A Big Problem

Kiera planned to take a hot bath as soon as she returned home from the grocer's shop. It was her precious holiday. She wants to spend this in a bit of peace. Suddenly, her phone started to ring. Who is calling her at this hour? Moreover, it was her work number. When she saw the caller ID she was more surprised. Why is she calling her all of a sudden at this hour?

Jesa was the assigned make-up artist of Annabelle 3 years ago. She was very skilled. As far as she knows, after Anna's retirement, she resigned immediately from the company too. She was aiming for something bigger back then. Since then, two of them lost connection with her.

Though she had her phone number, she thought she stopped using that number. But suddenly getting her call at this time out of nowhere is something Kiera was least expecting right now.

After dwelling for a while, she answered the call.

"Hey, Jesa! It's been a long time, huh?"

"Kiera? How are you?"

"Perfectly fine! What about you, huh? Suddenly making an escape from the company and calling me 3 years later?" Kiera chuckled.

"Escape plan? LOL! Nothing like that girl. I was just having fun on my own."

"Having fun? Oh my! I heard someone left the company to do something big, I think?"

"Ehh… nah! It was nothing like that. I did plan to earn more money so I kinda separately opened my own company."

"OMG girl! You are seriously something else. A whole company? How is it going?"

"Heh, it's going quite well but the problem is I thought I could make a short-cut way for earning money. But look, I am so busy from morning to night these days. Now I think it was less busy before, my life I mean," Jesa sighed loudly.

Yeah, Kiera knew about that. Jesa always wanted to escape from this hectic life after earning huge money and travel around the whole world. Though the idea was amazing, to earn money, she had to get involved in a busy life again. After all, escaping from someone's monotonous daily life wasn't something decided by the person's choice. It was decided by one's needs. If possible, she wants to escape too. It was already tiring enough for her to get away from all this.

But what always stopped her from running away was Annabelle. She could leave anyone but her. She was that important to her after all.

Suddenly her daze broke when Jesa called out for her.

"Hey, Kiera? You there?"

"Yeah, I am. I was just thinking what if I am the one running away now."

"Yeah, right. It must have been very tough for you these days, right? Thank God, Annabelle is not under your supervision anymore. Or else you had to deal with the troublemaker Annie again."

Eh? What did she mean by that?

Anna declared her retirement three years ago. There was a huge uproar among fans. Their cries were so heartbreaking when they heard that their favorite singer was no longer going to sing for them. No one connected with her was aware of her real reason for retirement. She didn't attend any press conferences. She breached the contract with her company and paid a huge sum of money for that. But there was no explanation, no excuses for her retirement to leave any opportunity to gossip or make stories from it.

She was just like a twinkle of the stars. She came without any notice, made each and every fan of hers fall in love with her singing and beautiful smile, and then just disappeared as if she never existed, to begin with. No one knew where she went. Her old house was empty, her social media accounts were all deleted. There were so many artists retiring unusually at a young age. But they never disappeared like that. They were always there for their loyal fans. For this reason, some fans of her started to hate her, others were still busy proving their loyalty towards her.

But Annabelle didn't feel like thinking about all those things. What she was, was something she has nothing to do with right now. No one knew Kiera, her manager, still kept contact with her. She was questioned several times at public meetings, interrogated by the hungry reporters. But she denied all those questions to answer. And soon, one day, all of these died down, just like that.

After 3 years, no one in the entertainment industry talked about her. Suddenly Jesa's mentioning her name out of nowhere made Kiera a little bit restless. What happened again to make Jesa remember about her?

There was a time Jesa complimented Anna for having the most wonderful and suitable skin for make-up products. She also heard her saying Annabelle was the most beautiful girl among all actresses she worked with. And now, that 'most beautiful' woman became a troublemaker to her?

This was the reality. This wasn't any fairy tale. No matter how great you are, when people stop to give you attention, you will turn into someone troublesome to mention. These shallow words of compliments said by those pretentious people back then never meant anything to Anna. She was exactly strong in this way. Doing things as she likes without wavering from her path by these false compliments.

