Y A N A
“I’m so sorry, Miss Allard, but I’m afraid there’s nothing much I can do,” Deborah says, glancing at her papers with a fake regretful face. “You’ve been asking for rent extensions for . . . three months?”
“Well, two months and twenty days, but of course,” I correct her. “Is there really nothing you can do? I mean, give me two weeks and I will--”
“Yana.” She stares at me sternly with her beady eyes. “That’s what you said two weeks ago.”
I open my mouth to tell her that no, that’s not actually the case, but even I can’t fool myself anymore. The truth is, my jewelry business Catori, is not taking off, and it’s been a year since I established it. I can’t afford the rent in downtown LA anymore, even if the store is right below the living space of the building.
Deborah Phipps, the owner of the establishment, is done with me. Hell, she could have thrown me out three months ago, but she didn’t. Or at least not yet.
I’m on my ninth life right here, and I don’t think anything will save me from giving it up.
I take a deep sigh, gripping the thin stack of papers in my hands. I can vaguely see the numbers at the end of the page, all the money I owe her, and I force myself not to look and find out.
“I really am sorry, Miss Allard.” Deborah starts to gather her files and slide them into her expensive briefcase. This time, she really does look pretty sorry for me. “I really do wish there was something more I can do for you, but I can only give you until the end of the month to gather all your things and leave. That’s in seven days, by the way, not fourteen.”
“Okay,” is the only thing I can say. If I dare talk more, I would cry. “Thank you.”
With that, she nods and exits my small office, closing the glass door behind her and leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I think for the first time in my life, I’m truly, utterly fucked.
I flip the papers on my desk, opening my computer to seem busy but in reality I want to disappear. It doesn’t help that moments after Deborah leaves, my best friends Lily and Jason eagerly knock on the glass door.
“Come in,” I squeak, trying to inject some happiness into my tone. But when I see their happy, excited faces, my heart just sinks.
“How did it go?” Lily asks, sitting on the chair that Deborah just vacated. “Little old Debbie looks pissed, so I assume you managed to talk her into a longer extension?”
Her tone is so hopeful that I end up blurting out, “Totally! We have . . . three weeks this time!”
Jason cackled. “Damn, Yana! I don’t know how you do it! How about we get some Taco Bell to celebrate?”
“Amazing!” I beam, but my face is frozen and my fingers are numb. I think I’m going to get a heart attack. Which honestly would be great at this point. “I’ll just go make calls!”
Both of them exchange high-fives with me before leaving, and I feel trashier than ever when the door closes again.
I lied to them. Right in their faces.
As I get out of the office to look around my little shop, I can’t help but wonder why on earth this isn’t working out. I am a design graduate. I have experience. Lily and Jason are marketing graduates with experience, and we have done everything we could to get our name on social media. We tried going with the trends, posted all sorts of silly stuff, tried to go viral a couple of times. . . .
And everything just failed.
I mean, I love my designs. I have gotten so many compliments on my work. I love that I honor my grandmother who’s from a Native American tribe Sioux. My heart is in this. I don’t plan to get rich off of it, but I did hope that I would somehow make my parents proud. Or at least not to think of me as a complete failure.
But I guess all that I could ever achieve is becoming the hot topic every Thanksgiving, and not for the right reasons.
Sighing, I sit on one of the leather couches meant for clients, then I turn on the TV plastered on the pillar just to have some noise in the background while I wallow in self-pity.
“. . . so to set the record straight: you and Olivia Lacroix are not an item?”
The loud voice of the The Early Express show host rings inside the display hall of my shop. I lower the volume, squinting to see who she’s interviewing. The camera pans over to the young man leisurely lounging on the couch, and my mood drops even lower.
It’s Mikhail Sartori, the famous CEO of Satellite Corp, a huge holding company here in California. He’s in his late twenties, handsome, savvy, and all that jazz. In his case, that also comes with an abundance of arrogance and the usual tendency to be a womanizer. Olivia Lacroix is like, what, the fifteenth model he got involved with this month?
“Not an item, Janice,” Mikhail clarifies, batting his pale gray eyes at the host. “Right now I am focusing on the expansion of Satellite Corp and providing more jobs for our hardworking people. In fact, we will be holding a--”
“What is it about Olivia that didn’t catch your ever-wavering interest?” the host Janice persists with a cheeky little wink.
Mikhail’s smiling face falters a little bit. He looks quite annoyed by the interruption, and I have to say that he does look really charming with his wavy black hair and piercing gray eyes. He could pass as a movie star for sure. There’s just something rough and intimidating about him that I can’t put my finger on, and it gets more intense when he frowns.
