Rina stared at Kayla’s retreating figure, fury wrapping tight around her like a tightly belted jacket. She tried deep intakes of breath, even as her limbs trembled and her lips shook. Swallowing, Rina fished for her phone in her purse, her eyes still on Kayla as she leaned on her car outside, in a conversation with one of her men. They looked at her with so much respect that Rina wondered how Kayla managed to keep everyone fooled. None of them had seen her for who she really was, and Rina would only look like a raving lunatic the minute she opted to point fingers.
Still, she couldn’t let go of this. She called Zayn, and he answered on the first ring like he had been sitting around, waiting for her call to come in.
“Zayn,” she breathed, and at once, she could hear him sit up. Rina wasn’t going to call him first after the awkward conversation they’d had over the weekend, but there was no other person she could talk to. It was hard to admit, but since she became blacklisted, the only person she’d had in her space was Zayn. He knew every detail about her job and life in general, and it just felt normal wanting to talk to him about every change that occurred.
But this time, Rina was certain he knew what happened because there was no other person who would have made that call on her behalf other than him.
“What is it? Where are you?” He asked in one breath, out of his chair already and heading towards the door to his office. “Do you need me to get you?”
“I just saw Kayla,” Rina said, plopping back into the seat she’d occupied before as exhaustion wound itself around her. “Her cockiness is annoying. You purchased her land, didn’t you? And sent a message to her office.”
“You weren’t supposed to find out,” he said after a moment of silence. “Kayla sure doesn’t know when to back down.”
“She’s pissed, Zayn, and she said she was going to get back at me. I don’t know what that land was for since I don’t know a thing about real estate, but it must have been really important to have gotten her this riled up.”
“Just ignore her,” Zayn said. He was already outside the building, with William telling Mia to push back his schedule until he returned.
“That’s hard. She’s right in front of me, gloating like she had just won some battle. This is the third time she’s done this to my face, Zayn, and I don’t think I have it in me to wait till the fashion show before getting back at her. She has managed to deceive everyone that she’s some saint.”
“Where are you?” His voice sounded urgent. Rina didn’t know how to feel knowing that Zayn had just left everything he’d been doing for her sake.
“I’m at The Sunset. It’s not far from the fashion house.”
“I know the place. I’ll be right there.”
Rina felt a flash go off before her eyes, and she looked up in surprise. It dawned on her that she had forgotten to put her scarf back on and don her dark shades, but truth is told, she was too tired to bother with any of that. Looking back at the window, irritation snaked through her as she watched Kayla laugh at something one of her fans who had met her at the parking lot said.
She had gathered quite the crowd now and was giving out her autographs, with such an angelic smile that Rina would have been fooled if she didn’t know better.
“How does she even manage to do this?” Rina asked herself. The answer came to her almost immediately. They’d been friends since they were both nineteen, best friends even, yet Rina had never seen this side of her, at least aimed towards her. If she could have been such a great actress to someone who was supposedly close to her, how could the world who only saw her from screens find out?
Kayla still had that smile on her face when a stranger popped her head through the small crowd and pushed through in her direction. She stopped and smiled. “Hi, Kayla, huge fan of yours.”
For some reason, Rina had this feeling that something unusual was about to happen with the stranger’s arrival. Perhaps, it had something to do with the eerie look in her eyes or the way she was dressed, too regular enough to blend in with the crowd seamlessly. She had bangs covering her eyes as if ensuring that no one remembered her looks even if they saw her a second ago.
“It’s such an honor knowing I have people like you out here,” Kayla gushed, holding a hand to her chest. “Would you like an autograph?”
The stranger nodded with glee, stretching out a seemingly blank note to Kayla, but there must have been something written in it as the smile in her eyes drained immediately. The stranger disappeared in that split second, and Rina jumped in fright when her phone suddenly buzzed. Pulling her gaze away from the window, she read the message from Zayn, asking her to come outside.
Rina pushed the glass doors open and allowed the air to rustle her hair. She walked past Kayla and the crowd that was still trying to get her attention, oblivious to the fact that they’d lost it already.
“Rina!” Kayla called with a forced smile through her teeth, still conscious that people were watching her. “This was you wasn’t it?” She flashed a paper in Rina’s face, still with that sick smile on her face. Rina realized that it must be exhausting for Kayla to try so hard to keep up with a false identity.
Rina took in the content of the paper, her curiosity getting the better of her. It was a warning that read “If you don’t want the world finding out what you did to actress R and her unborn child, back the hell up. This is going to be the last warning.”
A matte black car with tinted windows stopped in front of Rina, just as she flashed a huge grin to Kayla. “I told you, Kayla. Don’t mess with me.”
She got into the passenger’s side of the car and gave Zayn an appreciative nod as he zoomed away, with Kayla unable to take her eyes off them.