"I like your hair." Said the petite looking woman.
She also looked as if she was born to be a therapist, with sombre features and a kind sense of fashion, her presence calmed Luna.
Almost.
The teenager's fiddling with her fingers intensified and she stared at the potted plant on the coffee table next to her, "Thanks."
"I understand that you must have been hesitant in coming here." She said warmly, "You needn't worry, everyone does."
With a sigh, Luna put her palms on her thighs," So, from where should I start telling you?"
The older woman chuckled softly, " How about we introduce ourselves first? Would you like to go first?"
"Err my name is Luna Piérce, eighteen years old and as of today I am a Bussiness major."
"Hm interesting. I am Sogeum Han, fourty one years old and as of today I am your therapist. I will help you overcome any mental stress factors that you may be harbouring so that your mind is as healthy as your body. Now, I've already been provided your files by your uncle, so I have articles on your case from five years ago and your reports from juvie, so you don't need to waste time in telling me everything. What I want you to tell me about is the accident, how you got there, your reaction and feelings when you realized what was going on."
Luna nodded, she could do this, it wasn't that hard. Plus this was the first step in getting rid of the girl in the mirror.
☾
"Sup, partner? How'd the inventory check go?" Said Diane as she entered René Pièrce's office.
René was sitting on her office chair and infront of her, multiple coloured cloth samples were sprawled on her desk.
"All of this is the cheap and weak cloth that was being used for our products. And the actual, finer and more expensive material was being sold for high prices illegally." She said with anger in her tone, "This wasnt in just the Austrian warehouse, it was in the Turkish one as well!" She threw the list of the employees involved on the table, "Two completely different warehouses involved in the same type of fraud, with the same patterns in their dealing, it's not a coincidence, there must be a higher executive or director who planned all of this."
As Diane checked the list, René rubbed her eyes, "Had you not checked those customer reviews that day, we would've never found out."
Diane sighed and poured a glass of water and handed it to the curly haired woman, she looked absolutely brazen, "I'll look into it, okay? I'll found out who is behind this, you need to rest, you've been traveling for weeks."
Without responding to that, René clipped, "Did you get what I sent you for?"
Diane didnt reply for a few seconds,
"Diane."
"When will you tell me what is in this USB? What is it thats so important that you had to make a deal with my mother for it."
René rubbed a silk sample between her fingers, "I'll show it to you if you give it to me. And it's a beneficial contract, today's risk is tomorrow's profit. Now, the USB please."
Diane slowly picked up her purse, "My mother is a snake, she'll sell this company in a second if it means her advantage." She handed over the USB.
"First off, you and I have the largest shares so she will never have the power to overthrow us and secondly, that is why our company cannot have any weak spots." She opened her laptop and inserted the it.
"I want a report by next week on how you've taken care of the material fraud."
Diane said okay in response and came to stand behind her chair, looking at the screen.
A few short clicks later, it displayed a bunch of files, all titled with dates, two years apart. René smiled in satisfaction.
"What is this?" Asked Diane.
Now that what she had seeked for a long time was in front of her, she was no longer restless, so she turned her chair to Diane and explained what all of this was,
" At the tenth Le Caprice in 1948, the richest men of that decade sat down together to discuss bussiness relations. They were all at the top, only they could help or understand one another.
At the next Le Caprice, that year's host was a man named Christian J.Trump, he had recently hit it big with a diamond mine find in Botswana. He reserved a room at that fest, calling it the VVIP lounge just for another meeting among the richest men.
Pleased with his gesture, upon his request, they let him join. But Trump was definitely out of his league. If his offshore accounts could create sums in singular millions, theirs created sums in billions. He was also of no value to them, no deal with him could be of much benefit to them, and of course that made him livid.
After that party every host recreated the VVIP lounge and since Trump needed allies, he let them all in as well. Thats how the lounge lost its original exclusivity but thats not where things went wrong. On the 17th Le Caprice, Trump hid a voice recorder under John Astor's seat. And on the last day of the fest he proposed a business deal to Astor. Naturally, Astor declined but then Trump threatened him using the recording in which he was caught talking of tax evasion in his company which he had gotten away with. Since then, everyone started placing recorders for their security so that even if there were no written contracts, no one could go back on their verbal agreements."
"So.. did Astor do bussiness with him?"
"He did. A small contract just worth one million. And a week later he was found hanged in his home. Rumor has it that Astor had him killed as revenge and made it look like suicide."
Diane cocked her head, "How do you know all of this?"
"Christian Trump's grandson wrote a book on it. People think its pure fiction but we know better, grandpa was there."
Diane stared at the files, "The VVIP lounge.. isn't that where Ella Somevelle was semi-raped?!" She said the last part loudly because of the sudden realisation.
"Yeah, and every family protects these recordings with their lives so getting them is very hard. there may have not been any security cameras around at that place but there were definitely recorders. Francis burned our family's, that's why I needed yours."
Diane put a hand to her mouth, "How could he?"
"His cunningness doesn't faze me anymore, he is pure filth and nothing more." She uttered monotonously and turned back to the screen.
She moved the cursor and clicked on the file titled 'Le Caprice July, 2014.'