But of course, he quickly recovers with a grin when the audience cheers him on.
“Olivia is a beautiful, wonderful woman,” he says, and the hollering got louder. “Unfortunately, our relationship has always been and will remain professional. Like I said, I am dedicated to what my company wishes to achieve, and that is to bring more small businesses and workers to the limelight.”
“Bullshit,” I mutter, looking for the remote to turn off the TV.
The last thing I need is preaching from this upstart. What does he know about small businesses? He probably wipes his ass with hundred-dollar bills.
I’m about to turn off the TV when suddenly one of his statements catches my attention.
“. . . public conference for small business owners,” he’s saying confidently. “I will personally attend the event with my executives. We will choose from the first hundred owners who will register through the link on our official website, the top ten best business ideas and ventures. But we will do things differently this time.”
The remote almost falls from my slackened grip.
Janice beams and nods, but it’s clear she wants to go back to talking about the model. “And how will it be different, Mikhail?”
“This time, we will not be buying these small companies and taking them under our wing.” Mikhail smiles at the camera. “We will fund these businesses. We will offer our teams of experts. And from there, we will watch these owners soar. That’s what our company stands for. That’s what we aim for. Sharing our success and the support of our people--”
I don’t let him finish. I turn off the TV, toss the remote to the side, and race back into my office with my heart pounding.
This is unbelievable. This is astounding.
I can’t believe that the best possible answer to all my problems just fell on my lap like that, when all I did was turn on the TV that would be repossessed from me seven days from now.
Of course. Maybe that’s what I needed. Maybe that’s what Catori needed. A rich bastard who will lend me experts and fund my business and watch me soar.
And all I have to do is be one of the first hundred registrants.
I fire up my computer again, which has fallen asleep the entire time I was watching. As I click on the Satellite official website, my entire body starts to sweat. I scour the simplistic black and gray typeface and see the tab for the registration, and with that I get to work.
My fingers are flying across the keyboard, logging all the information they’re asking. Business type. Name of the owner. Registration number. Descriptions. My brain is in overdrive, spouting all the answers as fast as my hands could go. When I reach the submit button, I hold my breath, praying to all the gods that I got here first, that I actually have a chance to make something out of my life. . . .
“Congratulations! You are successfully registered for Satellite’s first open conference. The details have been sent to your e-mail. Please confirm attendance.”
M I K H A I L"Well, I'm just glad that was over," I say with a sharp exhale as I climb into the backseat of the SUV. "Now we can go back to normal.""Or new normal, considering Olivia's fans are still coming after you," my cousin and my executive assistant Evan says dryly. He points at the other side of the street to show me a group of adolescent girls trying to take a picture of the car. "I bet it's going to be worse online.""Please," I mumble. "What's the worse they can do?"I roll the window up and signal the driver to go, and soon we're cruising down the streets toward my office downtown.Am I excited to get back to work considering that I have that public conference tomorrow? Well, no. Because that was just a PR stunt that Evan suggested I should do.The truth is, I did give Olivia Lacroix the impression that she and I had something special going on. I wanted her to be at the front and center of the ad campaign we're launching for a perfume line of Belladona, one of the fashion
Y A N AUsually, I didn't mind living in the upstairs space of the store with Lily and Jason, but this time, I found it quite bothersome.After registering for the open conference yesterday, I tried to tell them about my meeting with Deborah and how we could possibly find ourselves out in the streets after the month of May unless I landed a deal with a douchebag bachelor. However, my cowardice was much too strong and I ended up just telling them that I would be meeting a client for brunch.That's why right now, I'm standing in front of the mirror wondering if any of them would find my pencil skirt suspicious."Are you sure we can't come?" Lily asks as she watches me put on some sneakers (because my high heels are already in my bag). "I really want to go on that brunch too.""Don't worry, we will stuff our faces as long as I get this deal," I lied, shrinking inside. "Wait for me here, okay? We need people for customers.""Oh, yeah. For sure."She sounds bummed and unsure about the cust
Y A N A No. This can’t be happening to me. My mouth goes dry at the sight of Mikhail Sartori standing in front of the double doors. The logical part of me wants to look at his face to see if he’s angry or not, but the cowardly side of me just wants to look away and ignore him until he goes away. Unfortunately, the cowardly part wins. I lower my head and pick up the broken necklace, taking my sweet-ass time as the whole hall gets brought into a standstill. I shove Gwen’s leg just to be mean, and of course she makes a whole show of flinching to bring even more attention to us. “What’s happening?” I hear Mikhail asking in a low voice, amplified by the silent hall. “What commotion is going on?” The woman at the desk whispers something incomprehensible to him, and I don’t dare get up until he’s gone. I’m silently praying to all the gods in every religion that ever existed to take me out of this awkward and possibly life-ending situation, stuffing the necklace back into its bag. I hold
