Resisting The Billionaire

6. Adrian's Plan

“Yes Mom! Don’t worry! I will take care of myself. You always do this whenever I go out of city or country.”

Adrian mumbled over the phone, as he spoke to his mother, sitting inside the still plane, standing at the runway in New York, where the crew closed the overhead luggage compartments and made the necessary on ground and for in flight checks, before the plane would take off for Los Angeles, to where Adrian was going on a very grave mission.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing Mom!” This time Adrian sighed in quite the agitation, getting irritated by his mother’s continuous worry for him, that at times he found completely unnecessary and pesky.

“Have you kept your medicines? I told Anita to pack your bags personally but you know, she is quite old now and she usually forgets to pack important things.” Joy worried over the phone, clear anxiety reflecting off her tone, “Gosh! I should’ve come to check your luggage myself but Mr. Diablo called me early in the morning.”

“What did he call you for now?” Adrian asked, intrigued to know what did the old hag wanted that time because each time, he came to his office, he only bore bad news.

“He thought that maybe we could work out a legal way to omit the binding clause…” Joy stated, not daring to mention the cursed obligation, that was forcing her son to marry a woman, that Joy clearly knew that her son didn’t enjoy the company of.

Adrian simply sighed and shook his head, assuring his mother with as much confidence as he could muster up, “Mom! I told you not to worry yourself about me. I have my prescription with me. So, even if Anita did not pack my medicines, I will buy it from LA. Nothing is out of my reach.”

“I can tell that. You are meticulous and I don’t have to worry about you but at the end of the day, I am your mother and no matter how tough and big you would become, I would always worry about my son.”

“Mom! Relax, okay? It is just a matter of a few days and I will be back soon…” Adrian’s patience had started to wear off and much to his appeasement, his assistant Jared walked inside the plane, handing off his hand carry to one of the air hostesses, who took it with much pleasure and even gave Jared a flirtatious smile, welcoming him on board.

Jared also stood back, leaning a hand over the open door frame of the plane and began flirting with the airhostess, something that Adrian noticed and rolled his eyes away.

Around the office, Jared would wear a fitted suit that wouldn’t show his physique that much but when traveling, he wore light polo shirts and jeans, that revealed his bulging muscles, something that he had gained, trying to keep apace with Adrian’s physique and fit, who forced Jared to go the gym with him, making him his gym buddy.

“Mom! Jared is here, if you don’t trust me that I would take good care of myself, why don’t you ask him and give him briefing about me keeping my health good…”

Adrian threw the phone right on to Jared, who was taken off guard but immediately caught the phone and held his against his ear.

“Yes?” he asked, oblivious to who it was.

“Jared! You are responsible for taking care of Adrian…” Joy began dictating the young man, who looked at Adrian and rolled his eyes in anger, flaring his nose and Adrian only grinned and shrugged at him.

“Yes Joy! Don’t worry. I will make sure that he takes his medicine and I will take good care of him.” he assured the woman, repeating the same sentence on too many times, until Joy finally spared the poor man’s life and cut the call off.

“At least give me a warning, who it is on the phone! I can handle the prime minister of England but not Joy. You know that.” Jared complained, sitting down on the large white seat, opposite to Adrian, who smirked back at him.

“Serves you right for slacking off and not focusing on the mission.” Adrian told the man, who shook his head.

“It is stated in my contract that I am allowed to make a move on women outside the work space and this ain’t no workspace buddy.” Jared stated, once again throwing a smile at the air hostess, who offered him a champagne.

Adrian couldn’t help but roll his eyes in disappointment that not only was Jared desperate but so was the airhostess because before Jared came, she tried to pull three moves on Adrian. But he had too much on his mind to even focus on his carnal needs.

“Can you stop thinking about f*****g holes and just get down to the point? Did you do what I asked you to do?”

Adrian snapped Jared out of his lusty gaze that he gave airhostess and the flight service manager, understood that Adrian was not enjoying the occasional intrusion of the young flight attendant.

She immediately rushed forward and pulled the attendant back and bowed down in respect to her boss.

“I am sorry for any inconvenience caused by the crew members. We will soon fly for Los Angeles and if you require anything, please let me know, I shall assist you directly.”

Adrian nodded and dismissed her and she also turned around and pulled the horny hostess with her, dragging her towards the crew cabin and chastised her for lousy behavior.

