7. The Pity Party

“Get me the proof he said about those underground fights, in written and signed by him. Or I will take you down with me, brutally.”

The line goes silent and I sit there with my heart throbbing in my mouth. I couldn’t blink, or breathe, or swallow the saliva that had been frozen in my throat since I saw her sixteen missed calls.

This has to be a misunderstanding!

Why would he sue the publication when they printed exactly what he had disclosed? Unless there has been a miscommunication.

My brain rattles from the left to right compartment of my brain while my veins thrum of unknown fear. I already signed an exclusive contract with Pegasus Publications and now my book is stuck with them under piles of legal cases.

“Oh God! What should I do?” I wait in silence like the heavens will answer to me in a booming voice from above, which obviously didn’t happen.

I thought I exorcised bad luck from my life, but like an uno reverse card, shits keep on coming back to me at a speed I can’t even detect its direction.

“Emara? Are you coming or not?” Ethan yells from outside as he waits for me on his rumbling bike. My brain runs slow and suddenly picks up the pace as I remember about my written submission and presentation of my project.

Fuck. Shit. Fuck-shit!

I pick my bag and my nervous-as-lizard body to leave for the college, for the sake of good grades. The presentation blankly passed above everybody’s head and the professor asked me to prepare again, next week.

Whole day, I couldn’t concentrate on my lectures as my mind kept on reaching out for my phone, reading updates of the fucked up situation caused by a single interview.

The whole internet is thrashing over the article. People are taking their I-was-born-for-this-moment frustration out on twitter, scowling at the blog and calling Carina a scandalmongering bitch.

Now I am glad she didn’t print my name.

By four in the evening, new articles publish on the internet, targeting Pegasus Publication for character assassination of the tech-tycoon.

I reach home with a panic attack. Sweat runs fresh from my forehead as I scroll through the hot topic of the day.

‘Pegasus Publication charged with Three Hundred Thousand Dollars by HighBar System & Co. for printing wrong information through the means of their renowned magazine, InLook.’

I am so dead. Dead like dinosaurs’s eggs.

In no time, the blame will slide on my head and soon these hungry tweets will turn into flesh-eating vultures, targeting my little ass which didn’t even fully learned sarcasm.

My phone vibrates on the bed, and I glance down at the messages popping on the screen.

‘Emara’

‘I am losing patience’

‘Did you talk to him?’

I take a deep shaky breath as I see Carina’s series of texts. My thumb slides over the keypad as I type nervously.

‘I will find a way to fix this.’

The silence in my head is the only reply I get. I don’t believe in myself either, but somehow, some way, I will fix this. I have to.

I wear my big-girl panties and straighten my steel spine. My pity party is over.

I need to meet him.

I need to meet this psycho dog and get those wires right in his brain about the misunderstanding he is suckling upon.

I push my phone into the deep gorge of my pocket as I walk down the stairs of my daddy’s mansion. “Mom. I have an interview scheduled at the last minute with-a-um.. HighBar’s company for my project. So, I’ll be leaving right now before I get late.”

I tell her my lies and she instantly wishes me best of luck with a kiss on my forehead. But with the past experiences, I know how best my luck is. It’s like God sniffed cocaine before he decided to write my story.

I book a cab and after two hours of impatient drive, we reach the high building of HighBar Systems Co. But it is nothing like before. The gate is grounded with extra security while people with cameras desperately fetch for snaps.

And that’s when I see him, among the chaos of flashlights and cameras, emerging like an unfazed tornado who doesn’t care about your garden or sheeps.

Dakota Black. The unbeatable Alpha.

My body quivers with goosebumps, remembering the close confrontation with him in his cabin. I still remember his raw masculine scent that my brain rebels to forget, and his eyes. Those deep fucking eyes under his thick lashes that penetrated into me like a shard of broken glass.

Too easy, and too much ache.

