Chapter 454: Two and half men.
Leilani.
My mind raced with a gazillion and one thoughts, but I can tell you for free that none of them were positive.
And as Amanda stood over, peering at me with the inquisitiveness of a child who just heard about Bermuda for the first time, I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and slowly twirled the envelope between my fingers with so much care, you would think it was a letter bomb.
And maybe it was.
Maybe an explosion was the next thing I would experience if I peeled it open.
I turned to look at her... like really look at her, my face twisted into a frown as I asked;
"Did you see who brought this in?"
She shook her head quickly— a little too quickly. "No."
"Do you know anything about it? Or check to see whoever must’ve sent it?"
Again, she shook her head. "No."
I sighed. "So you know nothing. You just saw it at the mailbox and decided to bring it to me. Am I right?" I asked, and in response, she lowered her head, nodded stiffly and muttered;
"Yes ma’am."
But even after hearing her say that, something about those words still didn’t sit right with me. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling either and for some reason, it felt as though I was suddenly cold— I’d been hot up until about two minutes ago.
"Okay, thank you. You can leave now." I said softly.
"Yes ma’am."
As she spoke, I couldn’t help but notice the way she stared at me for a moment too long. There was something akin to relief in her eyes, but beneath it was surprise— one that was barely concealed— fear and something else. I couldn’t name what it was.
I watched her turn to leave, while listening to the soft sounds of her loafers hitting the marble floor. However, just as she arrived at the door, a tight suddenly struck my mind and I said quickly;
"Wait!"
She stopped, turned around and crossed her arms over her chest. "Ma’am?"
"Where on earth is Yvette?"
That was the question that has been bugging me ever since I stepped my feet into this building this morning. It has been the only thing on my mind even as I walked up to her office only to find a new girl— this Amanda— sitting there like it was her safe haven.
My eyes didn’t miss the small almost infinitesimal twitching of Amanda’s eyebrows and then she lowered her head. "She no longer works here."
I was stunned. I frowned.
"She resigned?"
"No, she was fired. Late Alpha Frostclaw fired her for insubordination."
The word ’insubordination’ made me vaguely remember the one time I had snuck into the company while people still believed I was dead. I could still remember the look on Yvette’s face as she had dragged her eyes over my body like I was some kind of insect— filthy and beneath her feet.
The woman I had met that day was nothing like the one I had known before the fire and that memory... that thought made a chill run up my spine.
"Can you explain what you mean by that?" I asked, sounding colder than I had intended, and as soon as I said that, Amanda bit down on her lower lip.
We were alone in the room but she couldn’t help glancing around us quickly. She then lowered her voice as she took a step closer and said; "People believed that she was trying too hard to replace you."
My eyelids twitched. "Huh?"
"Barely two days after the news of your demise reached us, she went off to dye her hair silver..."
I knew that... I had seen that.
"And at first, no one gave so much thought to it, thinking that that was merely her way of paying her respects to you. But shortly after she was made acting MD and lead engineer, her style totally changed to yours. She began to talk, act and practically live like you... and then Alpha Frostclaw decided that he could no longer condone her attitude when she attended one of the meetings one day, wearing your red scarf around her neck."
I froze.
My red scarf.
I hadn’t heard about that scarf in a very long time...
For a moment, my brain went blank. Thoughts stopped processing in my head and so did the voices, already existing within the confines of my skull, grow louder.
When I lifted my head to look at Amanda, I noticed the frown on her face like she was recollecting the memory. She shuddered;
"She weirdly smelled like you that day too... and Alpha, already mad, couldn’t take it anymore. He asked her out of the meeting and out of the company altogether. She surprisingly did as told and never came back, not even to submit her resignation."
The news made me sad but at the same time, it made me quite uncomfortable. Usually, I would never have believed that a person such as Yvette was capable of such but I now knew better. So I nodded;
"Thank you."
My eyes once again darted to the letter sitting in front of me perilously like something out of a horror movie, I picked it up once more time and handed it to Amanda, my voice cold as I drawled; "Scan it to see if there is anything else besides paper inside it."
She frowned as if saying; ’What do you mean?’
But she didn’t directly ask me that. She couldn’t.
All she could do was do as told, and then return minutes later with the paper in hand. Her voice was barely above a whisper as she said; "There’s nothing underneath."
And with that, I took it out of her outstretched hands, tore the seal open and frowned when two pieces of paper fell out.
One of which was a letter and the other was a photograph. A photograph in which two identical large men spotting full heads of silver hairs stood... and then there was a young boy standing in between them, smiling at the camera with his left hand frozen in a peace sign.
It was Darius.
My eyes quickly met Amanda’s to find her squinting at me in confusion, and with a desperate need to get her out of here, I hosed;
"Thank you, you can leave. But please, make sure to check through Yvette’s things... the ones she forgot to take with her after her resignation and get me whatever you can find... and look for the red scarf please."
She was stunned by my request but said nothing. Instead, she bowed one more time and said; "Yes, ma’am."
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