Chapter 5 So He Is The One

• (REYA'S POV)
• “Marsha was the one who died in that car accident, not your father”, Dr. Warner broke the news to me in an apologetic tone.
• I was stunned by this sudden revelation. “Do the both of you take me for a fool? What kind of a nasty crappy joke is this? Why will she die? Did you not say that she is the one in the ICU? How come, How come my sister, Marsha Di is?”, tears started flowing from my eyes as I could not control myself anymore.
• “Reya, calm down, dear. I know it is shocking for you. But you have to get yourself together. We have already lost Marsha, Jaden's condition is not stable yet, you have to get a hold of yourself. You are the only hope left for the Emeralds”, Jeff tried to comfort me. But that didn't work.
• I sneered at him and spoke with a deadpan face, “Do you really think that now that Marsha is no more, I will be her replacement. No, never. I abandoned the Emeralds name ten years ago. Ohhhhh, how can I forget, it was you and your family who abandoned me and my mother, isolated us. Didn’t you say that I was an affair child of my mother and her imaginary lover”.
• “It was a mistake, Reya. We are all very remorseful for what we did and what happened to your mother besides it has already been ten years now. Let bygones be bygones”, Jeff tried to defend himself. This made the last straw of my sanity snap.
• “A mistake, ha, it was not a mistake but rather a grave sin. A sin you should atone for the rest of your life. Without any concrete evidence, you all accused her of cheating. Because of that my mother, my mother’s health deteriorated and she went into a cardiac arrest. My mother is dead all because of that damned family”.
• After screaming at top of my lungs, I stormed out of Dr. Warner’s office and started running aimlessly. Tears kept on streaming down my cheeks and fly all over the place as I was running like some dog was chasing after me. I ran and ran and ran without knowing where to go.
• My steps came to a halt when I reached somewhere nobody could see me. I was at the hospital’s terrace which was not much crowded because of the snowy and windy weather. I started sobbing again.
• “Why god, why? Firstly, they took away my mother, now my sister. Just why is this all happening to me?”, I questioned looking at the sky.
• I was already relatively weak and exhausted because of the current scenario. It had been nearly twenty four hours for me without taking even a sip of water. I felt dizzy in my head and fumbled back when somebody caught me. “Hey there, Are you alright?” A strange as well as familiar voice echoed in my ears. My vision was blurry and I could not make out, who was the one talking to me. Letting go of myself, I went into a deep slumber.
• ______________________________________________________
• *Beep, Beep, Beep*
• I squinted my eyes as I woke up from my long sleep. I was met with unfamiliar yet familiar surroundings. I noticed a machine was standing near the bed. And there was an IV drip inserted inside my hand. I tried to get up from the bed but I was too weak to hold myself up.
• Suddenly, someone came into the view and helped me by holding my back and made me sit on the bed. Dr. Warner placed the pillows in a proper manner and helped me rest my body on it. I stared at him while he was doing his routine checkup on me.
• I waited patiently for him to finish when I spoke up, “Where is this place? It is not the hospital, that’s for sure.”
• “This is- the Emeralds’ Mansion”, Alan conveyed. “You suddenly fainted at the terrace and we brought you here.”
• “You could have treated me at the hospital, why here?”, I protested.
• “It is not safe there. The media and news reporters are all over the place. We were in a bind.”
• “Tell me truthfully what you know about this fiasco”, I asked him point blank.
• With a heavy sigh, he said, “I will tell you whatever you want to know but right now your condition is not very good, your body needs rest.”
• “Tell me now, otherwise I am getting out of here”.
• “Ok, ok, relax. Here, have a glass of water first”, saying this he handed me a glass filled with lukewarm water.
• I drank it all in a hurry and felt a sharp pain in my stomach.
• “Take it easy, gulping down like this is only going to hurt your stomach”, Alan explained.
• “Ms. Reya Emeralds”.
• “Arya, it is Reya Arya”.
• “Ok, Ms. Arya, this is extremely confidential information which I am going to disclose to you. As you already know, the Emeralds have many high profile businesses and the most profound and famous are there Jewelry designs in the Jewel industry and outside of it as well. So, there are a lot of enemies out there. When the accident happened, your father and sister were together in the same car with your fathers’ secretary on the wheels. Unfortunately, the secretary could not make it and died on the spot. Your sister and father, both, where rushed to the hospital as quickly as possible but Marsha already lost a lot of blood. And as you may know her blood group was a rare type, we could not arrange for it within the time frame and lost her. She shielded your father in order to protect him. Despite your sister’s protection, your father took a huge hit on his head and right now he is in a *sigh* vegetative state.”
