Zara jabbed at her food with a fork, watching how the hunk of chicken slid down the mound of rice, the sauce dribbling along with it. She had barely eaten. The aroma, previously delectable, was now making her nauseous, twisting her stomach into painful knots.

She couldn't bring herself to lift another forkful to her mouth, but Max didn't seem to have the same problem. He was shovelling rice into his mouth at the speed of light, only stopping to chug soda straight from the bottle. It was incredible how this boy managed to be so gluttonous yet remain as fit as a fiddle. Maybe that was exactly it—output equalled input. His exertion at the gym required a parallel amount of energy.

He shoved what remained of his Chicken Tikka Masala into his mouth-hole and looked up at Zara, his rapid chewing slowing to a stop. His swollen cheek made him resemble a hamster. His eyes went down to Zara's half-eaten meal, and after swallowing, he nodded towards it.

"Do you not like it?" He drained what remained of his drink and lowered the empty bottle onto the table. She half-expected him to belch. Despite being part of the "elite" he did seem to lack basic table manners.

He had something to confess to her, yet he appeared to be nonchalant about it. Whatever it was, it couldn't be as important as what she had to tell him. It couldn't be life-changing or, even better, life-threatening. At the same time, he could be hiding his emotions. Max seemed to be the master of the poker-face.

Her doubt appeared on her face in the form of furrowed eyebrows.

"I'll take that as a yes then," Max shrugged and dumped the empty container into the takeaway bag, along with Zara's uneaten portion. He pushed it to the other end of the table. "You should really eat something, even though it's not this."

Zara reached up and rubbed a temple with the ball of her hand. "I'm not hungry."

She looked up at his staring, trying to decipher the message his eyes conveyed. He seemed lost in thought, mulling over something as he clenched his jaw. Without taking his eyes off her, he slid his hand over to her, palm up.

Zara looked at it the way a cat looks at a foreign object.

"Come on." Max gave her a pained expression and wiggled his fingers, but they weren't enough to coerce her into giving in. He retracted his hand and raked it through his hair, but the waves kept flowing back down his face. "Alright, well if you're going to be difficult, then I guess I should go first."

Finally.

She rested her cheek on a fist and gave him a small smile, but Max didn't return it.

"What I have to tell you is long overdue..." He took a deep breath, "I've known that you haven't been involved in...the robbery for a while now, but only yesterday was I able to convince my father about it. Crazy, huh? Three weeks and only now I managed to get him to understand the truth—"

Her shoulders tensed, and her grip around the fork tightened.

Two days earlier, and she would've been relieved, done cartwheels in joy.

Now, she felt more restrained than ever.

"I'll be right back," he stated, pushing his stool back to leave the kitchen.

This is it. It's over.

He would return with a gun, or a knife, and forcibly drag her to where her grandfather was. The man would suffer a violent and excruciatingly painful death by Max's hand, and Zara would be forced to watch it. Yet, her body didn't seem to want to move, it was like an invisible force was holding her in place, undeterred by the signals her brain was sending to her limbs.

She had to sit through whatever Max had in store for her, in a way, Zara owed it to him.

"Luckily, I made copies of these." His voice floated back into the room, pulling her out of her thoughts. As he sat back down behind the counter, her eyes flitted to the beige folder he placed on the table.

He opened it, scattering its contents. Mostly photographs, in black and white, but also a couple of post-it notes decorated with his illegible handwriting.

Curiosity getting the better of her, Zara picked one at random and slid it over to herself.

The subject of the photo made her heart drop.

"This...this is me? B-but I don't—"

Fuck. Jesus Christ, don't tell me that this happened when I passed out.

But no, this was before it all started. How...

The pounding at the back of her head returned, stronger than before. Her head felt heavy again, and she had to keep it up with her hands.

This can't be possible. How is this possible? It's not possible.

Her breathing felt strained, the room suddenly felt much hotter than before. She tugged at the collar of her shirt, it was suffocating her, she couldn't breathe.

She took another one, and another, all in compromising positions. They all pointed to the same thing; that she had stolen the pills.

I couldn't have done this. I was...I don't even know where I was that day. When was this? Why isn't there a date?

She felt a hand on her shoulder and her heart stopped.

"It's not you." His voice was right above her head.

"Then...then..." Zara's mouth formulated words but they rolled out sounding like gibberish.

Max brought the stool right next to her, his hand never leaving the shoulder, and sat down.

His minty after-shave wafted into her nose.

"I don't know who it is, but what I do know is that it's it a set up. These pictures were all taken as a hoax, a cover-up for a much bigger heist. I realised that the fact that you share a resemblance to this girl was simply a coincidence...until this new girl showed up, at school, fitting the part to a tee. Her name is—" He shook his head and angrily pushed the pictures away from her.

"Melissa," she breathed, her eyes wide as she looked up at him.

"How did you..." He shook his head in disbelief, "How did you know? Do you know her?"

Zara bit her lip and blushed, embarrassed of the circumstances under which she had made her acquaintance. In a matter of seconds, she would have to make the decision of whether or not to tell him.

