She kept mulling about it, wondering why Zayn had decided to come all the way to the fashion house for a meeting when the great Zayn Graham never met people out of his comfort zone. The best he could do was to set up the meeting at a diner and spend the first hour eating to his satisfaction before addressing the issue that had brought him there in the first place.
Rina had learned in a negotiation class she took a while ago that it was trite to make the other person not only know but understand his place in the meeting. It was a power play, where dominance was boldly asserted. But Zayn took his a tad farther. He just didn’t care about what the other person had to say, since most times, they were the ones who always needed his help.
The cab stopped at her regular stop and Rina alighted, not bothering to say thank you. These days, all of them had a foul look on their faces, and some of them even went as far as zooming off the minute they realized she was the one. Rina thought that treatment would stop after a while, but apparently, she’d been wrong.
But the backlash on social media had at least, stopped. They’d moved on to the next victim already, the spirit of the internet doing its thing. That was the whole disposition of life. No one was ever in a spot forever. There would always be something new coming up, but it was best to avoid the internet remembering all those things because once they did, they would come back for her.
Although Rina wasn’t scared of what they could do to her, it was the reason she still hadn’t uploaded any new pictures on her Instagram. She was bidding her time, waiting for the moment she’d used her anonymity to get the support of the industry and the whole country, before making her move.
Then, they would unavoidably come to her side again. Rina couldn’t wait for it.
The thought brought a grin to her face, a light spring in her steps as she approached the cottage. She halted abruptly when her eyes came face to face with the last persons on earth she wanted to see. In the last couple of months, they seemed to have grown even more inhumane, like they didn’t care who was in the right or wrong.
“Finally!” Kayla said through clenched teeth. I was beginning to think you had no plans of returning to your cottage.” She paused for a dramatic effect, then lowered her eyes and sneered. “Or should I say, Finn’s cottage since you’re only occupying it temporarily?”
Rina didn’t think she would have to face this until they appeared in court, and that was only if she couldn’t do anything about the case before the date it was slated for the preliminaries. She had thought about it on the ride too, making the plan to call a couple of lawyers she used to know when she was still popular in the industry, with her fingers crossed that they wouldn’t be as mean to her as the producers had been.
“Don’t you think it’s too early to count your chicks when the eggs are yet to hatch?” Rina said, her lips raised in a smirk. “Or didn’t you learn that in elementary school?”
“Elementary school didn’t include the factor of having all the powers of the country in your hands.” That jab might have hit if Rina didn’t have Zayn by her side, and even though she’d asked him not to meddle in her personal life, it felt great to have that as a wall around her, causing Finn’s words to bounce off.
But they didn’t know that.
Kayla chuckled at Finn’s attempt and Rina closed her eyes, counting two seconds in her head before opening her eyes again. In those two seconds, she’d prayed for patience not to lunge at Kayla with all the hurt and betrayal she had felt, making sure her former best friend felt every bit of it. But Rina wasn’t going to reduce herself to their level anymore. She did it once by getting married to Finn and allowing Kayla to deceive her for many years.
Rina refused to be that lady again.
“Just in case you didn’t understand what the motion read,” Finn started, walking closer to Rina. She looked up at him, suddenly remembering what had made her fall for him in the first place. Finn was a dashing young man, with a slender pointed nose, grey eyes, and lips to die for. His gait reminded her of every good thing, so much so that she had opted to spend the rest of her life with him.
But now that Rina had broken away from that confines, she could see clearly. And she knew that Finn couldn’t stand by the side of the man she was supposed to get married to. There might be no feelings attached and every bit of their relationship might be on paper, but it still made Rina feel good like she was armed with a secret weapon.
“It was meant to bring you up to speed with my plans and tell you that it wasn’t a mere threat,” Finn continued, stopping right in her face. His breath washed over her skin, and Rina felt repulsed, recoiling from him. “The matter is in court now, but we can end it all here if you just had over the ownership documents. You know how the public perceives you already. Do you want to have this all over the news and internet as well? That would ruin your already shattered reputation. Don’t you think?”
Rina regarded him like he had the most disgusting smear on his face. “Are you done talking?”
“What” Kayla was the one who snapped this time around. Her eyes widened in surprise like she hadn’t been expecting that response. She thought Rina would cower in fear, just as she had done in the living room, that day when Finn walked out on her.
For a few seconds, Kayla was scared Rina had actually grown a thicker skin, but then she remembered the daughter of who she was.
Kayla feared no one.