• After he explained everything to me, there was pin drop silence in the room. Then suddenly I asked, “So, do you know who the culprit behind all this is?”
• “There are some clues which we have found and are investigating it”, Alan told me politely.
• After this conversation was over, Jeff entered the room.
• “Thank god, you are awake. How are you feeling?”
• “Cut the crap. I know you are not interested in ‘my’ well being rather you are concerned about the young miss of Emeralds”, I snapped at him and made him shut up. “Take me to where my sister is.”
• Looking at each other, Jeff and Alan glanced my way. Alan broke the silence and said, “We will take you to her but right now you have to rest.” Jeff also chimed in and said, “Yes. Reya. You have to rest for now. Uncle will take you to Marsha when you recover”.
• “Then, tell me which room is my sister’s”, I probed.
• “Come with me”, without any further objection he took me to the room across the one I was in. Before opening the door, I hesitated and held the doorknob for a few seconds. Biting my lower lip, in one go I opened the door and entered the room. The room had an elegant vibe just like its owner. A feeling of nostalgia took over me. I remembered how I used to ask Marsha to refurbish her room which I always found gloomy and she always used to say how simple and refined her room is. She like it that way.
• There was a floating bed with pearl white sheets on it. The back wall was designed with contemporary wooden look. A large and comfortable coffee colored couch was adorned with off-white accent pillows. There was a floor to ceiling window which had smart technology to open and shut the curtain with sensors. A white office table made of marble was paired with a leatherette high back revolving chair. The flooring was all made of dark brown wooden material which complemented the overall room well.
• I felt my nose itch as I tried to suppress myself from crying, the feeling of nostalgia coming to me. I headed towards the office table where there was a picture of Marsha and me, alongside a picture of our family.
• Looking at the photo, I cracked up. Back in the day, our family was, just like any other family, was happy and merry.
• Composing myself, I sat at the chair and stared at the picture for a while.
• Suddenly, I had the urge to look for my sister’s diary. Marsha had a habit of writing journals despite being so busy with her schedule. I once
• discovered her writing secretly and keeping it in a secret drawer which no one knew about. No one, other than us knew about the diary.
• I search for the drawer’s key.
• The drawer had a passcode. I punched Marsha’s birthdate as the password. *Access Denied, Two chances remaining*.
• Ah oh, this is bad.
• Nervously, I contemplated for a while and thought what could be the passcode. Then I punched in the date on which she was appointed as the Vice President of the company.
• *Access Denied. One chance remaining*
• Confused and dejected, I was ready to give up on opening the drawer when a distant conversation popped in my head.
• Few months ago, Marsha and I were having a conversation when she broke the news that she liked someone and he has asked her to be his girlfriend. She was beyond happy and kept grinning and giggling like a fool. Yes, that refined and elegant person was behaving like a teenage girl. If I remembered correctly, the date on which he asked her out was June 17.
• Crossing my fingers, I prayed to god,' Shiva, please ye vala kaam kar jaaye (please, let this one get through)'. I punched in 0617.
• *Beep, beep, beep* With a click sound, the drawer opened up. I joined my hand and looking upwards and said, “Thank you"
• Pulling the drawer, I saw that there were a lot of journal entries.
• They all were numbered from the latest to the oldest.
• Out of all the similar looking journals, there was one which caught my attention. It had a different outside cover and had a unique latch on it.
• Being a mischievous child, I had a habit of skipping the heiress lessons. In order to punish me, my father used to lock me up in my room all the time and I picked up the skill to unlock the door from there.
• Taking a hairpin out of my hair, I inserted and twisted it and it opened.
• I started reading the diary and noticed that there were mentions of someone who I did not knew, her boyfriend, maybe. She wrote a lot about how she met him and how charming and handsome he looked and what he was wearing on what day. How she felt about his small gestures. When he proposed to her to be his girlfriend what face he made. All in all, it was all filled with her boyfriend. But never once she wrote his name in that diary. That was kind of odd to me.
• Flipping through some more pages, a photo slipped and fell onto the floor. I picked it up.
• In the back of it, it read, My RIVERS. Turning the picture, there were two people in that image.
• One was my sister and the other was a man with jet black hair and dark gray eyes. And in the background, there was a logo of R&R.
• So he’s the one.
• To be continued . . . . . . . . . . .