PAIN SEARED INTO ME.
My eyes fluttered open as whispers of soft rain hit the ceiling above me.
The room is cold and my hands felt like it had been soaked in ice water. It was numb.
I gasped in cold chill breath as I took in the whole room.
The room was big, huge actually. There was a wardrobe by the side which was filled with male clothes, shirts and suits, it was left open and it almost freaked me out. Probably someone was hiding in it.
The bed was huge and the ceiling felt like it was closing in on me. It was spinning and spinning. I looked to my right where the door was and that's where I saw a man sprawled up in a huge mahogany desk.
His white hair was scattered on his head and in the center there was no hair. He was putting on a blue sweater and black pants and a small reading glasses settled on the bridge of his nose. His eyes were focused on the book in front of him, but he looked tensed. He was tensed.
I sat upright on the bed just now noticing that my robe was still as I tied it around my body. What I was putting on under the robe was too skimpy, a short and a small singlet. The last thing I wanted was to expose myself to Mike or whoever the old man was.
There was a huge Window by the table which allowed dimming sun rays to sip into the room, by my calculation it should be around 4pm. It was almost a floor to ceiling window and by it a vanity Mirror which I ignored as I stared at the man.
"Who are you?" I whispered, my voice came out hoarse and tired. I sounded small to my ears and I doubted if he heard me, but he seemed to have sensed my presence even before I spoke.
The man turned around to face me, a gentle fatherly smile on his face. His eyes were hidden behind a small reading glass but I could see the blue of it. There was a familiarity in his smile that I knew I had seen previously. I cracked my brain to remember where I recognized that face from.
"Mira I presume?" He asked, a certain amusement in his voice laced with intrigue.
"Who are you please?" I repeated, getting up. I remembered where I saw his face now, in Noah's office there was a picture of him and Mike. He looked like an aged Mike or a more refined Mike either ways he bore a semblance to Mike in the way he looked at me, in the way his cheek lifted when he talked, his full eyebrows which were now white instead of Mikes blonde. He was Mr Rush.
My eyes widened as I gaped at the man. It dawned on me soon enough that I was in a room with a wanted man. In a huge room probably in the middle of nowhere.
"You have done your maths I see." He drawled turning back to his book. There was a certain finesse in his voice as if he was in the house on his own accord or he was immortal.
I walked to the window deck and looked down. Like I had guess the house was in the middle of nowhere. There was a small gate which rounded the compound and I could tell that it was locked.
It was a two story building and we were on the first floor and by the looks of it I couldn't jump. I might have survived a fall from a storey building during my teen years but this, I couldn't do it. First it was much higher, secondly I wasn't as impulsive and daring as I was years ago.
There were no trees in sight which would have been my best bet if I wanted to go down like that.
I tried to open the window but it was locked and it was the only window in the room safe from the small one which was high above the wall by the bed side. It was too small to fit in anyone so it was left open.
"Do you know where we are?" I asked, turning back to face the man with a question of my own. He had just turned to another page of his book, looking very unbothered.
"We are in Solvang. It was meant to be my retirement house."
"So I take it that your son decided to retire you before you were up for it." I nodded, looking at the book he was reading but not catching the title.
"He had his reasons." He smiled.
"Look I know he is your son and you probably want to be here, but I don't want to be here. I was drugged by your son and brought here. He is not exactly a good man but from what I've heard you already know that." I whispered, as if I was telling him a long lost secret.
He chuckled a bit, gaping at me. His eyes lit with curiosity and warmness. "You are just as beautiful as Noah described you. Long brown hair, small brown eyes, long legs, fair skin and well a running mouth."
I gasped. " Wait! What!" I giggled. "I don't talk too much maybe I used to." I thought hard, "No. I never did. Noah is crazy."
We both laughed for a while.
"You love him?" Mr Rush asked, with a blank expression on his face. He wanted to be sure I still loved Noah. Noah was right, maybe he could have a father in him, the father I doubted he had in his.
"I never stopped. Had some boyfriends here and there..."
"Including my son." He cut in.
"Yes. Including your son." I shrugged. "His was of impulse and I wasn't exactly dating him even though he was dating me."
Mr Rush laughed and shook his head. "Is that possible."
"Yea it is. It's just something we say in my country." I paused. "Look I need to get out of here." I muttered, rushing to the door. Like I guessed, it was locked. I tried to open the window again but it didn't bulge.