Jareb pulled out his iPad and opened up a file, placing it on the table in front of Adrian.

“Just as you told us, we found her exactly from where you said to begin our investigation on her.”

Jared informed him and Adrian skipped all the written information and went straight for the pictures that his team had collected over the past two days, while they had Diana investigated.

Those pictures in front of Adrian were Diana’s candid pictures that Adrian’s spies had clicked, during their investigation of her, while she went about her day.

It was her leaving the theater, grabbing a coffee, as some of the clicks were taken through the glass walls of the café that she took her coffee from and sat in for some quiet time. Then some of her pictures were entering the salon and others were of her leaving it late at night and getting in to aunt’s car. And the final ones were her getting out of her Aunt’s car and entering her small suburban house, followed by the last picture of Diana resting in the hanging hammock in the balcony outside her bedroom, with a younger girl resting her head in her lap.

Adrian gulped a little too hard, perhaps not expecting to see the pictures that were completely opposite to what he had imagined in his head.

He imagined her how she used to be ten years ago. Frizzy long, unbrushed brown hair with waves falling all over her face, back and clothes, a long over size vintage hoodie or a shirt that must had belonged to her Dad ages ago. And then clumsiness – Oh God! How could Adrian forget the essence of clumsiness that Diana carried with her, wherever she went. A droopy low bag on her shoulder, that she dropped each time she turned or had it’s loop stuck somewhere, making her pull back or fall down on the ground, becoming a laughing stock for the entire school. And above all, those thick rimmed glasses, without which she was practically blind.

But the girl that he saw in the pictures… she was almost someone else. She was clean, no glasses and hair straight, not just plain brown but a shade or two lighter showing that she had dyed them. Her skin held this thing, that Adrian had never seen before.

What was it? he tried to guess it and even though a word came in to his mind but he didn’t want to say it out and loud.

Radiance? Did she glow?

He wondered what made that dull and glum face of her turn so bright. It was almost like someone had made that girl go through a makeover machine and when she stepped out, she was completely different.

“Are you sure, this is her?” he asked in an intriguing tone and Jared nodded.

“Hundred and ten percent it is her. She doesn’t go by Diana Finley anymore. She now goes by Diana Sanchez. She took her aunt’s surname.”

“Her Aunt?”

“Yeah! Her late mother’s sister. To whom Diana ran to ten years ago, when she left New York.”

Adrian slightly scoffed at the reckoning of Diana changing her surname, “She changed her name as if someone was going to come looking after her.”

“Well could be but I think it was mostly because she was only fourteen back then and her aunt needed to have her guardianship. That’s why she gave Diana her surname and became her legal guardian and after that she put Diana in beauty school after she completed her high school and ever since then Diana had been working in her Aunt’s beauty salon, as a pro makeup artist or how they put it as these days, ‘MUA’.”

“MUA?”

Adrian c****d an eyebrow, baffled at the title that Jared informed him of.

His assistant simply shrugged back, “Anyways, that’s all it about her I guess. She is quite simple and I assume it would not make your job tough. She doesn’t have anybody looking after her.”

“What about any friends?”

“Just a three. One of her friends, Bernard, is a director who runs a small flopped theater at the boulevard. Her two friends are just the hairdressers from the salon. One is named Tony and the other one is Gloria.”

“Any boyfriends?” Adrian inquired, knowing that if anyone would be a potential threat to his plan, it would be a boyfriend.

Jareb once again shook his head, “Not any that our men could dig off. Though she did date a guy around four years ago, who was a student back then and when she had just started working at her Aunt’s salon.”

Adrian felt a nerve hit his brain, not because he was jealous but felt slightly nervous that any romantic interest of Diana’s could hinder his plans.

“But the two broke up when she Diana found him cheating. Ever since then, the two are completely out of contact and Diana hasn’t dated anyone.”

“What about her Aunt? How is she? Is she too pesky around her niece and loves and protects her a lot?”

Jared shook his head, “She is quite sticky to her niece and does keep her around but from what my men had been able to gather in such a short period of time is the fact that her Aunt is a greedy woman, for whom nothing is above her business and money. She was even engaged to some young rich fund manager from wall street. She is quite smart to have a guy ten years younger than her propose her. but somehow due to some publicly undisclosed circumstances, her aunt apparently broke the engagement off.”