"Annie? What about her suddenly? It's been a long since I heard her name. Heh, thinking that I was her manager once makes me kinda nostalgic." Kiera tried her best to make it sound like she almost forgot about Annabelle.

"Ehh? You didn't see the forum?"

Jesa was quite astonished. A capable manager like Kiera Simmons was not someone to forget checking daily entertainment forums.

"Forum?" Kiera twitched her brows.

"You really didn't see it?" Jesa asked, bewildered.

"No, really. Actually, I was transferred to the finance department after my promotion. I am now handling no one's contract to be exact."

"Then, let me give you the forum link. This is super interesting. Check it out, LOL."

As soon as Jesa sent the link, Kiera cut the call without saying goodbye. She was already regretting answering her call. She hates pretentious people the most just like Annabelle.

When she clicked the link, the forum post popped out in front of her eyes in an instant. The moment her gaze fell upon the pictures attached with the post; her mind went blank.

It was posted several days ago when she was still in Korea. This is insane. How can she let this happen to her?

What will Anna do after seeing this forum's post? It was retweeted millions of times. Why didn't she notice it earlier? No, she has to call the lawyer. She can't stand still without making a lawsuit against the poster. It was not just about the picture attached to the post; it was also very badly captioned. Anna was no more a celebrity. Then why does she have to tolerate these again? Posting these is a kind of cybercrime as well as a violation of citizen rights.

Her thoughts were interrupted by an incoming phone call again.

Mr. Kavin? Why is he calling her right now? It could be urgent, so she picked up the call.

"Hello? Mr. Kavin?"

"Kiera dear! How are you doing?" Kavin's amicable voice came through her phone.

"I am perfectly fine, sir. Right now, I am in a little bit of a hurry, pardon me. Can I call you back some other time?" Kiera said hurriedly continuously looking at her wristwatch.

"At this time? You, youngsters, do push yourselves too hard for work. Don't worry. I won't take that much time. I have something urgent to talk to you about too. I thought I would invite you to my mansion. But it looks like your schedule is too tight. I also asked Miya but she said that you were quite busy with some deal at the company." By Miya, Kavin meant Kiera's personal assistant Miya. She was the one in charge of assembling her schedule every day.

Though Kiera respected this old man very much, she was really very anxious about something else now. Right now, nothing is more important than suppressing this news though it will be quite tough to do that at this stage.

"Oh, please, of course, tell me if you can make it short as I said…..."

Kiera couldn't finish her sentence as Kavin interrupted her.

"I saw the news 3 days ago, Miss Simmons. I guessed being her 'Annie' before. But I didn't dwell on that though as I don't like intervening in people's personal life unnecessarily just because I run a magazine company. I think I can help a bit with this. I don't have any evil intentions. I like that child very much, whether she is Annabelle D'Costa or Annie. I have an offer for you."

Kiera was more than grateful to know this old man's thoughts. Her respect for him grew a little higher as she heard him say those assuring words.

"Thank you so much for your concern, Sir. But what kind of offer are you talking about?"

"I have one. Let's meet tomorrow. Bring Miss Annabelle with you also. Don't worry. My house is security tight. I can assure you about that. You better tell Miss Annabelle about all these. She needs to know. I don't think she knows that yet."

"Yeah, I will catch up later tomorrow."

So, she has to tell her, huh? And here she was thinking about how to avoid her involvement in this whole thing. But still, she somewhat trusted Mr. Kavin's words. Let's see what happens.

**** **** **** **** ****

Kiera was getting ready to head over to Annabelle's place when she found herself alone in the whole apartment. Theodore was out since Kiera left home early in the morning to buy some food and vegetables.

Why did he go out all of a sudden? He wasn't someone to hang out alone all of a sudden. Did he go for a jog then?

Suddenly, she saw a piece of paper kept under a paperweight on the kitchen table. Picking up the paper, she saw Theodore's clean handwriting written on it. Why does he have to write down something on paper when he can always text her. but when she read those words written on the paper, she got the reason for not texting her directly.