"Do you trust Noah?" Mr Rush suddenly asked. I glared at him and thought long and hard about his question and what my answer would be. Did I ever stop trusting him? I never did actually.
"Yes." I finally replied after a while. "Why?"
"Because if you trust him Mira you know to calm down and wait. He is coming. But you would be endangering your life if you try to do anything stupid."
"No I have to leave." I Insisted, pacing the room. "I just can't sit down and wait for him to come save me. That's...That's.. Ridiculous. And he was out in the morning you know. Someone gave him a lead. A guy named Peter what if.. What if he set him up and led him to his death. I need to get out of here."
I walked to the wardrobe and opened all the drawers but there was nothing sharp in it, nothing that could break anything. The lock on the door was opened with fingerprints which I guessed belonged to Mike.
There was a small door at the far corner of the room, I assumed it was the bathroom. I checked it out and there was nothing there except tissue, a huge jacuzzi at the wall and a toilet. With towels. Towels can't break anything.
I came back into the room feeling even more restless.
"Sit Mira. There is no way out here without Mike opening that door, but there will be a way out of here if he opens it and you will find Noah. But for you to find that way you need to know who Mike really is and I am going to tell you." Mr Rush advised, looking too sincere as if he had never told a lie in his entire life.
I guessed he was one of those honest men who would rather give up everything than bend his principles.
Seeing that I had no choice I sat down even though my legs kept shaking from built in anticipation.
Mr Rush closed the book and whirled around to face me. There was this lost look in his eyes that made me scared for him and for me.
"When I met Mike's mother It was raining heavily. I was rushing for a class in my limo, yea I came from old money." He chuckled, although his face turned serious at once.
I took in a deep breath and relaxed further into the bed. I had to calm down. No more impulsive, reckless decisions.
"I offered to take her to class and that's when, well I just knew she was my soulmate when I first met her. Just like Noah knew you were his. Our relationship went smoothly. Her family happened to be business partners of mine and soon even before we graduated we got married. When we had Mike, everything felt perfect until my wife Esther died from cancer. Lung cancer even before Mike was 12." Mr Rush took in a deep breath and sighed. He paused and I could tell that it was very difficult for him to tell me this.
"You don't have to talk to me about all this. Mr Rush." I spoke gently.
He exhaled again and waving his hand to tell that it was fine.
"Mike after his my wives death just became...diff.. different. Insubordination, drugs, fraud, fights. At first I thought it was just youthful exuberance but it lasted too long. The Empire under him grew but it grew out of the blood of others. He did things that I never would have approved off, that my conscience could not approve of. But he was sleek. Oh Mike is sleek, and I never got proof of his activities. When I met Noah, I just knew he had to be the one to finally take down my son. Call in a hunch, it was there and it was strong."
"You trusted him. Why?" I asked curious to know why he had so easily trusted Noah who was only just a stranger to him.
"Till today I never know. I take it that its instinct." He shrugged. "Mike knew that Noah was onto him and I feared for his life that's why I met my lawyer and made him transfer everything to him and in the case he dies transfer everything I own to the orphanage. Well Except Pristine shipping corp I couldn't bring myself to take that away from my son. When Mike got wind of this he was furious."
"And that's why he brought you here so that you could transfer the properties back to him?" I asked, finally getting a wind of the true story. Mike lied to me, everything he had told me from the time he met me sitting alone in that bar had been a lie. I felt so stupid for ever believing him, but at that time all I wanted was to forget Noah and Mike looked like the right option.
He hated Noah for taking all that was his and I hated Noah for manipulating my life and toiling with my heart. We seemed like the perfect match, but it was all just a lie.
The devil indeed takes very many forms.
"He knew that if he killed me then he would have no card to play and Noah knew also that he couldn't kill me, that's why he took his time to hatch his plan. But seeing you here I take it that Mike has found another way." He continued.
"If you won't do the transfer he had to get another person who could do it and no one else can except Noah. Everyone knows that Noah has only one weakness, Me." I muttered more to myself than to him. He looked at me with the expression that read now you know. "So how does this get us out?"
"Noah has to come or you can outsmart him but to outsmart someone you have to know them." He finished then he turned around and continued reading leaving me to my thoughts.