Beyond Duties

Chapter 10

As opposed to what they hoped, Jordan and Vee were unable to decipher what the painting was all about. Other than its title's literal meaning "First Son," they could not think of other clues out of it. 

"Maybe we are overthinking," Vee mused. "I wish we could have at least some time off..." She stretched her long legs across the chair as she watched Jordan staring intently at the painting. She was prepared for his nonplussed look which came after her words. "Come on," she chided, "assuming that our Dads and my brother are still alive, don't you think they could have already sent us another clue to help figure out what the painting is all about?" 

Jordan sighed in exasperation, but obviously didn't have plans to give up. He took the seat across Vee's, and stretched his legs on the table.

"We could be racing against time, for all we know," he said, matter-of-factly. "Assuming that they are still alive and in grave danger, deciphering the clues to their whereabouts in the shortest time possible is crucial. We can't just sit around and take as much time as we want."

"You are being too hard on yourself," Vee countered. "My Dad always told me to 'go with the flow' and 'take one step at a time.' Maybe our normal everyday lives would help us understand the mystery more than when we confine ourselves in the concept of research." She wondered where her words came from. Too much deductions, maybe? 

Jordan's intent look made Vee feel a little uncomfortable, especially when she noticed his beautiful eyelashes. She found herself getting hypnotized with every blink, and she only snapped back to her senses when his baritone voice reached her ears.

"Alright," Jordan was saying, "it's best that we also do our jobs as CEOs," he grinned, reminding Vee of another tedious task. He earned an irritated glare from the latter as reality kicked in. Either way they go, difficult tasks await.

After their short vacation, Jordan and Vee went back to work and faced their pending jobs in both of their families' businesses. While Vee engrossed herself in her projects for the Rustik - Yates Hotels, Jordan resumed his research on Conan's pending transactions for their company. He couldn't completely veer away from the painting clue, though. He still kept close contact with Frank on the progress of their deductions.

The painting depicted a story of a first son's material power which was hidden at the heart of a forest where images of beasts could be seen trying to penetrate its border. The backdrop is a map, but the image of the forest also resembles another map.

According to Frank, the backdrop map didn't match any of the land areas in their country, and that his team is now working on researching other countries' land areas. There may be a risk that the painted map wouldn't match any land area at all, and that it was purely fictional, but they continued with the research anyway.

That noon, Jordan just came from an important meeting when his secretary announced that he had a visitor waiting at the receiving area of his office. He wondered who it could be, since he didn't have much of a social life to have unexpected visitors. When he entered the room, he almost spewed hot coffee all over his chest as the tall figure of a woman met his eyes. 

Without realizing it, Jordan got rooted to his spot in the middle of the room, mouth half open, and only the strong scent of his black coffee seemed to move across the room. The beautiful smile of the woman before him slowly faded as he showed no signs of excitement.

"H-Hi, J," the woman gave a small wave, smiling yet again as she slowly stepped closer to where Jordan was standing. "It's been a while..." 

*****

Since it was obvious that Vee would be unable to dodge Lenka's interrogation, she decided to narrate every single detail about her vacation turned clue-hunting with Jordan. She purposefully left out the bath tub incident for fear of being teased, but her storytelling skills have yet to be honed since it was too easy to find loopholes which made Lenka discover that she was hiding something. Cornered, she finally shared what happened and how she was left with only a towel on when Jordan found her. 

As expected, Lenka started giggling so hard that Guy finally gave up trying to catch some much needed sleep. She relayed to him Vee's experience with Jordan, and with much excitement described how the Gallagher heir tried to calm their friend down from being hysterical. Her description was so detailed that Vee wondered if she had a spy camera installed in the hotel room on the day of the incident. She couldn't recall describing Jordan's lips as "luscious" and his six-pack abs as "devilishly enticing" when she told Lenka about it a few minutes ago. She gave Guy a knowing look, hoping that he would get the signal, but to her shock, he started grinning at her maliciously. 

"Seriously?!" She pouted, as the two ganged up on teasing her. She could feel her cheeks starting to burn as a strong blush crept up. "I should have kept that thing private!" 

Guy and Lenka playfully reenacted the scene, with Guy hilariously caressing his abdomen like he was doing a strip tease. Rolling her eyes at the two, Vee chose to tinker with her phone, instead. While she browsed through her photo bank, she saw one picture where she was peacefully sleeping in the passenger's seat of Jordan's jeep. She couldn't remember taking a photo of herself pretending to be asleep, and the shot seemed to have been from the driver's point of view. 

"Oh. My. Gosh." Vee almost jumped from the couch as Lenka suddenly appeared next to her, snatching the phone away and showed the photo to Guy. "The Gallagher hottie snapped a photo of her!!!" Lenka shrieked. "Caption this." Her fingers waved dramatically in the air as she said, "my sleeping angel," - she giggled again - "or, 'my lovely fiancé'" With that, both Guy and Lenka started shrieking again like high school girls. They continued exchanging ideas on the perfect photo caption, laughing hysterically as Vee ran away to lock herself in her room.

A/N

Hey, guys! Here's a short update for you...
I got caught up with paperwork, but I promise to publish another chapter this week, just please bear with me 😥

***Wondering who's that pretty lady?
XD