The villa on the coast, its rocky cliffs and whitewashed walls shining golden in the sun. The waves rolled into shore, a muffled throb that washed over the long-thumbing honeymoon of Caspian Montague and Celeste. His feet planted album from his unimpeachable hoe of the balmy terrace as he plays Jennings of Hayes Enterprises—in the jewelled forks of pristine dining.
Caspian lounged on the rail, his custom-tailored midnight blue suit brutal and noble on his form. His green eyes were as tranquil as the sea, the antithesis of the storm that had most recently blown through their lives. Sitting opposite him was Celeste, her russet hair dancing like fingers, her green eyes offering him the sort of hushed delight that had eluded him all summer long.
As the sky darkened, the lounge-chair couple settled into velvet pillows, the intimate experience made more so by the no-fuss privacy of their stepped-back-from-the-sea escape. Caspian held Celeste closer, their fingers tangled, the fire leaking between their bodies. He and others swapped stories and aspirations, and corporate concern faded away to the minutest of backgrounds, if only for a moment.
The silence was soon broken as Caspian's phone rang loudly in the quiet peace. He glanced up at the screen, and his face fell. So, it's yet another issue on the factory floor that threatens their serenity, and the board weighs in with it again. Celeste had watched the bulge of his jaw, looking to hers, cradling his for comfort.
My scattered left-hand feeling in a time cursed with missed calls that blew up his phone, the universe meeting him halfway since he wouldn't pick up, a black forgery that anticipated on the morrow what this world would be, or some shit. He sighed an expulsion of gravitation even in Eden. "I feel like I could do this forever," he said, a wave of frustration washing over his voice.
Celeste stroked his face and stroked his cheek. "We deserve this, Caspian. "A breather, to recharge, touch base."
But their reply was brief. Then, a helicopter: more paparazzi, their toy cameras flashing as though lighting a nightclub. Sinister drones buzzed overhead, capturing every pilfered second the couple spent on the lam. So peaceful a refuge became unwelcome news.
But so when he heard Soren's stilted voice, his heart sank, and a blocked call came any secret. "What, did you think it was that easy?"
Soren's voice sent a shiver up Caspian. Celeste turned to him as the reality of their situation washed over them as waves crashing all around. Real-world violence cast doubt on what had once been a comforting promise of escape and relaxation.
Caspian stiffened, and something set in his face. "What do you want, Soren?"
But this time, there was no warmth on the other end, only Soren laughing. "I just want what's mine. And I'm not finished yet."
By the end of the call, Caspian looked at Celeste, their honeymoon joy obliterated by the burden of their legacy. It was early evening, and the storm was still howling.
Darkrai is told that Caspian receives a blocked call — a creepy voice on the other line belongs to Soren, "You didn't think it'd be that easy, did you?"
Those hours felt heavy with urgency the following day, the effortlessly picturesque seaside villa punctured by the ceaseless roar of an industry that, in the blink of an eye, also had the capacity to drown Caspian and Celeste's honeymoon. Outside, the sun-drenched gardens were drenched in exquisite morning light, except for at the breakfast table, one couple did nothing but glare at each other from across the chairs, their former joy worn down to weight.
Caspian's phone was going off continuously around that time, every notification coming in worse than the last, needy thrums riffing out from Caspian's still undemanding hands. One came from an influential investor who had heatedly emailed him saying it would divest unless he dealt with what he termed the "leadership instability" roiling Hayes Enterprises. The implication was unmistakable: Their disappearance had been read as a sign of impotence, that Caspian did not possess the mettle for his office.
Celeste lay her own hand over the top of his, presented it to him like a crutch. "We've got to figure out what makes sense for us, and the company," she said softly, her red hair glowing in the morning sunlight.
Caspian massaged his temples, tired, and his shoulders heavy. "Every single day that we're not out of here is another day that they are questioning our leadership. "If I stop now, I am giving them validation.
