Let’s see how Aurora will react.

Whatever path she chooses will only lead back to me.

Where she was supposed to be eleven fucking years ago.

6

Aurora

The following day, I go to work with fresh motivation.

I spent the entire night tossing and turning in bed, mad at myself for letting Jonathan treat me as his property or a small child. No idea which pissed me off the most, but they both left me boiling in pent-up rage.

So I decided to completely ignore him.

Yes, he tore Ethan’s card, but I have direct contact with Agnus, which is the next best thing.

Today, I’m going to continue concept designing and forget about the bank’s axe that’s hovering over our necks like a guillotine.

They’re only holding off the auctioning of the stocks because we begged them. ‘We,’ as in me and my partner in crime.

Speaking of which, I swing by her office, juggling two caramel iced coffees. The reason we’re friends, as she likes to remind me.

She’s not there.

I greet my workers good morning, keeping my face devoid of the anxiety I see radiating off them. The atmosphere here has been grim and tense for a few months now.

The factory has been working irregularly lately and the bank’s workers have come to define its value.

Employees gossip, no matter how much we try to convince them that we’ll get H&H out of this funk.

Some even started to request days off to search for another job. I don’t blame them. After all, they need to earn a living, and if this situation we’re in continues, we’ll be forced to let some of them go.

The moment I open my office, I’m greeted by the sound of Don’t Look Back in Anger by Oasis. Layla’s taste in music is kind of stuck in the past and she still mourns the band’s break up.

My partner and best friend stands in front of the transparent board, scribbling at supersonic speed.

She has a tiny frame, so when she wears baggy trousers and oversized hoodies, she appears like a street hip-hop singer — a fact she’s proud of that since she considers herself street-made through and through.

Her hair is covered by a scarf, tucked elegantly at her neck. Layla is also a devoted Muslim and a third-generation British citizen. Her father is of Pakistani heritage and her mother is Tunisian.

As a result, her skin tone is a shade darker than her Caucasian mother’s and lighter than her South Asian father’s. She has the smoothest skin I’ve ever seen, outside of Photoshopped advertisements, and her huge brown eyes can show you the world if you stare at them hard enough.

“Oasis this early in the morning?”

She reaches out to me without lifting her head. “My iced coffee, mate.”

“Here.” I push it into her hand and we take a slurp at the same time, then sigh.

I stand beside her in front of the board. She’s writing up her marketing plan — the one we’ll need if we get investments.

When we first started this adventure straight after graduating from uni, we agreed that I’d take care of the designing side of the business and she’d do the marketing because she’s a genius at that.

Five years later, we were killing it. Our company had gone from two people to more than one hundred. We made that happen. Just Layla and I. Until that bastard Jake ruined what we built in years in a matter of months.

“This is the best.” She takes another slurp. “I feel more energised and ready to kick butt.”

“You must’ve had some coffee already.”

“I need two to fully wake up. Remember dorm days?”

“Ugh.” I used to literally splash her with water so she’d wake up and not be late for class.

“Uh-huh. Exactly.”

“Looks good.” I motion at the board.

“Not good enough, but forget about that.” She takes my hand and leads me to the sofa opposite my desk, then tells Alexa to stop playing the music. “How did it go yesterday?”

“I told you.”

“A text in the middle of the night that says, ‘I think we’re good, talk to you tomorrow’ explains rubbish. I need details.”

“Lay…”

“All of them,” she speaks like a stern mother and I sigh, then tell her the gist of what went down yesterday and the dreadful meeting with Jonathan. I’d previously told her that the mere thought of that particular encounter scared the shit out of me.

“Bollocks,” she breathes out after I’m finished.

“Bollocks indeed.”

“So your nephew really called you Mum?”

“Seriously, Lay?”

“What? I think that’s cute.”

“Aiden is anything but cute. He’s the mini version of his father.”

“So what’s the problem here?”

“Jonathan threatened me. If I go through with this with Ethan, he’ll come after me.”

“Not if you have Ethan’s protection.”

My brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

She takes a generous gulp of her iced coffee and crosses one leg over the sofa, fully facing me. “Okay, listen up. So Jonathan is like this big bad wolf, right? Guess who can kill a wolf?”

“A hunter?”

“Yeah, but we don’t have that. What’s the next best thing?”

“I’m not even sure where you’re going with this. Is this another one of your crazy ideas?”

“Focus, mate. What else but a hunter can kill a wolf?”

“Spare me the suspense.”

“Another wolf.”

“Another wolf?”

“The only way to bring Jonathan down is to use Ethan.”

“Really?”

“Why do you think Jonathan is so against the idea of you going to Ethan? He knows that if you have Steel Corporation’s support, he won’t be able to touch you. In a way, we’ll be under Ethan’s protection, and he’s known to take great care of small businesses and even their lawsuits.”

“You think?”

“I’m kind of sure.”

“Kind of?”

“The fact that he insists to know where you’ve been in the past keeps throwing me off.” She takes another sip of her coffee. “Why don’t you clear that up?”

“I don’t owe him anything.”

“You don’t, but if it can clear a misunderstanding, do it. It’s better not to be on his radar at all.”

Problem is, I think I already am. I screwed it up yesterday and I’ve been flagged by Jonathan whether I like it or not.

Besides, what misunderstanding could there be? Jonathan and I always lived in different worlds. Hell, his nineteen-year-old son doesn’t seem to know he has an aunt.

We have that much distance between us, yet he acted as if it never existed.

“So?” Layla urges.

“What?”

“What are you waiting for? Call Ethan.”

“Shouldn’t I give him more time to think about it?”

“More like forget about it. A man like him must receive a hundred company offers per day. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Hit it while it’s hot, mate.”