21 Chapter 20: Regina
The next few days went by so fast and the day for Becca's trip back to Massachusetts had arrived but as excited as Becca was, she was equally as nervous. Nervous to see them all, her family, nervous to see Johnny. The last time she saw her brother, he was..… well, let just say he wasn't himself. He was no more than a mere shell of the person he once was. She was now done packing for her trip without forgetting a single item, she knew because she made sure of that by triple checking.
Becca took a cab to the airport but her flight was unfortunately delayed due to some slight complications and had to wait for about half an hour before boarding the plane. Her stepmother had paid for her ticket so she was sure that she would be flying first class.
It was a couple of minutes past ten in the morning when the plane she had boarded landed at Logan international airport, Massachusetts. Becca got off the plane, dragging her suitcase with one hand and holding her purse in the other. She dressed casually in a black T-shirt, blue ripped jeans, and white sneakers with a pair of dark shades to complete the entire ensemble. Her intention was not to attract any attention to herself or standout in the crowd so she chose to wear the least eye-catching thing in her entire closet and voila! Here we are!
Becca plunged her hand into her purse to fished out her phone as she approached the airport exit. She then dialed Navaya's number and it rang twice before being answered. Navaya answered the call so fast like she was patiently waiting for Becca to call her as she was missing her bestie.
" You called so soon, miss me already?" Navaya asked nonchalantly over the phone after answering.
" As if." Becca denied, not wanting to admit the truth that she already missed her best friend, mostly her craziness.
" Then why did you call?" Navaya threw another question to her friend also in the hope of hiding how much she missed her innocent little Becca. Navaya's voice might have sounded emotionless over the phone but in reality, she was staring at her phone and waiting for it to ring with Becca's call ID written on top. Navaya tried to act like she wasn't even bothered by Becca's absence but couldn't as she missed her gist buddy.
" I just called to ask about work and how things are going over there. I hope you haven't caused me bankruptcy yet." Becca said with a little laugh as she signaled a cab to stop and got in with her luggage.
" It's always work with you," Navaya complained. " You know what? Maybe once you die a virgin and a spinster, I will use your office as your final resting place so that your soul can actually rest in peace." Said Navaya like the little sassy thing she was.
" Thanks, I would appreciate that." Becca responded and laughed when she had Navaya sighed from frustration.
" As much as I know that dying single is your all-time goal but at least try to have fun with your family and enjoy your holiday. Well, that's if you even know what a holiday means." Navaya dished out another round of sass that got Becca laughing like a maniac because Navaya sounded like a disappointed mother giving words of wisdom to her wayward daughter. " Since you don't seem to understand what it means to be on a holiday then allow me to explain. Get off your aging butt and go get a life, find a man while you are at it." Navaya scolded and hung up the call. Becca was stunned by what just happened, she stared at her phone screen in disbelief for a few seconds. ' Did her bestie just tell her to go find a man and hang up on her?' She asked herself before bursting into another fit of laughter that almost startled the cab driver.
Sometimes she didn't understand Navaya, Becca was sure that Navaya was missing her already but she still hung up the call and acted like she couldn't care less. Becca honestly felt pity for anyone who would ever try to understand the person Navaya was because she was not the type that could be understood. All you had to do was just go with the flow with her and you would be fine.
Becca was still laughing so hard that she didn't even realize that the cab had stopped and she had reached her destination, the house that she grew up in. It had just been a year since she had last been there and even though it didn't sound like a long time, it still felt like a decade. But in her brother's case, it felt like two decades since she hadn't seen his annoying face in two years.
After Becca paid the cab driver, she entered the estate but not after doing a full body search at the gate. She had always been made to undergo thorough searching whenever she came to visit and it was all because of the unspeakable incident that happened four years ago. She lifted her face and her eyes scanned the building until it met those of her stepmother, who was casually sipping a glass of wine on the balcony.
Becca fought the urge to roll her eyes at the scene in front of her. With one leg crossed over the other, her stepmother Regina looked aloof like a cold-hearted empress looking down at her subject. Regina was one of the richest businesswomen in America and a very cold one at that. She was feared in both the business world and in some parts of the mafia business but though she wasn't a mafia herself, she still had a lot of connections with them. And just like Leo Kane, she also had a nasty habit of making people that offended her disappear. Becca forced a smile on her face when she saw her stepmother wasn't going to say anything and was deliberately ignoring her.
Geez.... sometimes Becca usually forgets that the woman sitting and sipping wine on the terrace was the person who raised her.
