Gina gazed intently at Damien whose eyes had been glancing at the door since she arrived. She had a suspicion since the day his assistant came to work late, but she needed to confirm first before raising any accusations that could lead to bigger problems.
“Damien” she called out, her voice carrying a heavy weight of suspicion and her gaze piercing through him. “Is there someone important that you are expecting?”
Damien was caught off guard by her question. He had forgotten she was in the office with him. He quickly ransacked his brain for any excuses it could come up with. “Erm… I’m not expecting anybody. Just bothered about something”
“Where’s Rachael, your assistant?… I haven’t seen her since I arrived here at the company. It’s like she’s disappeared” Gina asked, waiting patiently for his reply, her gaze not leaving him. “Is everything okay?”
Damien took her question as an opportunity to dispel the doubts in her heart. He wasn’t lying anyway. “I demoted her to the position of a secretary. She isn’t to be seen around me or anywhere around my office anymore… I’ve gotten rid of her, just like you’ve always wanted”
Gina’s eyes lit up in delight as she heard the news, and a radiant smile spread across her face, illuminating her gaze. “Are you serious?…. You mean that thorn in the flesh is gone for good. I don’t have to see her wretched face anymore, right?”
Damien’s brow furrowed at the depreciating words coming from Gina. He was stunned by the hatred she bore for the innocent lady, but what could he do?…. “I never knew you hated her so much”
“I do not hate her. I just feel she’s a big hindrance to our goal. She had to go” Gina replied, her tone utterly convincing, her gaze filled with curiousity. “So tell me, what led to her demotion?…. What was her offence?… Did she leak something confidential?”
Damien suddenly began to cough out loudly, banging his hand on his chest. He didn’t know the right and satisfying response to give to Gina. He couldn’t tell her he had done it out of rage because he saw her with another man. “I need water,” he said in a bid to distract her.
Gina quickly stood up from her seat and poured him a cup of water, her gaze lingering on him as she felt a disturbance in her heart. A gut feeling that suggested he was hiding something. She needed to find out and she knew who the right person to interrogate first. She was going to find Rachael and taunt her into spilling what had caused her demotion but first, she needed to deal with the sly and cunning man in front of her.
“Sorry,” she muttered distantly before a thought crossed her mind. “Have you heard anything about the new project Liam is planning to launch?…. You haven’t been feeding me with current happenings”
“I’m sorry… It skipped my mind” Damien apologized, his tone was sincere as he tried to avoid her gaze. “Liam Callahan has been very secretive about the new project. The only news we have for now is that his tech guy has developed a new upgrade for their project’s security system making it difficult for our technicians to breach it… We might have to resort to another means”
“Is it that bad?…. We need to find a way. I guess I will have to go to that man’s house again, who knows, there might be something useful like the last time” Gina suggested, her tone hesitating as she deliberated on their next line of action. “For once, I think that Rachael was quite useful, wasn’t she?”
A fleeting glint of sadness appeared in Damien’s eyes for a moment but it disappeared immediately he noticed it was a trap set by Gina to catch him off guard. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t need her help anymore… I have you”
“Awwwnn… That’s nice” Gina’s lips curved into a smile, and her mood improved slightly. “What about the investigation regarding my daughter’s relationship with Max?”
“Hahaha… That reminds me. I found something interesting” Damien chuckled, an evil smirk on his lips as he stared at Gina with a kind of gaze that she couldn’t seem to place a finger on. It was a gaze filled with pity, her daughter was going to be used as a pawn in their game, a pawn that would end up getting destroyed before it was tossed away. “The footage we got wasn’t clear enough but I think your daughter had an affair with her fiancee’s cousin… Don’t fix your mind on it, it’s uncertain until the footage is clear enough”
Gina felt like she had been poured a bucket of cold water. Her daughter had gotten deeply entangled with the life of the Callahan family. If Damien’s words were confirmed to be true, then her life would be ruined if she remained with Liam. “Damien, are you sure about this?… You shouldn’t joke about such matters… Maybe, I should cancel the engagement with Liam”
“Don’t even think of it”Damien fired at her in exasperation, anger in his tone, his gaze threatening. “Her presence in his life is the major thing that has kept him from suspecting you. She must remain there… We’ll find a way to pull her out when the time is right”
“But.. but we know how Max wants to bring his brother down. What if he uses that as leverage against him?” Gina faltered in her speech at the thought of her daughter becoming in the limelight amidst their web of deceit and the quest for revenge. “What if Max tries to expose the truth to the public, what then would become of my daughter’s future?… I want her to start a new life somewhere far from all this trouble but without a scar on her soul”
Damien was getting infuriated by Gina’s constant worrying but he needed to calm her down to avoid any shortcomings in his plans. “You worry too much, my dear. She won’t be affected to that extent.. at least, she wouldn’t bear the brunt of it all…. As long as Liam goes down, your daughter will get her life back… Although, I don’t think she’ll be willing to leave anymore”