Humble vistas of redwood forest and golden hillsides offered little consolation as the couple vied to balance personal ambitions and work obligations. Days that should have been sweet with all the hard, sought-after sweetness a honeymoon is meant to churn up had become slaughterhouses of futures so that every thought, every choice, became burdensome.
The conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door: in walked Roman Martinez, his icy blue eyes clouded with concern. Caspian, Celeste, we are living in a second crisis." This meeting shall be an emergency and board meeting. "We are pressing the investors to make a decision on the demands a lot.
Caspian leapt up, that rumpled, sharp midnight-blue suit, that stiffly commanding, and underneath a wreck man. "There is nothing I can do — I can't run away from these problems," he said despairingly. "I must do this for the company."
Celeste was on her feet, too, her green eyes reaching for his, part love, part concern. "It's time that you and I meet in the middle a bit, Caspian. "You don't need to sacrifice our relationship for the business."
But the gravity of the moment loomed over him; the impending meeting, its imperativeness, left him little else to focus on. His suitcase is spared in the room's far corner; he rides a window and usurps his body to blame for his decisions. Least of all, because Soren's call wasn't going to gain them any friends, the road ahead would be uncertain at best.
Half-full suitcase, Caspian in the window. "If I walk away now, then I'm giving them what they want.
Celeste's phone buzzed with savage fury, cutting through the sacred hush that surrounded the villa and her army of emerald stamped across its face, not helping with the river of panic coursing between her breasts. News stations were broadcasting it live on the living room TV — a series of searing paparazzi photos that had appeared online overnight. It had laid bare their honeymoon to the unrelenting glare of the tabloids; their private sanctuary had been violated.
Instead, Celeste remained where she was, a twitchy-fingered boneless flap as she swoshed the screen's directionality by lifting her wrist, copper coils sending out puncturing minuscule sizzles algorithmically. The photos chronicled their week in the surreal vacation escape, frame by frame, snap after snap, until, finally — there he was, Soren Montague, lurking in the background, blue-eyed gaze transfixed as they gluttonized their way through the sausage party. Just the fact that Soren may have been watching them in real time made her goose-pimply.
Caspian moved in closer, his face a cyclone of confusion and concern as he scrutinized the advancing treachery. "They've captured everything. "We were here as tourists, as vacationers, as humans, as an escape.
Celeste nodded and answered in a near-whisper. "I am naïve enough and had thought that we have some privacy — but I guess Soren is determined to undermine us behind our backs.
The lovely drape of their honeymoon had been violently rented long before by the twin blood prices, and speed date celebrity of the corporate wars, battling for your tender embraces with all the dogged prebiotics of an Autobot. And when they were down to just hiding in their bedroom, the brightness of the once bird-friendly space turned the gilded cage into a gilded cage, not a bastion.
She laid her fingers along the rim of the glass, and Celeste stared dully out into the distance. One part of a working public spectacle for the ages, seemingly as the paparazzi were tossing the drones to make their break, was hoisting up their shots like "a space movement in a sovereign time way," in a gesture that could only be named to how a four-star-government prosecutor named for the moment "the high stakes of the King." The presence of Soren, our son, in their most private, intimate moments was a stark reminder that the fight was not over," it said.
Caspian stepped forward and picked Celeste's hand gently in his own. "It's one of those things that we have to take control over that, to hold the narrative in our own hands. We can't tell them the play-by-play of the war when we're on our honeymoon.""
Except Celeste's eyes were looking into space and in a million jangled thoughts that if they had tongues would have been fused into a single syllable: Where the hell are we? How much further ahead of us, and what is ahead of us? And so much of what they talked about had been so fucked with by those unwanted outside pressures that could turn them into a couple that could be slashed to ribbons that they needed to scratch and claw and zig and zag back on some structural level of privacy, almost on a daily basis, that was being taken from them.
The second one, Soren, is behind. Are you sure he's not at the game at all, in person?"