The Truths Behind the Life of Maeve Sun Lively

25

A LOT HAS HAPPENED SINCE Klarise had left me. But that was not all she did.

It was when I saw that interview, when her lies filled the screen, that I really woke up from a daze. From the drunk of love.

I quit crying, that was what I did first. I got myself properly dressed and met up with some of Adele's friends that she forced me to go with, which luckily none of them have seen the outbreak online. Then I found Mr. Wang before he got to me.

We had a large rented building then. Mr. Wang's company was doing well, he had G.W.F. and a boys' C-Pop group, in addition, he was already creating a new girls' C-Pop group. He was well dressed in a suit when I met with him that day, but his face was filled with lines of displease.

He gently walked me toward his office, smiling with nods as other employees passed by, and then when he closed the shades on the glassed windows, his calming mood vanished, replaced with such an outbreak of rage.

"What the hell have you done! Slapping someone? Are you insane? And what is this rumor I am hearing about you verbally abusing one of the participants? Are you out of your goddamn mind?"

I didn't know what to do with Klarise, so I started with Nathan Ma. That narcissist.

"He tried to harass me first. So naturally, I slapped him. He's turning the real truth around, making him seem like the victim here." I said it so calmly, but my insides swirled with the memory of his grip, once again reminding me of Ya Kai Jun.

Instead of accepting this truth in, Mr. Wang looked even more angered. He paced aggressively on the matted marble floor. "This—" He waves his hands everywhere, gesturing at something but also nothing. "G.W.F. is doing well, we have been invited to the studios in Beverly Hills."

"Really?" I smiled at that, a smile that hasn't been on my face for weeks. Beverly Hills, all the way over the ocean, another country, I wanted to get exactly there.

His eyes shot back to me. "Yes, which you will not be going."

I started laughing, but I stopped when I realized he was not kidding around. And at first it didn't seem real, but I blinked several times and adjusted myself. Still, I didn't want to believe him. "You can't do that."

He chuckled, a sort of a snicker. "I can, I made you."

I was already eighteen, and legally I was an adult and could live without a guardian's care. What was I so afraid of?

"I made myself, you stole me."

His grin only widened. "You came willingly. I made a name for you, I put you on the small pedestal that is now rising, and I will take you off of it now because I have the right to do that. I gave you everything you have right now, and I'm taking all of it back."

If the hard way didn't work, I had to become softer. So I made myself cry and dropped to my knees, my insides pulling at me to get up, the urge to slap his face. I reached upon the edge of his suit, begging like some fool. But men always liked this, it made them feel superior. No, not just men, it was everyone, everyone who has tasted the power of control craved for people to beg on their knees for their mercy. They savored it, and even though that was a weakness in them, it did not help me with Mr. Wang.

"Please, don't take me off. What did I do wrong? I will change, like I changed all those times before. Remember, you said I'm your biggest asset. I will prove myself to be that."

He bends down to me, his chubby fingers lifting my chin up. I could see the gold ring on one of them, things he's able to afford now. And it was then that I realized he didn't need me anymore. "Oh honey, you were my biggest asset. I have been enduring your terrible attitude for years, because I needed you. But now——" He opens the screen TV in his office, it was the interview with Klarise and her other teammates. "Now that you've broken yourself, in whatever ways, you've shown me that you're no longer worthy. You're just a piece of emptied bottle now, with nothing inside of you, thrown out with the garbage. I don't need something like that to take up my precious space."

He stands up, leaving me on the floor. Now the tears flooding out of my eyes were real. I was losing for maybe what seemed like the first time.

He tilted his head back, looking down on me, dark eyes filled with a vast darkness. "And Maeve, don't think I didn't know how you stole that captain spot from Bridget Wu all those years ago."

I felt even smaller when he said that. "She told you?"

He laughed. "That poor girl has her mouth shut as tight as an oyster protecting its pearl, of course she didn't. It's an obvious dark deed, what you did. I'm taking you off of G.W.F., and you're going to tell the media and everyone else that you're willingly leaving."

He was using this to threaten me, but it was also the thing I would've used against me too.

I got up from the floor, brushing dust off my bare knees. "You're a piece of shit, 王明哲 (Wang Ming Zhe), always have been."

"It's been six years working with you, 陈星星 (Chen Xing Xing), and it's been both a pleasure and misery. I hope you will find your own way after this...let's see what Adele and Joseph will do to you."

No one has called me that name in years, but then there it was, out of his dark-tongued mouth.

I stood there, fists clenched, and glared at him. But the more I did, the more he smiled, and I realized that this was how it worked. How things had always worked. It's a food chain, and maybe me and Mr. Wang might have been at the lowest part of it together once, but now, he was at the top. And those at the top have control over the fate of those below them. He had money, he had a well-going company, he didn't need me as his tool anymore. And I was too late to realize that. He had been waiting for some part of me to crumble and fall, for me to be at my poorest point, then when that time came, he would dump me into the streets. And he was doing that now.

He threw a packet of paper at me, which I didn't catch so it fell at my toes. "These are the paperworks, sign it and post it on your Weibo, tell people you are leaving G.W.F."

I grudged my teeth together, but I had no other choice. It was either this or him exposing me to the cops with what I had done to Bridget.

I bent down and got the contract, before turning away, I looked him in the eyes. Chest tight and tears going to burst out in storms, I managed to hold myself up like I always had. I tilted my chin higher to look down on his short figure, and just for a second, he flinched.

"Remember this, Wang Ming Zhe, you'll come begging to my knees one day."

He didn't say anything as I left his office, several of his employees stared at me as I walked out of that place. But when I reached the elevator, down the first floor, out of the building, and walked in a public bathroom, I started to cry. The contract in my hand seemed to wilt with me. Klarise had left me, and now I was out of a job, and as clear as the knowledge of the sun rising in the day, I knew Adele and Joseph would soon kick me out. I was on the lowest point of my career, it felt like my life was over. I wanted so badly, for the first time, to just disappear. My mother's words came back to me for the first time in years, and all I could think was how right she had been. And that maybe if I listened, things wouldn't be like this.

Although, what I didn't know was that really, my career was just getting started.