?Extra Characters:(1) Alissa Jiang - chosen wife for Nick/ex- gf of Gavin
(2) Gavin Li - Nick"s brother
(3) Li Hong / Uncle Li - Nick and Gavin"s father
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July 18, 20xx
Piraeus, Athens
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Nick watched the changing numbers on the elevator as he waited for the doors to open.
He turned his head when someone called him out.
His blank face looked at Alissa who was standing a few steps away from him.
She looked the same. Tall and thin. Her brown hair was twisted into a bun that s.h.i.+ned with glossiness. Not a strand was out of place. Her mink brown eyes were focused on him and her lips were curved up.
Yet, he never found her attractive. He always wondered what made his brother like this woman. Her smiles gave the impression of being fake. Her eyes always appeared to be sizing up anyone in front of her and the tilted chin as if looking down on people. If not because of Gavin begging him to accept her, he would have never spoken to this woman or even hired her in his company before.
"What do you want?" he asked coldly.
"Could we talk?"
Nick"s brow raised. "Talk."
"Not here,"
He glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch and noted, he needed to return before his wife awakens.
"10 minutes."
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Two minutes later, they were sitting opposite each other in a cafe inside the hospital.
"What"s your order?" the waiter asked.
"A cup of ----"
What she was saying was stopped when Nick gave the waiter a dismissive wave of a hand.
The young man thought this customer was rude but seeing how his dark eyes stared at him, he scrambled away.
"You are scaring him."
"What do you want?" he asked with a quick, disgusted snort.
Alissa cleared her throat and bowed her head, "I am sorry about Gavin. I didn"t mean to hurt him."
Mentioning his brother, Nick"s jaw tightened and rejected her apologies, "I am not the right person to hear that."
"But Gavin never wants to talk to me," she complained while she gently bit her lip.
Nick smirked at the woman"s stupidity. She"s smart but she"d forgotten easily what she did.
His forehead furrowed, "Why shouldn"t he?"
"I broke up with him because I don"t love him, Nick."
"I don"t care whether you love him or not. You should have never toyed with his feelings in the beginning."
The words made Alissa reflect from the past.
The first time she"d seen Nick was when she moved to Uncle Li"s house after her mother died. She was 10 and Nick was 13. The moment her eyes fell on the sight of him, she blushed. She didn"t understand what it was but she liked following him around. But he was always aloof and avoided her. So, she hung out more with Gavin who was 11 then. Because Gavin usually spends the afternoon playing with his brother, she started tagging along with them. Yet, even if she became the younger brother"s close friend, his treatment of her never changed. In spite of this, this didn"t deter her persistence to be close to him.
One day, Nick approached her. She was so excited when he said he wanted to talk to her. Yet to her dismay, he warned her not to use Gavin to get close to him. Her eyes puffed for crying all night because of this. The next day, she went to see him to confess her feelings. However, Nick left and she"d never seen him again until her and Gavin"s graduation. At the time, she was going out with his younger brother.
She noticed that Nick changed. He talked to her politely but at least with less animosity. She was even happier when she landed her first job in NL Industries as an a.s.sistant Marketing Director. She was confident with her skills and intelligence but she was afraid to tell him how she feels. Apart from worrying that he will distance himself, she was engaged to Gavin Li.
Then three days before the wedding, Uncle Li offered her something she can never refuse. To become the Operations Manager for his newly established real estate company overseas. In her desire to be at par with Nick, she broke up with Gavin and went to the US.
Alissa accepted on the premise that Uncle Li will allow her to marry his first son in the future. He promised and told her, he was planning the same thing.
Now, she"s the President of this company and she can now proudly stand next to Nick.
Alissa fixated her teary brown eyes on him and confessed, "I love you, Nick."
Instantly, there was that force in him wanting to spit and the compulsion to flee, just to be somewhere clean because what she said made the surroundings dirtier and polluted.
Nick shook in gooseb.u.mps hearing his name coming from her mouth. At the same moment, he grimaced. He"d love to hear that from Blythe, but never and will never be from this despicable woman named Alissa Jiang. He disliked her in the past. Ten folds at present. Heck, even in the afterlife.
He found it funny that he was wis.h.i.+ng fervently for this woman to be a c.o.c.kroach in her next life so people can easily squeeze out her life with just one step.
Besides, this smelly and filthy creature is a source of many bacteria that cause diseases. They are insects with no meaningful contribution to society, just like her. They are simply loathsome.
An ugly twist in his mouth was evident when he asked sarcastically, "Do you? or the things that I possess?"
Alissa felt a lump formed on her throat and was unable to think of words to refute him.