Y A N AI feel numb. I can’t believe I just did that. I can’t believe I just lost all the chances I have to make things better for Catori and my friends.I slapped Mikhail Sartori, a billionaire.Why the hell I’m not being escorted out of the building right now, I have no idea, but I have to assume that it’s a good thing because prison is the last place I wanna be right now.As I go out of the conference room, my knees start to shake so badly that I have to prop my hand against the wall to stop myself from falling over. Some of the hopefuls see me walking out in this condition, and I vaguely register their faces going pale. Do they think that the single-man panel in there roasted the shit out of me? Because if they’re not stupid enough to slap the CEO, they would not be in my place.In the distance, I can see Gwen getting to her feet and looking at me. I don’t dare meet her eyes. I know that if I do, I might just commit murder.“Is everything okay, miss?” the desk lady asks me, but I
Y A N AI don’t say anything. My body is numb and all I can do is sit there and shrink more and more. My luck is rotten to the core. First I blew my chances of making it, and now I got chased into an alley by a strange man whose advances I rejected.I might just die tonight too.He knocks on my window and laughs as I flinch. “You were so brave telling me to fuck off, and now you’re cowering in your car? Open the door so we can talk.”“NO!” I yell at him. “I’ll call the police!”“Do it,” he urges, and to my utter horror, he raises his hands, showing me that he’s holding a crowbar. “I’ll count to three.”A scream escapes my mouth. I fumble for my phone but it falls under the seat. Tyler is swinging the crowbar in his hands, mimicking using it to break my window.And the bad thing is, I know that he’ll do it, so I just crumple into a tight ball, closing my eyes and waiting for the worst.But it doesn’t come.The only thing I hear is the clang of the crowbar falling on the ground, and a l
M I K H A I LSo Yana Allard is indeed human.“That can’t be possible,” Evan told me yesterday after Yana walked out. He looked at the door she just shut closed and then turned to me. “I could sense her. Her human scent is strong and pure, and being in the same room with her was hard. . . .”“Not for me,” I whispered, and that’s when I had to admit to myself that yes, it was pretty strange. How come she was purely human and didn’t affect me? I was supposed to be the one who would get triggered more easily. “She might be something else.”“I doubt that,” Evan said, but he did look unsure. “Other creatures had been wiped out by civilization. Us Lycans are pretty much the last ones here.”“Only one way to find out,” I said, clutching my smarting cheek. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to be a troll or something. She was strong.”He laughed. “Only one way to find out, boss.”With that, he looked at me and instantly, we both knew what to do. I assigned an officer to take over the
Y A N A I’m floored. Not only that, I think I just sank all the way to Satan’s armpits in hell because of what Mikhail said. However, he just looks at me pleasantly as though this is a perfectly sane conversation between two sane adults. “Of course, this will be completely--” “Aren’t you a billionaire?” I blurt out. When he looks mildly offended about my interruption, I lean close to him and say slowly, “You are a billionaire bachelor.” “And what does have to do with anything, Miss Allard?” I shake my head. How come a rich businessman like him can’t understand basic logic? “What I meant, sir Mikhail is that you are rich and successful, and attractive. . . .” I trail off when I see the smirk on his face. “So you think I’m attractive?” “That’s not the point!” I wave him off. “The point here is, you’re basically the perfect bachelor. Hell, don’t you have a whole groupie of models worshiping the ground you walk on?” His smirk only gets wider. “So you know things about me?” “Everyo
M I K H A I L“What?” Yana splutters as the stylists approach him. She backs away as though she’s being arrested, putting her hands up in surrender. “What’s happening?”“Miss Allard, relax.” I let out a little laugh. “Let them take care of you, okay?”“But what are they going to do to me?”“Make you beautiful.”Yana’s mouth goes wide. “So you mean I’m not?”Oops. I turn to the stylists. “Take her away.”“HEY!” she yells, but they manage to coax her into coming with them, taking her to the private conference room I have at the back of my office.I take a peek before I close the door, and I’m pleased to see that they stylists bought all the clothes, accessories, and makeup that I told them to choose. Yana still looks like a fish out of water, but I’m certain she will adjust in no time.I go back to my desk and start to flick through some documents containing our financial statements. I review the summary and see that there’s a mistake, so I decide to take a crack at checking them cover