Endings: Book One

Chapter Seven : The Future

The universe crumbles around us, yet we remain still in it's never ending grasp of demise and destruction. The future is uncertain but we can do everything in our power to make it better if not a less worse than it already is.

-Katherine, a fading past.

Adrian felt a change in the room, a brief cinematic pause as soon as his eyes met hers. He couldn't find the words to describe how she looked even if he'd been given a lifetime for it. Past the tables of everyone who was transfixed on him, he knew he could on care mostly about one in particular. She was looking at him too, her head slightly inclined to the left, clearly to get a better view of him.

She came.

He hadn't thought of her to be a party person especially one for lavish events so he'd made sure she would have no reason not to come. An invite, encouraging words to the chief editor of The Times and a contract revisal stating a prolonged extension to the interview as long as it was Camila Ambers who was included in the equation. He smiled, not for the crowd but for the sheer knowledge that his limits had not yet been tested.

A Cadillan always gets what he wants. And at that specific moment he only wanted her.

The room fell silent before him and it took an enormous amount of effort for him to remember what he was meant to be doing. He turned his attention from the reporter in a red dress, sitting somewhere in the midst of the guests before him and returned back to more pressing matters.

"Good evening everyone, I told Rachel there was no need for all this-" he gestured to the room and everything in it. "Then again, my mother told me she'd kill me if I did a small house party instead"

The crowd laughed at the remark, clearly amused by his choice of words having kept them on their edge for so long.

Good, now to begin.

"Honestly though, I wouldn't have pushed through with the idea. Since I need all for you here to make our agenda a success and frankly, my penthouse wouldn't be enough for most of you"

He caught his mother's nod of approval from her seat at the very front. He saw Lara's unimpressed expression and knew that she had a few words to say to him after all the event was done.

"Anyway, I'm not your usual host so I don't really know what to say so I'll skip to the good part" he paused for dramatic effect. The crowd's laughing had died down, their ears drawn to him like a magnet. He had their attention.

"As we all know, each year my family hosts this wonderful event to raise money for charitable causes around the world. And for years it's been that way. From refugee interventions in Central Africa to victims of war crimes in the Middle East, we have been able to fund such ventures and it's all because of you."

Take a deep breath. Brace yourself. It'll all be over soon.

"We can change the world, in fact we have changed it on a significant level but I believe it is now time to change it differently"

The screen behind him came to life right on cue. He checked to see that the contents displayed matched the presentation that he'd prepared and smiled as he looked back to see the bewildered faces of his guests.