Chapter 8: A Dignified Company President

~Three Hours Later~

Mr. Charles strode towards the window with a phone held close to his ear.

As the sound of the phone ringing from the other end reached his ears, he tilted his head to the side to steal a glance at Roy who was sitting behind an oak table with a fist under his jaw, staring at him.

"She is not answering?"

Mr. Charles shook his head. Just as his lips parted, a different sound went off from his phone to show that the call had been disconnected.

'Beep—beep—beep—'

This sign alone was enough to put Mr. Charles under tension. The next second, he turned his full boy to face Roy.

"The line was disconnected. I will give it a try one more time."

Meanwhile, at the other end, Anna was sleeping soundlessly while a string of unknown numbers surfaced on the screen of the phone she had kept on the nightstand.

She was in such a deep sleep that she did not hear her phone ring. It was her mother who was walking past her door that heard the sound and walked in in time to see her stirring on the bed.

Seeing that the incoming call was about to wake her up from sleep, Ms. Carter quickly hurried to the nightstand to pick up the phone. The moment her eyes caught sight of the unknown caller ID, she swiped the call icon towards the left, rejecting the call.

Once she had succeeded in ending the ringing tone, she put the phone on aeroplane mode before putting it back on the nightstand.

A soft sigh escaped her lips as her gaze moved to Anna who had already stopped stirring in her sleep. "You must be so exhausted," she said as she adjusted the duvet on her body before walking out of the room.

---

'The number you are trying to reach is not available at the moment—'

Mr Charles felt weak in his knees as soon as the female automated voice passed on that information.

It was obvious that the line had been intentionally dropped dead, but how was he going to report this situation to his boss who was waiting in anticipation?

"She is still not answering?" Roy probed.

With that information, Mr. Charles was forced to make the revelation, "The line is not available at the moment."

He was careful with his wording in other not to upset the man whose plans were not exactly going towards the direction he had intended.

Telling him that Anna had turned off her phone after rejecting his call the first time was akin to begging to be punished.

A heavy silence descended upon them. No other words were exchanged.

The only sound in the room that was heard came from Roy drumming the tips of his index and middle fingers on the oak wood desk and the ticking seconds-hand of the oval-shaped wall clock in his home office.

'She turned off her phone? Is she that sleepy?' Roy asked himself as his gaze turned thoughtful.

Even without his right-hand man revealing the truth, he already had a sense of what happened.

He did not seem bothered whether he had been scammed or not. He just went on to deliver the next thing on his mind.

Roy lifted his gaze. "Mr. Charles—"

"Yes, Sir," Mr. Charles answered as he crossed his wrists in front of him in an attentive stance.

"I need you to steal something for me."

Mr. Charles: "…"

"I want the family register kept away in my father's office," Roy revealed.

Mr. Charles: "…"

The look on Mr. Charles' face was very expressive. If he could ask the question, it would have been, 'Excuse me, you said what?'

A whole dignified multi-million-dollar company President wanted him to go into the minister's private study to steal his family's register?

That was appalling!

Mr. Charles was left speechless. Never has something of this nature ever happened since his first day of employment. This was a first.

Seeing that Charles remained rooted in the same spot even after he was done passing instructions to him, Roy raised a questioning brow. "You don't want to go?"

Mr. Charles quickly shook his head. "I will go get it," he replied before taking his leave.

Earlier, he had been too stunned to say a word but at Roy's low-key threatening gaze, he was forced to snap back to the present and hurry away.

---

~An Hour Later~

Waking up from her deepest sleep in two years, Anna sat up on her bed and stretched her arms above her head while letting out an unladylike yawn that stretched the corners of her lips.

Arching her back to relieve the muscles there, she finally brought a hand over to cover her mouth.

A smile slowly turned up on her lips as her gaze darted across her room, taking in every single item.

A few hours ago, when she first stepped into her bedroom, she had been too tired to pay attention to the details, but now that her energy had been refuelled, she took her time with her observation.

A soft shade of lavender painted walls adorned with two artworks. A white shelf crammed with books, picture frames and trophies. A clean study desk with only a lamp on it and to its right, there lay a white tennis racket and two signed optic green tennis balls on a wall shelf.

As Anna's gaze swept across the room, bringing back some beautiful memories, it finally dawned on her that she had not seen or known what her room looked like in the two years she was blind.

In the spirit of this new revelation, her eyes turned teary. Slowly, she got off the bed and made her way to the big shelf.

As Anna's fingers glided past each trophy and framed pictures, the events that led to those victories started popping up in her head one after the other.

"This is real," she mumbled to herself as she reached out with a finger to catch the teardrop that had slipped from the corner of her left eye.

But as Anna was reeling in the joy of her past victorious moments, an alarm sound went off from her phone.

That small distraction was powerful enough to pull her back to the present. Slowly, she went over to the nightstand to pick up her phone and unlocked it.

As she turned off the daily alarm that reminded her to take her meds, she noticed that she had missed a call from an unsaved contact she did not recognize.

'Who could it be?' she wondered.

It did not immediately occur to Anna that Roy must have been the one who left that call. It was only when she noticed what the time was on her phone that her eyes grew wide in realization.

She just remembered that she had an appointment with Roy Kim, and a marriage to register.