" it's nice to see you again, mother. Isn't it too early to be drinking?" Becca shouted from the gate to get her stepmother's attention.
" Oh! You arrived so soon!" Regina exclaimed, pretending to be surprised when she wasn't. " How are you doing, sweetheart?" Regina asked as she took another sip of her wine. She was wearing a beautiful long white dress and a Tiffany diamond necklace around her neck. She wore a gulf pearl parure bracelet on one wrist and a Graff diamond hallucination watch on the other, literally blinding Becca with all the bling she had on her. Keeping Regina's iced wrists aside, the J.S Terrantez Madeira wine that she was casually sipping down was worth as much as an average American's biannual salary.
Becca could hear and feel the mockery in her stepmother's question, acting like she didn't know that Becca would be arriving around that time when she was the one who bought her the early morning flight tickets.
" Me? Oh, I'm good, very good in fact. I'm just hanging around here while being searched like a criminal in my own house, no biggie. It's cool, great even." Becca said in the most sarcastic tone she could muster, hoping that her stepmother would finally realize that searching her wasn't necessary, anymore. Regina stared at her stepdaughter for a couple of seconds and shrugged her shoulders.
" Well, I'm glad to see that you are having fun over there," Regina responded and Becca's eyes widened with disbelief. ' Are you kidding me?!' Becca exclaimed in her head. Did her stepmother not understand how sarcasm worked or did she just choose to ignore it? Was her EQ value gradually decreasing due to old
age?
" Mother! It happened four years ago, I am an adult now!" Becca whined while Regina rolled her eyes and folded her arms over her chest.
" Oh, so now I'm your mother when you don't even bother to call or say hello. I'm sure you wouldn't even know if I had dropped dead during your absence because don't care to check up on me. Why would you when I mean nothing to you after all? You have forgotten me." Regina nagged, showing her pettiness in its full glory.
" It's nothing like that mother, you mean the world to me. I have just been very busy with work these past few months that's all." Becca instantly explained her side of the story but Regina wasn't having any of it.
" Don't you dare lie and use work as an excuse because I know when you are lying?" Regina scolded and Becca quickly shook her head.
" Of course I'm not lying to you, why would I?" Becca asked. " You know I love you more than anything on this Earth. I don't even know why you would think of something as horrible as that. Me? forget you? Never!" Becca said sugar-sweet words to her stepmother to put her at ease.
Everything that Becca had said to her stepmother was true, she truly loved Regina more than anything in this world, well aside from her late mother of course. Amanda was the only person Regina couldn't rival when it came to Becca's love.
" Work shouldn't stop you from contacting your family. Take me for instance, I run my own company as well but still managed to raise three beautiful children and I'm currently the richest woman in Massachusetts. I didn't use any magic spells or something but I still did, right? You should know that family always comes first, why don't you kids ever learn from me? First, it was that strong-headed brother of yours and now it's you. I never really get a break, do I? All I did was give birth to children but I'm being treated like I killed an entire village." Regina nagged like an offended grandmother while Becca just stayed silent the whole time listening to her.
Becca did open her mouth to say something once but quickly closed it because she knew anything that she said in her defense would only earn her another full lecture on how children these days were so rude. Her defending herself would be like opening up a can of crazy that had no lid. "And about that drinking comment you made earlier, wine tastes great at any time of the day," Regina added and luxuriously took another sip of her wine.
Becca shook her head at her stepmother's petty nature but neither the less, she still loved her to pieces and her childish attitude made her even more adorable. Regina might have been a cold-hearted tyrant in the business that nobody wanted to mess with but to her, kids she was as cute and fluffy as a big teddy bear.
When Becca's suitcase was done being searched, she started dragging it towards the house with no help whatsoever. As Becca walked into the house, Regina's unusually piercing gaze was still upon her. Becca felt her stepmother's hot gazes and looked right back at her without even blinking, trying to match the intensity of her stare. Someone who didn't know how both they behaved would think that they were challenging each other or something but it was only just a little staring game they usually played against each other.
Becca blinked and looked away when she couldn't keep her stepmother's gaze anymore.
" HA!" Regina exclaimed, feeling happy that she had won again like she always did, and now, shining brighter than the sun itself was her victory smirk. She tucked away a few loose strands of her beautiful curly red hair behind her ear and happily sipped more of her wine.
Becca snorted at her stepmother for being so childish and roughly dragged her suitcase into her room, feeling a little annoyed that she haven't yet won against her stepmother in that little staring contest of theirs.
