Chapter 49: Chapter 49

CHAPTER 6

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. With no further ado, I'll get straight to the reason why I requested for your presence here. Some of you have had the pleasure of seeing me and even, conversing with me, while the rest of you have not. Hell, some of you don't even know who I am. Well, allow me introduce myself. I am Natalie Devaux Richardson, chairman of Carrington Industries. Contrary to what the lot of you might think, I am not just some spoiled socialite. I'm here for a purpose, just like the rest of you are. I see the stares, the dirty looks I get. However, I'm not here to whine about that. You may continue to give the stares and dirty looks. The one thing I ask is that you do not make the mistake of underestimating me. I haven't been here long enough but from what I encountered earlier today, a lot of you might be willing to go to extreme measures to get rid of me. After all, your loyalties would lie with those you have known before me." I say as I begin to walk towards the stairs. I look up, and I smile internally as I see Luke standing, watching me from upstairs. We share an eye lock. I look away and begin to go down the stairs. I can still feel his eyes on me.

I continue, "In essence, what I'm trying to say is; if you hold a grudge against me or have quarrel with me or simply dislike me for reasons best known to yourselves," I say, as I approach the crowd, the sound of my heels echoing as I walk. The crowd parts into half as I walk further. I halt. The doors open as per my request. I point at the glass door wide open.

"Get out." I state, looking them all in the eyes. I can see mixed emotions and reactions. Some surprised, some amazed, some scared, some indifferent, and some irritated by my boldness. "The door is frozen and will remain so for the next hour. Enough time to pack and find your way out should you decide to leave."

Immediately, I walk towards the south side lift as quickly as I can. I enter. They all look at me as the door closes and I smile.

"Count your days, Luke, because your days in this company are numbered."

Two days later.

The week had gone by rather slowly, but I am grateful because Saturday was only a few hours away.

I take off my shades as I alight from the car. I adjust my fur coat as the weather is quite cold. Just before I begin to walk towards the company entrance, my eyes fall on Luke who's just come out of his car, the car we once shared together. He's in a black tux, as usual, his blonde hair perfectly styled. I look away, and put my sunglasses back on. I begin to walk towards the entrance. He's beside me, and I stop. He stops too, his entourage stopping a few feet behind him.

"I don't have all day." He says, and I chuckle. Is this man insane?

"I beg your pardon?"

"Ladies first." He says, and I can't help but laugh. I laugh until I begin to feel tears in my eyes. He had become quite a joker.

"You know, I don't even know what to say to you at this point. You would make a good comedian. You should start thinking of it, because you might need it sooner than you think." I say. I enter inside the building and head towards the elevator. I enter. The doors close and I'm glad, because he didn't get the chance to enter. I got extremely irritated whenever he spoke to me.

I arrive at the hallway leading to my office.

"Good morning Ms. Richardson." A group of employees chorus. I nod and wave as I walk to my office.

"Good morning ma'am." Jennifer says. I take off my shades.

"Good morning. Can you get me a cup of coffee? Dalgona." I say to her.

I go into the office and sigh at the pile of documents I have to go through. Business proposals, finalized documents of projects and a few credit documents.

I sit, taking a document out of the proposals. It's a business proposal from a company called BY Group. The first few pages are introductory. The business is family owned, ran by the matriarch of the family. I flip through the pages until I see what catches my eyes. The product they want us to invest on. It's wireless power banks that can be charged with solar energy. It sounded very interesting. They wanted us to invest in their product and also, give counsel because Carrington Industries was mainly a power brewing company.

Jennifer arrives with my coffee. "I didn't know if you wanted sugar or not, so I got two cups, one with sugar, and another without sugar."

I smile, "Thank you." I watch her as she leaves. I wondered seriously if she was truly Luke's mole. I look at my wristwatch, it was almost 1pm, lunch break time. Time had gone by really quickly as I was going through the documents. My phone rings. It's Ashley. I pick.

"Downstairs? Why are you here?" I ask, getting up. She'd brought Louis over, without my consent. "Just stay there, don't talk to anyone and don't move." I say to her. I rush downstairs as fast as I can, my legs hurting as I rush.

"Sorry!" I say as I bump into a staff. I reach the ground floor and there, I see Ashley, and Aunt Ruth holding my son. I heave a sigh of relief as I walk up to them.

"Aunt." I say as we exchange pecks. I carry Louis and hold him tightly. I spread kisses all over his face. He laughs, his growing teeth in full display. He makes baby noises and I adjust his shirt.

