"What are you telling me this for? Tell the investigator to go ahead."
The man and woman standing outside the door, pause, hand outstretched to knock. They looked at one another and stepped back quietly.
"I did. He's quoted a higher number for the job." They heard the woman's guttural, "urgggg," before she said something in a lower tone. They continued to step back carefully. Suddenly, the guy caught the young woman's hand, other hand raised, one finger out, indicating quietness. They stopped backing and heard the guy's response, "I thought you might say that. I took the liberty to look into the information he gave us. The insurance company paying things is actually registered under one of the chairman's earlier investment companies. Later he handed over all those management to his sons."
"Check the door for me. Sia was supposed to be here a while back."
The woman standing outside tapped the guy besides her repeatedly and started backing out quickly. At the end of the hallway, Sia pause, hand still clutching the guy beside her. The door pushed open slowly, she slid her hand from his arm and entwined her elbow with his, pulled a smile and pushed her body forward.
The man caught offguard, stumbled slightly. Sia looked sideways, the boyish face smiled tightly at her. She gave him a apologetic smile but did not take his annoyance to heart as they continued forward as if they had never been at the door.
"Ah. Miss Sia. The chairwoman has been waiting for you. You are late."
Sia gave another apologetic smile, her one and only armour to keep alive and kicking. "I met March on my way here and paused to have a chat. Thought I'd bring him along."
She brushed past the assistant, straight into the office. Besides her, her lawyer, her armour, her ace greeted.
"Hello Chairwoman. Long time no see."
The chairwoman's eye flashed with annoyance but the smile on her face was brighter than Sia's. "Is that how the kids greet these days?"
The man besides her nodded gently, "not all. I talked to your grandson today and he told me I sound like an oldie."
The chairwoman laughed, long and thin, like a witch's cackle on TV. "You are a real charmer," the smile in her eyes was real now, "he said the same thing to me. That little thing's mouth is getting smarter and smarter everyday."
The man beside Sia only smiled but did not respond. The atmosphere turned lighter and any suspicion on their eavesdropping never came forward. The chairwoman smiled at him, "what brought you here?"
Sia resisted the urge to clench her jaw or her hands. She smiled and looked at the man beside her, eyes open wide, curious slightly. The man twitched in her direction, slightly annoyed but not entirely showing it. Sia wondered since when she had learned to read him so clearly. Dismissing the thought she looked to the chairwoman and waited. The old woman took her own sweet time, her smile dimming a little by little as she looked from her charmer to Sia. Sia did not smile, just looked on with mild satisfaction in her eyes.
Sia did not make her ask the question she did not want to ask, she did not even want to put the man beside her on the spot. She said, "he convinced me to hand over the shares. It is one percent and keeps me connected to the family. Since I plan to move oversees, it is best not to keep things dangling here."
The chairwoman smiled brightly at her and then at him.
"We knew you would make such a decision. We had a long chat with the chairman but he insisted you hold a slight share as an impartiality from him, rather than catering to your needs."
Sia's nerves throbbed with the effort to stop herself from speaking out. Then again, it wasn't that hard of an impulse to control. She had the practise of twenty years. Sia opened her mouth to discuss the terms further but the chairwoman was over her, addressing the man beside her, "best decision we ever made tying the Mirage Hotels with Velo Group. This engagement was for the best for all of us. When do plan to start construction overseas?"
And thus, her now fiance launched into a details story of how his meeting with board ended with mixed directions and indecision. We sat in the office for an hour before the old woman let her botoxed face rest and dismissed the pair.
The assisstant saw them out, chatting amicably, "when do you plan to tie the knot? If miss Sia leaves the country again, who knows when she will be back."
Unseen by the men, Sia gave them a lopsided smile. None of the people here were eager to tie the knot. Neither her, nor her partner was eager to make permanent of their partnership. Thus he joked, "I wish she'd whisk me along. No more boring board meetings, no more dealing with people who don't want to see me anymore than I want to see him."
Laughter burst through her chest in surprise. Did her fiance just jab her father's assistant?
Once she laughed, she surprised herself and bit her lip, breathing through her nose forcefully.
