Resisting The Billionaire

65. Two years Part II

Adrian stood stunned, watching Diana well and alive, walking with all her might and strength, strutting as she walked straight through a small door and in to the very building that Adrian was planning on buying.

Snapped out of his daze, Adrian immediately rushed after Diana, still flabbergasted with his findings.

As he rushed behind her, Diana had already disappeared behind the door, that was heavy and creaked as it closed with a loud thud.

Adrian pushed through the door, even pushing down the large handle on the seemingly fire exit of the door but it refused to budge.

It grunted, cursing at the timing of not being able to catch up with Diana, before she entered inside the building and disappeared.

He then walked towards the front of the building and pushed through the main door, it was made out of old oak wood and was quite heavy but it opened smoothly and allowed Adrian entrance in to the building.

Passing through the oddly odorous narrow hallway, that had only a few bulbs lit up and the rest flickering, Adrian ended up reaching the main center of the building, which held two passages split on each of his side, while a large double door faced him.

Adrian walked through those doors and ended up right in to the small stepped seating area of the theater, which had the large stage set up with all the lights turned towards the thick grey curtains, drawn on to the stage.

Somehow, a seething feeling began settling in his heart and he gulped hard, watching as people walked inside the theater and sat on the different seats, making Adrian realize that there wasn’t any chronological order to the seating and people sat wherever they felt comfortable or desired to.

Adrian also grabbed a seat and also held the brochure that was placed on every single seat of the theater.

He scrolled through the brochure and his eyes widened, as he saw that along the entire cast and crew of the show that was about to be played on the stage, was smacked a picture of that one face that he could always detect even in the largest of the crowds.

Slapped with heavy makeup on her face, looking like an euphoric character was Diana, looking in to a void with a dramatic expression. It became quite evident to Adrian that Diana had indeed become an actress.

He wondered whether she had joined the theater after she ran away from home. He assumed for a split amount of second, if Diana had become an actress and perhaps was in some sort of struggling phase of her life, but he immediately snapped his head out of that thought.

Had she become an actress, she would’ve ended up in an add on anywhere on his radar where his men would have informed him about her whereabouts.

Even though he wasn’t persistently looking for her but he had asked his men to keep her in the loop of their search and every year when they would close down their annual reports and inquire from Adrian whether or not he wanted to end the search on Diana since his team was not able to find her.

But Adrian would only ask them to keep her in the loop just in case. He wasn’t curious much to know where she was but there was always a part in his heart that hoped and wished that she would be fine.

It wasn’t that her absence was hindering his daily routine or had paralyzed his mind beyond the point where he couldn’t even go on to do his daily tasks.

He was normal and went on to live his life just as he had planned even without Diana’s presence in it. but every now and then, he would be reminded of her.

Every other day when he would work out a trick that was taught to him by Ross, he would immediately remember his daughter, whom he found to be pesky but at the same time, he would also be haunted by the reminder of the fact, over how he slept with her one night and broke her heart in a horrid manner.

There was a lump of guilt that had woven its presence quite evidently over his heart and that guilt was what he wanted to deal with and find out where was Diana and how she was doing.

At times he feared, that she might had been taken away by someone when she was young and smuggled to some horrible part of the world and that was the reason why he could never find her or track her but at the same time, his team assured him that they had searched through all such human trafficking networks of the world and Diana was never spotted on any such network.

On the other hand, there was instances when he worried if somebody had hurt her and killed her but he always hoped that she had survived even through the toughest of the times and that she would be well and alive.

Adrian held that brochure in his hands and curled his fingers around it tightly, crumpling up the colorful thick piece of paper in his hands.

He felt an unsettling agony surging through his body that made his scrunch his eyebrows and knit them together.

He thought that the moment he would ever see Diana again, he would be relieved that she was alright but somehow he felt agitated and angered.

Angered towards the fact that he worried sick about her at times and prayed for her safety. He carried an unresolved guilt in his heart whereby he blamed himself that it was his mistake that Diana ran away after her parents died. Had he been kinder towards her, he believed that she would have stayed back with him. but again, he never realized his mistakes until he didn’t lose her.

The lights around the seating area began getting lower and Adrian could tell that it was about time when the show was going to begin.

He contemplated his choices. He could sit back, watch the show and confront Diana once she appeared on the stage or perhaps wait till the show was over and then make his way backstage where he could get to confront her.

But Adrian didn’t face either of the two choices.

Instead, as soon as the curtains were drawn off the stage, he got up and walked out of the theater.

Somehow, a part of his heart made him believe and face the truth.

He could go all in and confront Diana but the eventual truth was the fact that Diana didn’t want to see him anymore.

He had known her to be someone, who always stole glances at him and looked for ways to communicate with him or to get to talk to him.

And the person that she depended the most on, in a world where she was lonely, perhaps that very person broke her heart.

And when she lost her parents, becoming completely alone and having no left to rely on, she left, understanding the fact that she couldn’t depend on Adrian anymore.

He was sorrowful for her, when she had lost her parents. He remembered watching her and just looking at her entirely at her parents’ funeral.

In that Holy Church, where people came to pay their last homage to the deceased couple. Diana was standing still and frozen, looking down at her worn out flat black buckle shoes that were probably a size or two smaller than her correct size and she wore them when she was in middle school.

Adrian could tell that she was stuck in a daze, too frozen to even comprehend what was happening around her. everyone simply grieved with the little girl but no one grieved for the little girl who had no one in the world left.

There were instances, from the church to the graveyard to even the wake, he wanted to talk to her.

His hands itched and his body twitched for him to at least for once tap on to Diana’s shoulder and tell her that it would be just right and that she wasn’t alone but there was a sense of comprehension and shame that was holding him back.

He believed that what he had done to her, the wounds were still fresh.

The way he had cut her, it was still deep and must had been bleeding for Diana that her loss of her parents must had only made her even more miserable.

And that’s why the very next day when he convinced his mother to bring Diana home or to take her under their care, just as a way to repay Ross for training Adrian, Diana was gone.

She was nowhere to be found. Even after searching for her, for years – Adrian could never place her.

And yet when he finally found her and had so much in his heart to tell her and to talk to her with and about, instead of staying back, he decided to finally do something for her. and that was to leave her to be unfound.

And that was how Adrian ended up walking out of the theater and realized that Diana didn’t want to be found.

All those years, she kept a low profile and enjoyed her life.

He sat inside his car and waited for the next three hours, until finally Diana walked out of the theater and that old building that he planned on buying.

Sitting in his tinted car, in the darkest corner of the street, he watched from a distance, as Diana laughed and chimed, walking along with a bunch of different people, looking like her friends, Adrian realized that she was finally happy and it was for the better that he didn’t show up in her life and meddle with her regular affairs.

He simply drove his car away and left Diana to be.

He asked his men to finally take her out of their search loop, because he didn’t want them to find her one day and he decided that letting Diana be as she was, would be the only way for him to respect Diana’s wish.

He also didn’t buy that building, recognizing the fact that she worked in that theater somehow and the farther he stayed away from her life the better it would be.

Alas – little did the naïve man knew that fate had something else planned for the two and it would bring him to the point in his life where he would end up conspiring and planning just to find ways to bring Diana closer to him.

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