"See? Just like my father, you are a narcissist. Both of you are preoccupied with money, success, and power. The only thing that differs, you"re not a s.a.d.i.s.t like him. But who knows?"
He shrugged his shoulders in disgust.
That is how his therapist viewed his father"s abusive tendencies when Nick was young. It took many years for him to understand his father"s behavior. Even as a child, he always wondered how could a father be cruel and charming at the same time.
He flapped his hand in dismissal to cut out whatever that"s going to be spewed out by her. He hates nonsense. Moreover, let her not contribute to global warming. The more she talks, the more she emits carbon dioxide.
He pushed his chair and stood up. The only reason why he had this conversation in the first place was that need to sound her out. He had to know why she left Gavin. It turns out, she never loved his brother at all.
He stepped away in haste. At this moment, he desired to see his wife. This hospital trip was just a complete waste of his time. He utterly regretted it.
"Nick!" she shouted and ran after him with her 5-inch stilettos. She caught up and tried to grab his arm to refrain him from leaving but the appalled man swatted her grasp like she had a contagious disease.
She sidestepped trying to hold her balance but, her heels were unstable. They snapped, twisting her ankles at once. Because of being thrown out of balance and the ineptness to clutch on something for support, she stumbled. Her b.u.m hit the steps of the stairs.
A loud thud was heard.
A sudden and intense pain scattered out from her pelvis to her spine with the impact of her fall. It felt like she broke something. On her eyes was confusion and the world seemed upside down. She tried to move to minimize the pain but it was extremely unpleasant.
In her dizziness and nausea, she was certain she was hallucinating when she heard his scornful and resolute voice, "Don"t call me Nick. I don"t know you."
Nick turned away ignoring the fallen woman but when he remembered something, he stopped and warned her, "Don"t ever think of appearing on my sight or even in front of my family."
There was an uncontrollable shudder in her when she heard these words. It never crossed her mind that he despised her to this extent. She thought that if she"ll reach the top, it would be easier to get close to him.
There was a dull ache in her heart that added to the severe painful sensation in her bottom. She felt she was dying.
Her head started spinning and her heartbeat seemed to stop momentarily. No matter how much she wanted to stay composed, she groaned in the loudest and most unladylike howl that reached Nick"s ears but he never gave her a backward glance.
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The next moment she returned to her senses, she was lying down on her stomach inside a room that looked like any hospital room but not exactly like one. It was a sterile room filled with metal furnis.h.i.+ngs and tools. She was on a movable bed. She was surrounded by three-layered metal containers. Next to her, was another bed with an outline of a person covered with white cloth.
The room was very cold. The air was so creepy that the hairs on her skin were standing for an unknown reason.
When her sight caught the feet that were poking out from what looked like a humongous freezer that can fit a body, her eyes widened in disbelief.
"NO!!!!!!!!!!!" she yelled and tried to move but every time she did it, the pain was unbearable and excruciating.
She conked out again in fear.
Alissa had been pa.s.sing in and out but always being awoken by the numbing pain emanating from her lower back.
The overwhelming sting was intolerable. She really needs something for it.
"Why are you making me suffer?"
"Please, pain reliever pl-----ease." she croaked. She"d lost her voice for screaming out for the last two hours or more.
"Pleeeea.s.ssseeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"
"Let me out!!!!!!!!!"
Her repeated wails reverberated to call out the attention of anyone outside.
But the man stationed outside that empty wing of the hospital where the morgue was, remained deaf to her piercing cry.
No matter how much he pitted this patient who dislocated her coccyx, keeping his job is what matters.
The owner of the hospital ordered all staff not to treat this crazy woman if they wanted to keep their post.
Who wants to leave this workplace? It"s one of the leading hospitals in Europe in terms of medicine development.
They"d rather be unsympathetic than to lose their source of income.
It was the same for this bald mortician as he put on his headphones to listen to Beethoven"s Silence.
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Somewhere in the city, this telephone conversation was on-going.
"You know that it"s inhumane not to treat patients, right?" Dr. Moreau asked in French. His family controls a large part of the healthcare industry in Europe.
Nick laughed at his second cousin"s question. Dr. Moreau"s grandmother is Trinette"s sister.
"Save your pity to humans."
"Isn"t she one?"
"No, she"s my father"s expensive dog."
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? A/N:
In the real world, it is inhumane not to give medical treatment to someone who is suffering or injured. A doctor can lose his/her medical license if this is discovered by the Medical Board. However, in this chapter, I went beyond this reality. Please remember that although this novel leans more to real events in this world, it is still a work of fiction. Hence, some things were purposely thwarted/ altered to give the effect I intended to deliver.