"You could say that, I guess. She just happens to be Saffron's girlfriend...I found out the joyful news in the school corridor, as I was walking back from the front office after you gave me...the roses." She coughed out the last part, a smile cracking her stony expression.

It would be one of those memories that would remain imprinted in her brain for the rest of her life.

For all sorts of reasons, both good and bad.

Max blinked a couple of times, but then grinned back. He looked pleased with himself, knowing that he had hit home with his ostentatious gift. "That bitch Saffron...of course he would do such a thing. He led you on then went and banged another chick. Not just any either, had to be one that looked like you. I bet he has one of those weird fetishes..." His voice trailed off.

If he was expecting her to object, then he expected wrongly, because she wasn't going to disagree. She still had that knife lodged in between her shoulder blades.

"I knew you would like the flowers though, I got them from the best florist in the whole city, hand-picked them myself. Even though your texts tried to make me think otherwise...I knew you were just playing hard to get."

He reached up and twirled one of her curls around a finger, his 1000-watt beam never faltering.

"You still haven't exactly got me." She made air quotes with her fingers and rolled her eyes, "And for the record, I wasn't playing hard to get, I am hard to get."

"If you say so." He returned the eye-roll and turned back towards the images, all business. "So are you going to tell me how Melissa and this correlates?"

"Right. Well, I talked to her for like two minutes, she seemed to be very nice, the kind of person that gets along with everyone. Definitely Saffron's type."

"Okay, new rule. You aren't to mention that prick's name in my house, nor around me."

Getting jealous are we?

Max almost turned green.

She giggled, pushing a strand of hair behind an ear, "Deal." She stuck her tongue out.

"Moving on," His nose flared as he feigned seriousness, "You shouldn't judge a book by its cover. She could be an ultra-bitch, a snake waiting to get you."

"No. I'm telling you, Melissa was genuine. A little naive, but overall a very...kind person. She said she wanted to be an actress, and one day, a star on Broadway or something. She even mentioned having an audition for this play about a burglar." Zara pursed her lips, linking the two seemingly dissimilar episodes together. "Do you think that this is her in the pictures?"

"Could be." His hand hovered over them, until he picked one up and placed it in front of her. "In this one, the girl is wearing a tattoo. You can't really tell what it is, but it's something."

Zara's eyes narrowed as she examined it. "Yes, it's the one. Right here." She gestured to a spot on her neck.

"Great. So that mystery is solved...I'd say that we've reached the end of the road with this one." He began to to push the photographs into a deformed pile, a dismissive action on his part. How could he brush it off so easily?

She gulped, frustrated with herself for allowing their banter to make her forget the real issue.

Simon.

"So...do you know who is behind all of this?" She asked tentatively, her nails digging into her forearm.

"Yep. We already know who the guy is and all those involved. He'll—They'll get what's coming to them."

Her stomach lurched.

"W-what do you mean?" Zara's voice sounded hoarse even to her own ears. Max must've noticed it as well, because he looked up at her with an eyebrow raised.

"An insider. Worked for us a long time. Betrayal, treason, whatever you want to call it, on a corporate level—It's one of those things that don't ever really happen in real life, only in books, in movies. In the end, it's always just a single person who got the ball rolling, one guy who started it all. Always the person you least expected, but when you look back, all the signs were there, it is just you that was blind."

He pushed all the photographs into the folder.

"What are you going to do to...them?" She twiddled her thumbs, tapped her foot against the leg of her stool.

That was the most crucial question.

The look he gave her said it all.

"You can't," Zara mumbled.

"Can't what?" Max flexed his fingers, angling his body so that he could face her.

"You can't...you just can't! I won't let you." She struggled to maintain eye-contact with him, and hence had to avoid it. Zara couldn't allow herself to become hysterical, even though she could feel her blood pumping in her ears.

"What—"

"I won't let you hurt him...Grandpa didn't mean to do it, he's not a bad person, he just had to..." She was rambling, talking to herself rather than to Max.

"Zara!" He grabbed her shoulder and shook her, "What are you talking about? What does your grandfather have to do with this?"

So he wasn't referring to Grandpa, but to someone else. Shit. It's out there now though...if I don't tell the truth now, he might end up hurting someone innocent.

If I am the one to tell Max about it, I'm sure he will go easy on Grandpa. He's got to...

"He has everything to do with this." Zara pushed her hair out of her eyes, and slid off the stool. She needed to distance herself from him, only then could she really speak. She took a deep breath, "My grandfather, Simon, is behind all of this—"

Zara proceeded to recount everything she could remember, including the incident which would inevitably lead her to getting smashed, and standing right there, in the kitchen, with Maximilian Rubair.

"It's a lot to take in," He admitted once she had finished.

They remained in silence for a few moments, with not a single word uttered.

She took a step towards him—why, she didn't know at the time—but he raised a hand. "As much as I need to be alone right now, I have to speak to him. In person." He was cold, so cold. Max wouldn't as much as glance over to her, and that made her heart twinge with pain. "Go pack your things."

All the things she wanted to say lingered in her chest, unsaid.

Zara nodded and went. 

-:-