Chapter 4
The taxi driver sensed the pain in her voice. She tried to sound cold, but her voice shook, proving that she was trying to mask her despair.
The taxi driver was naturally able to draw a few assumptions in his head, but the highest probability was… heartbreak.
'Something must've happened when she returned to her apartment,' he thought. But he dared not ask because when he glanced at her from his rearview mirror, he saw that the lady was staring straight with an empty expression on her face and her tears did not stop falling.
He drove the car in silence around downtown LA. He didn't dare speak to ask her questions nor stop anywhere. He just drove aimlessly avoiding the area they had come from.
The lady suddenly opened her mouth as they passed a liquor store, "Go back to that store. I want to buy a few things first."
"Y—Yes, Miss."
The driver parked the car and watched the lady enter the liquor store. She was in and out quickly, it didn't take her long to return with a bag full of alcohol, probably four or five bottles of booze.
She returned to the taxi and said, "Drive, I'll tell you where to go."
**
The taxi driver drove through downtown LA until they stopped in front of an office building. The building looked dark except for the lobby.
The driver frowned, "Are you sure you're going to stay here for the night, Miss?"
"Yeah," Kate said. With work being most of her life, she had nowhere to go but her office.
She opened the taxi door, bringing with her the bag of booze as she got out..
She gave the taxi driver two one-hundred bills, she noticed the taxi driver's hesitant expression,
"What's wrong with me staying here?"
"I'm just afraid that you will…" the taxi driver stopped before he could say something horrible.
"Kill myself?" Kate completed his sentence, and the driver nodded reluctantly.
He thought it was offensive to assume, but the lady looked like someone who would kill herself after heartbreak.
Kate scoffed, "Don't worry, I'm not an idiot who'll kill myself over a useless bastard like him," She turned around and stared at the office building. "My office is on the fifteenth floor, I'll stay there for the night."
Kate turned back, looked at the driver, and gave him a thin smile, "Thank you for helping me."
The driver watched the lady walk into the lobby. He sighed, 'What a pitiful woman. I can see that she is in a lot of pain.'
**
Kate used her card to enter the elevator and pressed the button to the fifteenth floor.
The whole floor was dark, it was late at night and no one would be working at this time. Kate used her employee card to unlock the door and enter her office. She turned on a few of the lights to guide her way.
Of course, Kate knew she could just stay in a hotel or one of her other apartments if she wanted to calm herself down.
But this office—Emperor Books Publishing company—was the place she felt truly at home.
This was the place where she started it all.
She started her career because Matt's acting career simply wouldn't take off and couldn't provide for them, so she worked here.
She thought she'd work like a normal person, coming in at nine and leaving at five. But as her relationship with Matt deteriorated, she started working crazy hours until the late CEO, Mr. James Grant, recognized her talent and promoted her repeatedly until she became a chief editor at the age of twenty-eight.
It was also around that time that she began to pay for her mother's expensive medications and her sister's university studies.
She also had to support Matt since acting barely gave him any money, so she became the sole breadwinner for three people all at once.
'Well, I thought that giving Matt a comfortable life would be enough to compensate for the fact that I can't give him a baby,' Kate thought.
'How could I be so stupid? Of course it's not enough for Matt. Nothing I did was good enough to him, meanwhile he is doing the bare minimum as a man.' She ridiculed herself in her own mind.
Kate walked through the empty hall, thinking about going to her office and staying the night there.
But her attention was suddenly diverted when she realized the lights were switched on in the CEO's office.
'Huh? I thought the CEO office has been locked since Mr. Grant's death.'
Kate frowned, immediately suspicious. Worried there might be a break-in, she took out a wine bottle from the bag as a weapon and sneakily walked towards the CEO's office, trying to catch the intruder.
The door wasn't completely closed, so Kate grew more suspicious. She peeked through the gap and saw a man's arm dangling at the end of the sofa. There was a striking black snake tattoo circling around the arm from his elbow down to his hand, and he was holding an almost-empty bottle of strong booze.
Kate doubted this man was a burglar, especially after seeing a limited edition Parker's Heritage bourbon in his hand.
He was someone with money, at least.
Thus, she felt braver, opening the door to learn more. Who was this man that dared to enter the office late at night?
There, she saw a blond young man roughly in his 20s, lounging leisurely on the sofa, surrounded by two more bottles of the same bourbon he had drank. He didn't react when the door opened, probably because he was half drunk at this point.
"W—Who are you? How did you enter this office?" Kate asked carefully, holding her wine bottle like a sword and the remaining bag of wine bottles in front of her like a shield. She was prepared to throw them at him and run if this young man suddenly pounced on her.
The man finally turned his head towards Kate, and Kate's heart skipped a beat when she saw the man's face.
She was taken aback by his handsome face that reminded her of a man she once admired, and eyes that could petrify anyone at sight.
He had a set of deep green eyes that glinted dangerously as he peered at Kate in silence. It gave off the illusion of a green-eyed snake ready to strike and bite once provoked.
Kate would be lying if she said she wasn't scared. But she did not intend to leave her office, and the man didn't seem hostile towards her either.
She felt a chill crawl up her spine as he observed her with his viper-like eyes, and when he finally spoke her heart beat faster.
"Which bastard dared to make you cry?"