“Hmm! If what you’re saying about her aunt being meticulous about money, then there would be no way that she would be the one to break the engagement with a rich guy.” Adrian weighed in.

“Yeah! Even I thought so. but apparently, she called the engagement off, right at the engagement party and sent all the guests back home, without giving any reason. The guests reported that the guy begged her to listen to him but she refused and gave his ring back. That’s how everyone is sure and I am sure that she was the one to call off the engagement.”

“Hmm…” Adrian remained quiet for a second, as he scrolled through Diana’s pictures and finally closed the iPad, “Still find out the reason for why she ended the engagement and also, who is the young girl in the last picture with Diana?”

“Oh! I forgot about her. she is not a very significant character, just her spoiled little cousin. Her Aunt’s daughter. Paulina, who goes by the name Polly. She is just a big high school cheerleader who is a bully. Your typical high school mean girl character.”

Adrian couldn’t help but chuckle, “She seems quite close to her cousin.”

“Yeah! Because her cousin pampers her, helps her with makeup and stuff.”

“Hmm! Well, just find out everything and more that you can on these three women.”

“Sure. I will order our men once we land. So, Diana goes to her Aunt’s salon by four in the evening. How about we pick her up from there and…”

“No!” Adrian immediately lifted his hand up in the air, stopping Jared from wasting his time any further and proposing an idea that didn’t fall well with Adrian’s plan.

“Then?”

“What are the peak hours of her Aunt’s business?”

“Umm, around seven to eight!”

“Great! That is when we will make an entrance. The guards and the security will surround the whole place and then I will go in. you stay out and control things around the whole area, make sure no one else enter the salon while I would be in there.”

“Why do you even want to go in?” Jared inquired, quite confused with what Adrian was up to. He knew that his boss always made sure to make an impact that would last long and leave the essence of his power and show of his supremacy over the rest. There was a reason how he was able to impress the members of the voting committee to make him the CEO, despite of his cousin’s higher chances to be the controller of the company’s affairs.

“Because this is a very futile and a meager thing that is being an inconvenience to me. But she needs to be handled with care. If we have her picked up from her place, she is going to feel that she is important and a necessity. We need to make it feel that she is an option or perhaps, we are doing her favor. We need to bring her in slowly without alerting her. and as far as I know her, she would already be alerted by my sudden presence.” Adrian informed Jared.

“Is she that quick witted?” asked Jared and Adrian shrugged.

“Honestly, I am over estimating her. the last I remember her, she was the dumbest person on earth.” He placed his elbow over the arm rest of his chair and a finger over his lips. A small smirk appeared on those lips of his as he remembered something clumsy that Diana had done in the past.

“Well if she is that dumb, then why are you afraid that she might be alerted that we are on to something and visiting her for a reason?” Jared snapped Adrian out of his haze and his boss simply shook his head and decided to be more alert himself and in the present, thinking about a careful way in which he would be able to handle the Diana crisis.

“Well, we just need to take precautionary measures. And that’s why we also need to take care of her aunt, who I will handle and I will also make sure that I leave an imprint on everyone in that salon, so that no one dares to make a move against me. I know a way that would make Diana walk out of that salon on her own and make her think that she is the one handling and controlling charge of the situation, all the while she would simply be falling a prey to my plans…”

As Adrian unfolded his plans to Jared, looking out the window of his plan, that flew and took him high and above the clouds, he felt extremely proud of himself that how easy and smoothly he was able to execute his plan.

And as Diana walked out of the salon and Adrian follow behind her, Jared sat in the tinted Range Rover, as the very corner of the seat. Sitting in the passenger seat and having a direct view of the salon’s door, he had started to get anxious when Adrian had spent such a long time inside and was not coming out but the moment he watched Diana walk out all alone, followed right behind Adrian, he couldn’t help but laugh in clear amusement.

“Oh Mr. Sarmiento, who sly fox.” He clapped his hand in clear joy, watching as his boss was able to execute the first part of his plan, which only boosted both his and Adrian’s confidence that just like how they were able to win the first silent battle, they would be able to win in all of their plans and thence, there was nothing that could stop Adrian from becoming the CEO of the Sarmiento Corporations. Especially now, now that he had Diana in the palm of his hands.

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Wow! Do you think Adrian has already won :D

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