Chapter 1 – The spoiled brat
Aniya Rossi sighed. She was correcting a tiny deviation in her perfectly drawn lip liner, but the limousine that was driving her trembled because of a bump on the road, and her lip pencil made a weird line on her left cheek.
She pressed the console at her front and opened the privacy-shadowed mini window.
Her personal driver noticed the movement and squeezed the steering wheel, getting ready for one more of her usual rants.
“Davis, do you mind not driving like a toddler on his tricycle? You ruined my make-up! Just look at me! I look like a total freak!”
“I am really sorry, Miss. There was a hole in the road, and I couldn’t-“
Aniya waved her hand while making a despised look. “Do I ever care about your excuses, Davis? Pull over! I need to fix this and I don’t want you to make the matter even worse!”
“Certainly, Miss, let me search for a safe spot to-“
“Again with the excuses? Pull over right now!”
As the driver quickly signalled and parked in an empty spot in front of a hydrant, Aniya grumped, “The staff is getting worse every year... I need to have a serious talk with my father. I don’t need stupidity near me!”
Aniya grabbed a wet mini towel from the compartment on the left door and quickly cleaned the line on her cheek. She put a new base on that area and corrected, once again, the line surrounding the lip gloss.
She looked at the small mirror again and frowned. “It looks different. I need to remove all the base and start all over! I don’t have time for this. I want to see the new Dior collection!”
She closed the little mirror encrusted with precious stones and threw it into her tiny purse, annoyed because she didn’t like what she saw, but couldn’t waste any more time because she wanted to try all the new dresses of the season. She signalled her driver to continue and looked out the window.
The City was always the same. Pedestrians walking on the side-walk, beggars sitting in a corner with cups or hats in front of them, kids on skateboards, surfing the crowd.
Aniya frowned. She preferred it if all the beggars were hidden from sight, and everyone wore the latest fashion clothes. All those casual clothes walking around annoyed her, and she averted her eyes to the phone on her lap.
She took a quick look at her I.nstagra.m account, ‘aniya_rossi_official’, one thousand new followers. She clicked on a random profile and twisted her upper lip in a grimace. A random guy’s profile photo with a naked chest.
“Yuck! Gross! You just earned a block, stupid!”
She threw her phone into her purse and faced the window again. The limousine was almost there, but it got stuck in traffic, and then she saw him, standing on the sidewalk, staring at her.
Aniya knew no one could see her through the smoked window, but it was as if that amazing, handsome guy was staring at her soul. Without even realising what she was doing, she touched the button and lowered the window. Their eyes met, and for a few seconds that, for her, seemed like a lifetime, she couldn’t stop staring.
He was wearing a simple white shirt with some kind of drawing on the front, ripped jeans, and sneakers.
His dark eyebrows contrasted with his dark green eyes. A chiselled chin, a beard two days old, a short haircut with a few tuffs over the left side of his forehead, and pink light lips, half-open like hers, as if he was also mesmerised by her.
Aniya noticed his wide shoulders and how tall he was, standing above everyone else that was walking on the sidewalk. She was not short, but he was apparently a few centimetres taller than her. His right arm was slowly raising, as if he was trying to reach her.
Almost hypnotized, Aniya’s hand touched the lever to open the door. The limousine moved, and the man was left behind.
Aniya blinked for a few moments, then closed the window again. She then noticed that her heart was pounding like a madman, and there was even an increase in heat between her thighs.
She opened her legs a little, the maximum her tight, tailored light salmon dress allowed her to do, and put her right hand over her chest and tapped it gently while taking slow deep breaths and whispering, “What was that...? That man looked dangerous… and so, so hot…”
The limousine stopped a few seconds later, parked right in front of the special parking place assigned to Aniya’s favourite shop.
Without waiting for her driver to open the door as usual, Aniya opened the door herself and exited the car, glad to arrive finally at her destination.
While she was looking up at the sign of the shop, she heard a scream from her driver, who was on the other side of the vehicle and was moving towards her in a hurry, “Miss Aniya! Look out!”
Then she noticed a shadow running coming from her left. She felt her purse being grabbed, and she immediately reacted.
She increased her grip on the purse, grabbed the wrist of that unknown shadow, and pulled it to her left while rotating her body and stretching her right leg on the ground.
The thief stumbled on Aniya’s fit leg, and his momentum, driven by her pulling, sent his head straight at the junction between the two doors of the limousine, one of the hardest parts of the vehicle. Blood splashed on the door, the thief’s head cracked in the middle.
Aniya frowned at her driver, who was gulping, already knowing what she was going to say. “Thanks a lot, Davis! You can pack your things when we get back to the mansion because I am sure my father won’t be pleased when I tell him-“
Suddenly, she heard a strong, alluring voice coming from behind her and felt an unfamiliar warmth in her right forearm that made her tremble. “Are you alright?”
Her left elbow immediately went up and back as she rotated. A powerful blow hit the temple of her new opponent, followed by an open palm hit to his chin with her left hand. The man was sent flying backwards and hit the concrete side-walk head-first. Aniya then noticed that it was the same man that she saw a few moments ago. His green eyes were blinking at her in surprise and shock at what had just happened.
