“Good day, miss. Taken by this princess’ frock? It’s a custom design by our boss.”
“Really?”
“Of course. Our store carries many original designs. Please come in and have a look.”
A promoter in the children’s apparel store that Sasha had been ogling came out to entice a prospective customer.
The pastel-pink dress that Sasha had been eyeing was gorgeous, featuring a pair of butterfly wings. It would instantly transform any young girl into a fairy princess.
Sasha imagined how her daughter would look in the dress. Excitedly, she entered the store.
About ten minutes later, she came out with the dress and two sets of boys’ apparel in the latest fashion.
These are their birthday presents then!
In a significantly greater mood, Sasha began to feel her stomach rumbling with hunger. She decided to grab a bite at a restaurant.
“What? This Astorian dude is the man who rejected you? What’s up with his taste? How could he scoff at the Benson family’s heiress?”
“That’s enough. I just feel lucky that I never got involved with him.”
Sasha had picked a rather expensive restaurant. Once she sat down, she overheard two elegant and young foreign ladies gossiping to her right.
Gossip was not Sasha’s cup of tea. Instead, she looked through the menu and ordered immediately. “I’ll have these two, please. Thank you.”
“Alright. Please wait a moment, miss.”
The waiter left quickly with the menu.
Bored, Sasha whipped out her phone to check if she had received any calls or WhatsApp messages.
Before she could even unlock her screen, the two ladies to her right launched into another impassioned discussion.
“Yeah, you’re totally right. You could’ve been in trouble by association after what went down today. Still, isn’t the Hayes Corporation pretty huge? They wouldn’t be at this global summit otherwise, right? They seem pretty careless about how they choose their CEO.”
“Who knows? Maybe they’re digging their own grave.”
The Benson heiress cackled evilly after the words left her mouth.
Sasha’s fingers, on the other hand, paused.
The mention of Hayes Corporation was a shock.
Finally, she turned her gaze to the two ladies and asked, “Excuse me, did you mention the Hayes Corporation just now? What happened to it?”
The ladies turned to stare at her, looking rather displeased.
The taller lady explained, “Yes. The corporation’s CEO had an incident at the summit. Someone broke a scandal about him murdering his mother when he was young.”
“What did you just say?” Dumbfounded, Sasha’s mind blanked.
No, no, this can’t be! It’s impossible! The only people who know about his secret will bring it to their graves! Why would anyone expose it at a global event?
Sasha was in complete disbelief.
“That’s a joke, right? How could that happen?”
“Hey, weirdo, you can read the news yourself if you don’t believe us. I’m sure the whole world knows by now!”
The two ladies began taunting Sasha for her naïve ignorance.
She felt a shudder run through her body at their mockery.
Sasha unlocked her phone in trepidation.
Before she even opened her browser, a headline notification had appeared on the screen.
Breaking News: CEO Of Astoria Corporate Giant Hayes Corporation Revealed To Be The Murderer Of His Mother At Global Commerce Summit.
The title of the article was as eye-catching as it was bone-chilling.
Still, a more horrifying sight awaited Sasha once she clicked into the article.
There was a video in the article, barely ten seconds long; watching it felt like taking a time machine to when she was six years old. Her brain pounded.
The traumatizing scene she had tried so hard to forget resurfaced in her mind.
What was Sebastian’s deepest, darkest secret?
It was indeed the fact that he had accidentally killed his mother. At Matilda’s birthday party, a psychologist had attempted to hypnotize Sasha into exposing this very secret as well.
Everything happened when she was six years old.
Back then, after she confessed about Sebastian’s atrocious dog-killing incident, the Hayes family finally noticed that something was amiss with Sebastian and sent him off to a hospital.
They hid him from the public and started him on a therapy regimen as well.
In the beginning, Sebastian refused to admit that something was wrong with him. He refused to take any medication or participate in any of the therapy programs suggested by the doctors. All this only worsened his condition.
Unwilling to see her son’s decline, Margaret Hayes had snuck out to the hospital one day to advise him.
No one would ever know what she had told him. When Sasha decided to pop by for a secret visit later that day, all she saw was an unhinged Sebastian slashing his mom on the neck with a shard of glass from a broken cup on the floor.
