MarkI’d spent the entire morning holed up in my room, rewatching this video over and over again. The short confrontation I had with Anna a couple of nights ago had been on my mind since I woke up. Even if I wanted to ignore it, I couldn’t. It seemed someone had secretly taken a video of us that night and now every major media handle was talking about it. Once again, my outburst was costing me my reputation. However, I didn’t care much about that. Watching that night over and over again, I realized how insensitive and disrespectful I’d been. She wasn’t my property, but I sure made it seem so. No wonder she quit on me.I was hoping she’d come around to tender her resignation the morning after. It would give me a chance to properly apologize for being such an asshole, but she never did.Heaving a deep sigh, I tossed my iPad away and sat on the bed, wishing I could take back that day.How did it go so wrong? After the conversation with my mother, I was convinced I wanted to be with Ann
Mark Sure enough, as the door opened, a man with deep brown hair tied in a man bun and a grey bespoke suit walked in. Immediately I saw him, my brows creased in anger and a sudden rage ran through me. This was the last person I’d expected to see, “What are you doing here?” He looked at me with a content gaze and smiled, “I’m sure you know why I’m here, Mark. We have a mutual interest and her protection is of importance to us.” “Jack is it?” I started, unable to conceal my disdain towards him. The mere sight of him was aggravating considering he was the same jerk that Mark chose to go with. “Her protection isn’t any of your business, if you want to do Ms. Brookes a favor, you’ll crawl back to whatever hole you dug your way out of,” I replied firmly. “See, that’s where you’re wrong,” he chuckled. “You don’t get to decide who Anna chooses to have around. I can see she respects you and doesn’t want to end things badly with you, that’s the only reason why I’m here, to talk some se
MarkShaking his head, Jack turned and headed for the door. “Think it over.”That was the last thing he said before I slammed the door behind him. It felt good. To me, Jack was nothing more than just a manipulative prick who for all we knew could be one of the people after Anna. He couldn’t be trusted. If I was going to relocate to Europe for some time, I had to keep tabs on him.I was now certain of what I wanted - a future full of life, and with Anna. I wouldn’t allow anything to happen to her, even if that meant protecting her from her decisions and this thing with Jack that was clearly a mistake.Pissed off about Jack knowing about my relocation, I figured there was only one person who he could have learned that from. I picked up my phone and dialed her number. Every second that it rang, I became angrier until finally, she answered, and her voice caught me off guard. “Mark, I didn’t think you’d be calling so soon…” she said, her voice squeaky and nervous.“What Mia? Surprised tha
MarkI paced around trying to figure out who could have informed Jack about Europe. If it wasn’t Mia, then who could it have been? Jonathan had just broken the news to me recently, and I doubted he’d told anyone at the company yet. So how did Jack find out? I pondered heavily but every time I was close to a lead, the pieces just didn’t fall into place. None of this made sense. After trying futilely, I gave up. The only thing on my mind at that moment was meeting Anna and patching up things before I had to travel.Grabbing my phone, I tried to call Eric again to check in on what he found, but before I did, my phone suddenly rang. It was my mother and I already knew what she was calling about.It’s safe to say the night Anna quit on me, I may have gone a bit overboard after I returned home. I was shocked by my father’s calmness. After the things I said to him and the rest of the family, I’d expected to be cut off, but strangely I wasn’t.I heaved a deep sigh and let the phone ring ti
AnnaA few days had passed and I was still having a difficult time getting over how I ended things with Mark. He may have been an annoying douchebag, but he had helped me in a time when no one else would. I couldn’t help but think he deserved a chance at an apology at least. Lately, I had been trying to keep myself more busy than usual, juggling activities from picking up my children from school to random meetings with Jack and online fashion design classes, and in doing so, realized that my life was pretty slow and I didn’t know what to do with all that free time.For the past eight years, I haven’t had enough time to myself, being in between jobs and trying to raise kids, I had to let go of some of my dreams, but now with this money, I could chase my dreams of being a beauty and fashion brand owner and still provide for my children.A couple of days ago, I registered for a fashion design class around Lake Placid, but the classes were not to start until a couple of weeks from now.S
Anna When I looked at the screen now, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed seeing it was Jack. I hadn’t talked to him lately and we were supposed to meet this weekend to meet with my family’s lawyer and legally reclaim my inheritance. “Hey Jack, how are things going?” I said as soon as I picked up the phone “Things are going pretty well. I just wanted to inform you that your family’s lawyer, Bryan Ferr has just arrived in Delroy and we should be meeting him tomorrow to go over your family’s properties and inheritance. I hope you remember the plan, right?” He asked with a serious tone. Nodding my head, I answered, “Yes, we can’t meet with The Circle’s council until there’s legal proof that you are indeed the heir of the Brooke family, which means I’ll have to completely claim my family’s inheritance and be ready to take up my position as the head of The Circle.” I repeated word to word, just like he had said them. “Anna, till we’re done with all of these, you have
Anna“What are you getting at? You want us to do business with Mark?” I asked, quirking my brows.Jack remained silent for a while and then heaved a deep breath, “We don’t have that much option right now. Chances are anyone we hire or try to ally with is probably already working for Edgar. We can’t risk a chance of having our plans exposed. Mark cares about you Anna, his family is well-connected and we can trust that he’ll be heavily interested in keeping you safe if we bring him on board.” He argued. I had to admit, as much as I thought this was a bad idea, Jack had argued some valid points. He was right, we couldn’t trust anyone, and even though Mark was acting in a way I could not understand right now, I could still count on him to show up for me.“I thought you said we couldn’t trust anyone, and don’t you two hate each other? If we were to work with him, what would happen then?” I asked, with a hint of doubt. It seemed rather unlikely that those two could put aside their male ego
Anna As I hurried towards the door, the doorbell rang again and I became more curious. I wasn’t expecting anyone this weekend, I’d sent my children to their babysitter and Jack said he wasn’t coming over till later this evening. With no hesitation, I swung open the door and immediately froze in shock. Standing at the other end of the door, holding a bouquet was none other than Mark, with a wide smile plastered on his face. My hands weakened immediately as I stared at him right there, yet still in disbelief. “Let me call you back,” I said to Jack and without waiting for his response, ended the call. Seeing Mark at my doorstep was the last thing I expected, and right at that moment, there were a lot of feelings I did not know how to control. The way he looked at me made my skin crawl with pleasure, not with anger or disgust like I’d expected our next run-in or encounter to be. I wasn’t quite sure why he was here, or how he even found my address, but for a short moment, it didn’t