Rina had told herself over and over again that the last thing she would let Kayla elicit from her is fear and tears, especially what happened the last time with her losing her reputation in the country. It still stuck to her like glue the aftermath, everything she’d had to go through. And now, it was happening again, sneaking its arms around her and threatening to pull her under. But Rina held her ground, refusing to let it overwhelm her again.
Despite how scary the gun looked, being waved in her face, Rina tried to calm herself down, to think through the situation at hand and try to find a way around it. Swallowing, she counted to ten in her head, then smiled disdainfully at Kayla. “You are still the same child from many years ago, do you know that?”
“Your psychoanalysis isn’t going to work on me.”
“But think about it. We were nineteen, with huge dreams and bright smiles, walking through those doors knowing we’d just gotten scouted into the movie industry. You were scared. I saw the fear in your eyes, but still, you held your head high.” Rina chuckled suddenly. “Or maybe that was just me seeing things that weren’t truly there. Now that I think about it, you’ve always had an incredible way of making people believe you even when you weave a strong lie. Your parents, the board of directors at Scottsdale, me, Finn not that he doesn’t deserve it.”
“Yeah,” Kayla spat at her. “You all are just so gullible that it didn’t even take me anything to get you under my charms. Oh, cute Kayla, humble Kayla, the rich girl who is kind enough to be friends with someone like you from a poor background, desperately trying to make it out here.”
“You are correct, only that now I just found out that I am the daughter of the late Jones family, and you are still trying to take that away from me. Aren’t you tired of doing that? You wanted my career so desperately, that you were willing to be friends with me for so long just to get into my life and find the perfect opportunity to strike, and then you wanted Finn to yourself since I was the one who had him in the first place. And now, I am engaged to Zayn, but all of a sudden, you want him too.”
“Zayn was always meant to be mine, Rina,” Kayla slurred with mock sweetness. “That is one thing I don’t expect someone like you to understand. But now that you are here, under my binds, and given the fact that I have nothing to lose, I might as well tutor you on some things. Zayn and I go way back to the periods when we were still kids, attending the same nursery and grade school. He would always smile at me on the way to his class, and wave me goodbye before going with his father. And then, just like me, he grew up to be the most spectacular, handsome, and powerful man in the country a force to be reckoned with. Who in their right senses wouldn’t think he and I are meant to be? Tell me.”
Rina laughed, a hollow sound that reverberated around the space, the echo feeding back to them. “You sure are delusional, Kayla. It is understandable that Zayn did all of that for you because he was just being downright nice, perhaps as a result of the fact that no one in school wanted to talk to you. You have a nasty habit, Kayla, so they can’t be blamed for wanting to stay away from the witch. But it all ended there. Zayn has never believed in love and never did until he met me. I am the one he is in love with, and I guess someone like you would never understand that.”
Rina threw Kayla’s words back at her, earning a surprised expression. “What you deserve is a go at all my leftovers, because that has been your trajectory the roles already assigned to me before you made Scottsdale blacklist me, the interviews I was supposed to go for but had to make you a replacement instead, my ex-husband, my old house…Can you see where I’m headed?”
A dark look crossed Kayla’s eyes and at that moment, she lost her shit. Laughing awkwardly, she leaned away from Rina and sauntered away to a cackling tin in the center of the warehouse, returning a moment later with an iron rod still with red flickers on its base. “I was not going to do this, Rina, because I thought you deserved death. But maybe you don’t. Perhaps, what you need is something more permanent, something that will make you think of me at every chance you get. And you see this little comeback you think you staged, my pretty iron rod here will have it gone in the snap of my fingers.”
“Kayla…” Rina moved in her seat, trying to push away from the rod.
“Oh! So now you can be scared. I know I made the right decision setting this up too.”
“You can’t possibly think you would get away with this,” Rina murmured, even though the former cockiness in her voice was gone. “The cops are going to find you, and Zayn is not going to let this go either. He will hunt you to the ends of the earth and have you pay back for hurting me.”
“I don’t think it will get to that extent,” Kayla smiled, leaning into Rina. “I’m only going to place it on your face, the one spot everyone can’t stop staring at or talking about. Let’s see whether Zayn will still profess love to you before the whole world when you are nothing but an unrecognizable mixture of ruined flesh and bones. He is going to look at you like an appalling sight, and guess who would be there to easily slide into his life?”
The iron rod was getting dangerously close to Rina’s skin and she feared there was nothing she could do about it.