupid, which was almost every other day.It was why he took him to their usual spot at the nightclub. Nothing annoyed Sean as much as losing to their sister's wit—a sentiment that Tate understood completely, a sentiment Tate shared. But he also knew that nothing soothed the man's soul more than a night away from work. Music and the beautiful women that paraded the club, they were a balm for his soul. The best part was that he could buy the all with money and he had lots of that.Sean hunched over the table which was covered with every kind of wine imaginable. There was chardonnay, champagne and rosé. At least those, Tate could recogniz
The house Kayla had bought for Louisa and Tia was far larger than the one she shared with Reynold's. The structure sat nestled on a reticent street of the suburbs and it was surrounded by neatly manicured lawns that soaked in the summer sun. It was two stories high and boasted of a quaint front porch. A wide garage graced the building and it was all fenced round with whitewashed wood. The space at the foyer and the back of the house were both vast enough to fit a family barbecue.Kayla stared up the stairs on the front porch. Nearly all the lights in the house were had been turned on.She parked in the Rolls Royce facing the open street, just in case she had to leave as quickly as she had come. The walk to the door at the porch was a short one, but it seemed like ages before Kayla was in front of it. She raised her hand to press the doorbell, but the door twisted open before she ever made contact.Kayla blinked, surprised."Kayla," It was Reynolds. He poked his head out of the house