The men looked over their shoulder, one amused while the other constipated. They parted way sooner than the assistant had wanted. Together, elbows locked, she walked out of the office building and got into her car before she said, "thank you for back there."
The man leaned on her window, the perfect image of handsomeness. "Sadly your good looks are lost on me or else you'd make a perfect husband."
The man's lips quirked askew, "sadly you are too contricted to be my type or else you'd make a perfect wife."
The two of them sighed dramatically and got back to the main subject. "Do you think we should check the insurance companies under my brothers?"
"You ask Kai. I will talk to Ali."
"You think Ali will divulge?"
"He will if I ask for insurance on my investement from his companies. He will not miss a chance to do me under."
Sia smiled, "you do hold substantial shares in the hotel."
The quirk at the corner of the lip higher, no friendliness in him anymore, "they deserves it for what he did to my sister."
Sia patted his hand, "be consoled that you could save her in time. How is she these days?"
"She enjoys reading. Loved the books you sent her. She has been into anime as well. Has taken a particular liking to designing. It's the kind of violent things she watches and draws that concerns me sometimes."
"What did the doctor say."
"They say it is her way to cope and she is doing very well."
Sia patted the man's hand once again, "the hotel I was interning with held a big anime convention once. A lot people are into that thing. If she finds a like minded community… maybe."
The two of them shared a sincere smile, a rare of its kind. "Thanks, I will look into it."
Sia looked past the man as an older man walked towards them.
"Apologies miss. All the self driven cars are scheduled for a service today. If you will follow me, I will drop you today."
Sia did not like loosing her freedom at all but did not utter a single word. The schedule was not until tomorrow, she had checked. If so, why did the driver insist on taking her car? Were they going to temper with it? Was it possible that the chairwoman knew she was in the corridor leading up to her office? Her mind ran a mile a minute. She looked at the man who had fallen in step with her said rapidly, "I will take a nap after heading back, maybe call me around 6 so I don't pick up my appointment at 7."
The man looked at her with question but did not speak of them as she raised her phone.
Once she climbed into the backseat, they two of them parted with a smile and Sia began typing on her phone.
"Something is not right. The schedule was for tomorrow. Check with the car service my family uses and follow my car to see where they take it."
"What about you?"
"I have some pepper spray and that knife you gave me. I will be fine. They might want to tamper with my car. None of them would be brazen enough to do away with me right under the family's nose, using the family driver."
"Still. I will call you at 6 and see you at 7. Just to be safe."
"Who is the beneficiary to your shares? What if someone wants in into the company."
"It's dad. I doubt he is the one."
"What about the properties?"
"They are all bought under different names and liable to fall back to the buyer. I am telling you, I will be fine. It's the car tempering I am worried about."
"Alright. I am following the car. I will call you in an hour."
And so, she sat. Alert.
There was a strange smell of car freshener in her part of the car. It made her sneeze a couple time and made her light headed. Time passed oddly, such that one moment she had only crossed a street in a sluggish state and the next she was much too far from the office.
With her phone still on her hand, she pressed the first digit on the keypad with all her remaining presence and it called her one and only back up.
Then, she didn't remember much. When she opened her eyes in the car she was in a recluse area. The time on her phone was 7 pm and the sun was on the horizon, behind some mud mounds made from a half finished dig site. The car with the absent driver was in the middle of this dig. She moved her shoulders, arms and legs to get a slight sensation back into her body. She still felt sluggish. There was no one in the car with her. She looked about and found the trunk open with nothing, with a slight sound of rummaging from the back. She checked the doors, all open. No keys in the ignition. The driver did not have any ulterior motives at least. Or so she hoped. In any case, there was no use being inside a car if there were no keys in the ignition. She opened the door and stepped out. A head peaked out from the trunk.
Her wobbly legs froze, heart picked her, her consciousness cleared with a sight of red splattered across the white of the driver's neck. The blank look in his eyes was far more horrifying than the blood. He stared, she stood. He looked back into the trunk and back at her her.
A moment of distraction was all she needed, she turned and ran. Something hit her, hard, straight on the top of her head. A man, tall and burly, was all she saw before sharp pain and darkness took over in succession. She laminated her lack of foresight, for not listening to her friend, for considering the level of danger small. And then, she couldn't think anymore.