I feel my bones melting and my chest rising with deep breaths as I stare at him from across the road, sitting in a cab. It is not difficult to spot him among the dozen frenzied paparazzi.

With a height of 6’4, he stands tallest even among his bodyguards. A black color umbrella towers above his head to protect his expensive black tailored suit from the adulterated droplets of rain.

Even from far, he looks untouchable. A man you may trail your eyes upon, but can never reach. He screams of power and darkness that will consume you even before you lay a finger on him.

There is a deep scowl on his face, as if every second of this attention is maddening to his nerves. Camera lights continue to flash on his hard face, that controls a barbaric growl within.

He ducks his head into his car and my heart thumps down a bit. Black glasses completely shield his mask from outsiders and in the next second, the car beings to roll on its four tyres.

He is leaving.

He is going away. Out of my reach.

“Follow that car!” A command at the speed of light strikes out of my mouth as I point at the black sedan which passes right in front of us.

“Excuse me, this is Uber. Not Fast and Furious.” The driver says in a similar tone as my classmate Hardick.

“I don’t care, just follow that damn car!” I yell in panic. My nerves jump in and out of my body as I see Dakota’s car getting smaller and smaller every second while I sit in here. Shit! He is going away.

“I care.. because this is a damn-fucking Uber! I need a destination to begin the trip.” The driver speaks every word slowly by moving his lips as if I am deaf or have some mental problem.

“Just cancel the ride, turn off your Uber location and drive like a normal car. I’ll pay you double.” I tell him as I pull out a bill of hundred dollars from my pants back pocket and hand him. “Go now! Go, go.”

“Yeh gori ladki pakka marwayegi!” He says something in his mother tongue and gears the car to roll on the road. [This white girl will surely get me killed!]

The car slowly picks up the speed, but not enough to catch that black sedan which glides on the road hastily like a voracious snake.

“Drive fast. We gonna lose him.” I tell the man as Dakota’s car disappears from the road after taking a right turn.

“Am I bald?” The driver suddenly asks me out of nowhere. I arch my eyebrows in confusion as he looks at me from the rear mirror. “What?”

“Do I look like Vin Diesel to you?” He comments sarcastically, and I scowl in return. This butter-chicken bitch!

A part of me wants to throw him out of his car and drive it like I stole it. But alas, I don’t have a driving license, nor do I have the knowledge to operate this thing.

After ten minutes of being on the verse of a breakdown, we stop at the corner of a street which leads to a huge iron gate, that has pointed arrows on its peak and surrounded by ten feet high walls which acts as a barrier to hold back commoners from entering in.

And far behind the forbidding gate, a two-storey villa covered by concrete, steel and glasses, stands erect on the wide grounds with a monstrous architecture.

It’s not a mansion. It’s a fucking castle.

“Are you sure this is where you wanna go?” The Uber driver asks me after staring at the house with the same wide open mouth as mine.

I came too far to meet him. I can’t run back without his written statement that he spoke those words right out of his mouth and I wasn’t imagining them. He has to take the accountability for the mess he created.

I take a breath and summon my lady balls as I walk out of the cab, bravely. The clouds above me decide to cry harder as my legs stride towards the wrought-gate of the purgatory.

The more I walk closer, the more the barrier gets taller. I gulp, feeling highly small to the iron bars and peep at the driveway, which appears like an enchanted way passing through a garden of fairy tale. All pretty and empty.

Maybe the security guard went inside due to the rain. I take this moment as a cue from God and curl my fingers around the cold metal, pulling it hard and harder and harder. But it stays frozen as it is.

I hold the bars of the gate and give it a good shake, hoping they would magically pop one with my touch. But they don’t even wiggle. The iron appears strong and indestructible, that won’t even bend against an airstrike.

It is un-openable, at least from outside.

Now, there is only one way I can get to the other side. A crack of thunder rumbles above my head and I take it as another cue from God..

I have to climb the gates of hell to meet the Devil King inside.