The Stolen Heart

Chapter 6: Behind enemy lines!

I was currently in the headquarters of NBC news, waiting for my nemesis to arrive in the meeting room where I was seated by her assistant and asked to wait. I was starting to become restless from all the waiting. Ugh! That b***h was so doing this on purpose. It was very obvious that she was keeping me waiting just to showcase her power.

Ah! Think of the devil and the devil shall appear. There she was dressed in Louis Viton from head to toe, her blonde hair tied into a tight ponytail.

She looked annoyed as she opened the door to the meeting room. She strode forward and sat herself on the opposite side of the table and continued to glare at me. I resisted the urge to laugh at her and took a deep breath to calm myself down.

Okay Merina, take a deep breath......be the mature one......

Just then the door opened with a bang and in came Justin Malcerk. I sighed resignedly. Oh! This isn’t going to go well.  Justin looked taken aback to see me there. His eyes narrowed and went between me and Johanna. The poor guy looked scared out of his wits.

Johanna immediately got up, seeing Justin and went and hugged him tightly.

“I knew you would come back to me”, she muttered dreamily in his chest.

I felt like puking watching the scene. Justin looked purely uncomfortable. He pushed her aside gently.

“You clearly did this to gain my attention and now you have got it. Now state your demands. What the hell do you want?”, He asked sounding frustrated.

“You….What I want is you”, she replied immediately without even aftermath of a thought.

I rolled my eyes involuntarily. Could she be any snobbier and more spoilt?

Justin sighed, then ran his hands through his hair, then looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh! Don’t look at me. It’s your mess to clear up in the first place. I had just come here to confront her but you beat me here too. So, go ahead, work your magic.”, I said and smiled sweetly at him.

He let out a groan, frustrated.

“I have never let anything or anyone I want get away from me.”, she spat at me with a warning tone.

I c****d my left eyebrow at her and asked dryly, pointing to Justin, “Oh really! Then how come this one got away?”

“Because he is stupid. He can’t see what he got because he still obsessed with his first love”, she said with venom in her tone.

What the hell? First love? Who? Justin? That took me by surprise. Justin wasn’t the type of guy to fall in love with someone. And I had spent all my childhood with him and I have never heard of this supposed first love of his. I had never even seen him to talk to any girls then. It was only after he had gone abroad for his college that he came back as a playboy.

“Who is it? Do I know her?” I asked Justin confusedly, tilting my head slightly.

Joanna let out a maniacal laughter and Justin started blushing furiously and tried to avoid my eyes. I frowned wondering what the hell was going on? Justin wasn’t acting like himself at all. Gone was the manly, arrogant, assertive man I used to know. Now he looked sheepish and nervous. Guess! Love does that to someone. Still, the fact that Justin had been in love with the same woman since childhood was unbelievable. No matter how hard I tried, I can’t imagine Justin as a boyfriend material, he was way too nonchalant and had a devil may care attitude towards women.

Joanna stopped her maniacal laughter and took a step towards me, staring down at me in an intimidating manner.

“Would you like to know who that woman is? The woman who he has been so obsessed with for his entire life that he always puts her matters above his own? That he even has her picture in his wallet? Yep, you heard me right! The great Justin Malcerk ,who doesn’t keep his family’s…not even his dead brother’s picture, keeps this woman’s picture in his wallet. Astonishing isn’t it?”, she spat at me, each word dripping with sarcasm.

I involuntarily took a step back. He even had a picture of his first love in his wallet? That seems highly unlikely. Justin was not an emotional or a sensitive person. He was always brisk and rational.

My mind immediately went back to the time Richard, Justin and me were hanging out in a café and Richard had forgot his wallet so he had taken Justin’s wallet to pay instead. Justin had gone to the washroom. The moment Richard opened Justin’s wallet; his face had changed color. I still remember clear as day that the expression on Richard’s face was guilt. It had rubbed me the wrong way that day, what had Richard seen in Justin’s wallet that he looked so guilty. I also clearly remembered Justin’s sheer panic when he walked out of the washroom to find his wallet in his little brother’s hands. Richard had pretended he hadn’t seen anything and Justin had relaxed after that. It had stuck me odd that day but now…I don’t even know what to make of it.

