The Last Heiress

Chapter 8 - A Little More Than A Friend

Chapter 8

Orion was waiting for me outside. The boy didn't know when to leave. Standing there, in his well-tailored, expensive menswear, in my grandmother's hallway with the peeling manure-colored wallpaper and crumbling asbestos-laced walls, he reminded me of a male fashion model trying to make an artistic statement about the decay of society.

I strolled right past him and mashed the elevator's down button.

"Have you ever had a servant steal from you?" I muttered, still shaking with disbelief at what I found inside that briefcase.

"What are you missing? Anything valuable?"

"I don't know," I crossed my arms over my modest chest and rethought my words before I spoke again. How much of my predicament did I want to share with Orion Oslen? He wasn't my friend or my confidant. He was the son of the man who had once operated my father's rival company. They even tried to open a distribution facility outside of Beijing once, to say nothing about their plans to expand all over the world. Now, their family business had fallen to the wayside. As I understood it, he was living on their generational wealth. No one has even heard of Tercel for years.

He wasn't competition. Perhaps his family was two decades ago but certainly not anymore.

Yet, all the same, I didn't trust him. I wondered if he was trying to trap me in a moment of weakness.

Get a hold of yourself, Angela! The world wants to kill me for the actions of my father's company. Since Orion's family operated in the same business of refining Black Waters, he and I were in the same boat on these rocky seas. I could trust him, for now.

"I found something peculiar and unexpected in my luggage."

"What did you find?"

"Nothing," I muttered as the elevator arrived. It creaked with age as I stepped across the rusted doorway. Yes, nothing, indeed. No money, no jewels, no documents containing real estate holdings. My father wasn't a prankster. What did this weird gift mean?

I couldn't even bring myself to confess what I found inside that luggage. Being laughed at by the likes of Orion Oslen would truly be hitting rock bottom.

Orion leaped into the elevator beside me. I wished he hadn't. The ancient device shook under us dangerously. If the elevator groaned with displeasure at having to transport a 120 lb girl, it was furious at the muscle-bound he-man standing beside me.

The machine slowly lowered us back to the lobby as though it was voicing its displeasure by taking an extra long time.

"Where are you headed?" Orion demanded as the seconds ticked by and the awkward silence settled between us again.

"I'm going shopping." Once again, I struggled to control my tone. I couldn't help it. Everything about my posture and voice said — why do you care?

"You can't just wander around alone."

"Angela Liang is dead, remember? I'm safe. No one is looking for me."

"Where's your purse?"

I stopped dead in my tracks. Orion noticed what I hadn't thought twice about.

Yes, I left my purse back at my grandmother's apartment. What did it need it for? It was empty anyway. I knew that, but until now, he didn't. Perhaps he assumed I was carrying my weight in cash and diamonds inside that purse. It would have been the wise thing to do when fleeing to a foreign country.

Lao Tian Ye, what else could go wrong? If only I had remembered my purse, I could pretend I had everything I needed and he would let me be. I immediately dug around my jacket pocket and flashed my cell phone at him. It was all I had on me other than clothes on my back and the Louboutins on my feet.