She felt that strange, alluring sensation again, but her anger overpowered everything else.
Aniya stepped with her right heel on the man’s hand against the concrete, shouting every single time, “Don’t! You! Ever! Touch me! Pervert!”
She then turned to the door of the shop, the sole reason she left the comfort of her mansion that morning, while her driver was left behind to deal with the thief and the pervert.
As soon as the automatic door opened, a smiling young girl was waiting for her inside. That smile disappeared when she noticed the mess outside and how Aniya’s always perfect hair was misaligned. “Miss Aniya! Did something happen to you? Your hair, you-“
Aniya looked at the girl from top to bottom and stopped at her name tag. “Amy… the new girl. Go call Maddie. I don’t deal with small people.”
The young girl turned pale and nodded, rushing to call her manager. An older girl appeared, wearing the same uniform, and she spoke with a polite smile, “Miss Aniya, a pleasure as usual. Please come with me. I already told Amy to go make a chamomile tea for you, and I will help you for today.”
Aniya blew a tuft of hair away from her right eye as she answered, “You can start by helping me fix this mess. This shop is getting some strange neighbours lately. Thieves and perverts everywhere!”
“Of course, Miss Aniya, it will be my pleasure. I will take care of your hair and makeup, and then we can try the new collection. I am sure you will be pleased. The designers went overboard this year!”
Aniya spoke while following Maddie, her personal stylist, since the first time she went to that shop with her mother when she turned fourteen. “I will be the judge of that, Maddie, thank you. You know perfectly well that I have exquisite taste, and sometimes Dior stylists go crazy and totally ruin a collection.”
Maddie forced a smile. She was used to Aniya’s bad mood, but that morning, she was being overly annoying. Perhaps because of what happened outside, since Amy told her that something was going on out there, and one of their biggest customers seemed to be involved.
While Aniya sat on a chair in the changing room, Maddie asked, “Do you mind if I ask what happened to you outside, Miss Aniya? You look stressed.”
Aniya glanced at the mirror and noticed that not only was her hair messed up, but her face was flushed.
Her light blue eyes were shining with anger, and her medium-sized breasts were moving up and down, accompanying her unsteady breathing.
“I do mind, but I can tell you that you would be in worse shape than me if a thief tried to rob your purse in broad daylight, and then a pervert grabbed your arm. My father was right when he told me to take self-defence classes. No pervert can grab me without getting the deserved punishment!”
Maddie slowly nodded while carefully brushing Aniya’s hair. “I am so sorry to hear that, Miss Aniya, but I am glad you are alright. You know, I have been following your I.nstagra.m for years, and I always like to watch the self-defence videos you upload every two days. I always practise those movements, and my boyfriend fears me. He says that he must be careful with me because I have become rather dangerous.”
She immediately continued when she noticed a wrinkle on Aniya’s upper lip. “I am nowhere near your level, Miss Aniya, of course! But at least I learned how to defend myself in certain situations!”
Those compliments made Aniya smile, a genuine smile, one of the few she ever let people see, and Maddie gulped. It was as if suddenly Aniya’s face was glowing, and even her eyes looked gentle. “Thank you, Maddie, that was so sweet. That’s why I made those videos. No woman should ever feel herself in danger and unable to defend herself. There are a lot of rude men out there, and a lot of perverts as well, that seem to think that the sole existence of women is to grant them pleasure when the opposite is the reality. The sole reason men exist is to obey every single one of our commands. We are the ones with the uterus. We are the ones responsible for the continuation of our species. Men are just annoying tools created to serve and worship us. The fact they can give us some pleasure is just a bonus.”
Maddie muffled her laughter, “Pfft!… Miss Aniya, I’m sorry, but the way you say things... Of course, I totally agree with you, but society is in fact ruled by men. Women have slowly increased their power over the past few years, but in many areas, it’s still too difficult.”
“Yes, I also know that. That’s why I studied so much. My parents prepared me to become the new President of our company, and I have already faced some harsh meetings with those old men on the Board of Directors, to learn. I know they don’t like me or my ideas about an increase in the wages of the women that work for us, as well as an increase in higher positions for some of the best-qualified women. Many of those old men have sons or nephews that they want to give a prominent position, but they will have to go over my dead body and my fifty-five percent shares before I grant them their wish.”
Maddie jolted in surprise, “Fifty-five percent? Shouldn’t it be less, considering your parents own the company?”
“They already signed a procuration for me, and I also used… let’s say, less well-known companies I bought with the money I earned from I.nstagra.m advertisements without telling my parents. Those small companies made a few deals with small groups that had some shares of my family’s company, and all that put together made me the bigger shareholder of the company. My father had to face a voting session from the Board of Directors every time he wanted to do something, but I can fire them all if I want to. I told my parents about this over dinner last night. Father choked, mother almost fainted. My easy-going character probably deceived them over the years. I may be blond, but I am not stupid! Those old geezers are up for a surprise at tomorrow’s morning monthly meeting!”