Joanna was watching me closely like a vulture watching her prey. She looked as if she wanted to murder me but couldn’t because of the cameras and witnesses.

God, her mannerisms, her tone….She was a total psycho. If he already had a woman he loved, shouldn’t she just leave him alone? Why was she getting all worked up like this? Is it because she really loves him or is it just that her ego has been hurt?

She turned her attention to Justin, who had gone pale and asked sarcastically, “What do you think, Justin? Should I tell her or not?”

I saw something snap in his eyes and he immediately closed the distance between them.

“What you want is me, right? Well, guess what? You will never have me. It has been her all these years even though I was beside you. It means that if it wasn’t you for the past twenty years, it’s never going to be you. She is the only woman I have loved. I apologize if I have hurt your feelings or your goddamn ego. I was merely trying to cope. I wanted to move on but clearly moving on is not an option for me. I apologize for all the wrongs I have done to you, but that doesn’t give you the right to attack or defame anyone else. If you want, come at me, but never go for my employees nor my family.”, he finished with a single breath, then fixed her with a predatory stare.

I stood there, my mouth open all the time while watching the exchange. I had never seen him so furious. The vein on his forehead was bulging furiously. I couldn’t believe my ears….Justin Malcerk…..I had never seen this side of him before. He sounded as if he was madly in love with that woman, whoever she was, completely bewitched, both body and soul.

I blinked in surprise as Justin held my eye contact for a mere second. But what I saw in that second was pain…pure raw anguish. I caught my breath and whimpered under his intense gaze.

Joanna burst into tears at his outburst.

Justin turned his gaze from me and back to her, then shook her violently and said, “We are done, are we clear?”

She immediately tried hugging him again desperately, her polished nails clutching his chest hard as if she was hanging on to her last life line. Justin let go of her forcibly and turned his back on her.

“You do realize that the moment you turn your back on me, you will also lose all 700 billion that comes with me”, she said threateningly, her eyes ablaze with anger and humiliation.

I blinked confused. What did she mean by that? Then it hit me. The Johnson’s were a major shareholder of Malcerk & Co. That’s why the Board had acted so quickly against my favor without even holding a hearing first. It’s because though Justin was the owner, he had his hands tied by her daddy.

“Think twice before threatening me, Miss Johnson. I am not an easy man. Don’t mistake my humbleness or politeness for weakness. I didn’t attack back at you, not because I was afraid, but because it would be a waste of my time.”, He replied in a dangerously calm voice.

I recognize this Justin. This was the tone of the bully Justin who I had grown used to….the one who didn’t care about stamping on others who got on his way.

Joanna looked petrified at his declaration and sank back into the ground, weeping her eyes out, clearly trying to play the victim angle now. However, Justin walked out without even a second glance at her, slamming the door hard on his way out. I gotta hand it to Justin. Most men would have fallen prey to her victim act. I had seen it happen way too many times in my life. But he walked right past out, without an ounce of sympathy in his eyes.

She stopped sobbing hysterically as she heard the door slam and got back up in the very next second and fixed me with a deathly glare.

Woah! The moment Justin left, her attitude changed three hundred and sixty degrees. She was busy giving me a predatory stare now.

“You…..I will take you down, myself even if I have to use all my power and connections. I will make sure you know your goddamn place”, she shouted at me, her face flushed red with anger.

“Honey, first of all, I have no clue why you have a vendetta against me, but frankly speaking, I don’t care enough to try and find out why. If you think your money and power can drive me out of this industry, you better think again. I made it all on my own without a godfather. And don’t forget that I am the same woman who took down the mighty Zane’s of California. I made them go from being the power player in the major leagues to being a nobody. I completely drove their business to the ground to nothingness. Do you know who the Zane’s are?”

She smirked and replied sarcastically, “No”

I smiled and replied, “Exactly”

At her confused look, I laughed at her and replied, “The Zane’s were the most powerful people in this industry. They had millions of employees and a turnover which was triple of your daddy’s company and I drove them down, made them vanish completely that not even a single living soul remembers them. So, think again before coming at me princess, because you may be a b***h but I am the goddamn devil.”