"I didn't know you'd be coming. Why didn't you inform me, especially bringing Louis." I say to aunt.

"I wanted to take my grandson shopping, is that so bad? Besides, I missed you, darling." She says as she caresses my face.

"Ashley, how are you? Did you have lunch already?"

"Yes, ma'am. I did" The teenager states. I remember when I found her in a supermarket, shoplifting. Her story was similar to mine. Her adoptive father had just died too and she didn't know who her mother was. She had nowhere and didn't know any family.

"Did you give him a bottle before leaving?" I say as my son begins to hold my breasts. He was probably hungry. That was Louis way of saying he was hungry, so I knew whenever he held or touched them, he was hungry. Something tells me to look up, and as though I could feel his eyes on me, I see Luke looking at us from the last floor, where his office was. He looks rather shocked. He had on an expression I couldn't quite explain. He begins to walk hurriedly, looking back every second.

"Isn't that. . .?” Aunt Ruth asks. "Let's go. Now!" I say as we exit the building. Thankfully, the car is still in front of the building so we enter and drive off. What was he trying to do? Why was he rushing down? Did he want to see Louis? I ask myself all these questions as I hold my son as tight as I possibly can. I would never let Luke get his dirty hands on my son. Never.

"Earth to Natalie, for God's sake!" Aunt Ruth yells, and I jerk back into reality.

"I've been calling your name for the last minute, look, Louis is crying!”

I look down at my baby and I'm saddened. "I'm sorry, my love. Oh!” I hurriedly unbutton my shirt to feed him. I run my fingers through his hair as I feed him.

"Sweet boy," Aunt says as she plays with his feet. "You know you must stop breastfeeding him soon and you'll probably stop producing milk anytime from now. Louis is almost one."

I nod, "I know, but I just can't say no to my son. He loves eating from me, and I feel such a special connection every time I get to feed him."

She smiles, "I wish I could understand what you meant by that. I mean, experience it, you know." I hold her hand to comfort her. I look outside the window. I was sad, extremely unhappy. It happened after Luke saw the baby and I. I wanted to be alone, at this particular moment. I wanted to cry and scream. I was deprived of my fathers love and now, my son who's innocent was deprived of his fathers love too.

I receive a text. It's from Lee Martins. He's in town and wants to meet up at Fahrenheit.

"Take me to Fahrenheit, please." I say to the chauffeur. "Once I drop, please, aunt, take Louis back home. We can shop together, some other time." I say.

At Fahrenheit.

"Any intel on the woman in the photo?" I ask him.

He nods. He opens the brown envelope and begins to bring out pictures. "Her name is Hajiya Amal Aaidah."

"She's Muslim?"

"And mixed race. This is her brother Zured and her youngest sister Aaraf. They're orphans. Their parents died around early 2014." He brings out another photo. I gasp, shocked as I scan the photo. "They got married around June 2014." He says.

"Are you certain? It can't be." I say as I look at the photo. It wasn't a wedding picture, but clearly, there was a ring on Lucas' finger alongside his alleged wife. I couldn't believe it, but there was solid proof before my eyes. I didn't want to believe it.

"He returned to London legally, with his actual identity but changed his name afterwards. Amal's parents left a fortune. They had mines and oil rigs scattered over Africa. Senegal, South Africa, Mauritius— a lot of countries, to sum it up. Somehow, that fortune ended up with Luke, although his efforts in the company made the wealth multiply abundantly."

"How did Amal's parents die?"

"Plane crash.”

"Don't you think there's something shady about it? Did you find anything in regards to that?"

"No, but I will if you request for it."

"I do. Find out whatever it is you can about the plane crash. Everything!"

He clears his throat, "I'd have to increase my fees."

"You know money isn’t a problem. Find out more about that plane crash. Something's amiss." I say. The more I kept digging into Luke's past the more I began to understand the amount of skeletons he had hidden away. If I felt any morsel of pity for him at any point, it was all gone now. "Lastly, can I request for something else? A bit personal? I'll pay." I convince him.

"I need you to find me someone in the black market, with access to drugs. Can you do that?"

As his profession states, he doesn't query me about what I need such a contact for or what I wanted to do with banned drugs. He simply nods. "I'll have the contact sent to you before dusk." He says and gets up, arranging the envelope properly. He hands it over to me.

"Thank you." I say as I look at the envelope.