TimeBound (Time Tells #1) (COMPLETED)

Chapter Three

One Week Ago...

"Alanna?"

I look up from my work at the sound of my name. Bertha stands at my door, her face wrinkled with a smile.
She looked tired. More so than usual.

I wasn't surprised, she was doing the work of half the staff who we now couldn't afford.

I frown at her and stand, walking to her side.

"I told you leave all the cleaning to me." I tell her.

She smiles at me, "I know your hands have wounds from them." She says, "And I'm faster."

I had neither practice nor experience and I was paying the price for both.
My body was learning, but it was leaving marks. Marks I hadn't known she had seen.

"They're not wounds." I say, "They're making me stronger."

Which was what callouses and tightening muscles result in. The journey may be painful but the result will protect me.

Bertha gives me a smile and pats my cheek. I catch hold of her hand and turn it over. They were old, calloused and pruney. My heart tugs at me and I press a kiss to her palm.

"Please let me help you." I tell the woman who had raised me right along my parents. It took me years to convince her to call me by my name.
She was kind and wise and resilient.

But lately I've been seeing a general droop to her demeanour. It had become a constant companion of everyone who still worked for us.

Because everyone knew they could be next.

I was working diligently on my book, but the payment from it wouldn't be enough. Not enough to run a billion dollar company, our charity funds, the restaurants, our house...

But it was something.

Bertha pats my cheek once more.

"Your father would like to speak with you." She says.

I smile at her and she leaves. I decide to join her as soon as I finish speaking to my father. I turn, walking towards the direction of my father's office, which was where he now often holed himself up.

I knock on the door and hear my father's voice asking me to come in. I open the door and smile at my father.

The room smelled like it always did. Of papers and wood. Wasn't often that the smell of papers permeated the air. But legal documents were still signed and dealt in printer paper.
Everything else was digitalized.

I step in and shut the door softly behind me. When I step closer to my dad, I see a look in his face.. in his eyes ...that ring bells of warning.

"Dad," I say, seating myself opposite him and leaning forward over the desk and covering his hands with mine, "What happened?"

My father's bleak eyes lift to meet mine. They were dull, tired and hopeless.

"Three days ago, I was approached by Kri Industries." He said.

I straighten. That was the most well doing Yade line of companies. They had begun as a simple security software design company and now were the single preferred and used security systems in every company that can afford them. The quality that made them exceptionally desirable lay in their design that was unique to each company. Which means every company had their own software for security that no other company knew of, or had seen before.

They had grown to delve into other areas like real estate, publishing, construction...and their work and service was unrivalled. Also, almost unaffordable.