𝙿𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚎 || 𝐅𝟒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃 (editing)

fifty one

chapter fifty one:

It's Yours
———

The Paramaanantra business empire — the one that Roselyn focused all of her attention, care, and enrgy on — had collapsed into ruins. The company stock was at an all time low and continued to dwindle into a smaller and smaller number. Cars, houses, and luxurious clothing owned by the Paramaanantra family was sold off by Roselyn to use the money in a last ditch effort to gain some sort of stable footing in the business world again. Every living second her total net worth was drastically decreasing.

And there was nothing Roselyn could do to save it.

She desperately tried to contact her old investigators to try and cover everything them into reconsidering their stances. It was useless. Not a single investor budged and they all continued to take out all of the money they put into the company. The only people that hadn't completely abandoned the family were the people that were directly related to the other members of F4. But even then, it was clear that they were not in support of the company. The other families were slowly distancing themselves and it would take a complete fool to not realize it. At events they would practically smoother the Nakamura's with praises and meaningless monetary gifts.

Technically, the Nakamura family — or more specifically Hikaru — did nothing entirely malicious to the Paramaanantra group. All they did was attend a high-society party and tell a singular person that they were no longer interested in investing in the Paramaanantra company and subtlety brought up that the Nakamura group was looking to partner up with someone else and invest in another company instead. It wasn't their fault that the person they told decided to tell the countless other people at the banquet.

Roselyn was getting a bit too comfortable at the top of the Thailand empire. She got used to other companies crawling at her feet to just be associated with her. So where exactly did she go wrong? Aside from the blatant disregard for her employees, people she claimed to be friends with, and any other person that got in the way of her vision — Roselyn did a single thing that really pushed Hikaru Nakamura to subtlety destroy her.

Because she had grown so used to being the top bitch in the business world, she made the mistake of viewing the Nakamura's as equals. Sure, she was terrified of saying something disrespectful to Liliana when she found out that Lia was a friend of Thyme and, Roselyn understood that they had more wealth and power than her. But her arrogance and pride wouldn't accept that those foreigners were higher in the world than her. This led to Roselyn following her sense of greed and trying to blatantly force acquaintances with the other family. She would do everything in her power to prevent others from close enough to the Nakamura's and in turn tried to take everything for herself. After all, she still believed they were equals. Suddenly there was a switch one day where her brain made the unforgivable thought: Roselyn Paramaanantra, an owner of a real estate company that was based primarily in Thailand who had the net worth of around 2-3 billion, believed she had the possibility to make a lackey out of Hikaru Nakamura, the owner of one of the largest technology companies in the world and had a net worth of over a 134 billion.

She viewed them as people that simply got lucky and succumbed to their high status lives. Thus, she believed that it wouldn't be difficult to overpower them and force them to worship her every move just like the other people in the world in business in Thailand. Unfortunately, she misjudged and miscalculated her situation. Her downfall actually began when she attempted to force Liliana into a marriage with Thyme. A couple weeks after, Roselyn tried to blackmail the family and in return get an investment in her own company.

Those same lucky people were now menacingly looking down at her as she tried to crawl her way out of the pit.

Thyme was devastated.

He felt a sense of betrayal after finding out that his friend was the sole reason why his entire livelihood had gone to shambles. He was infuriated by the entire situation, specifically the fact that no one had been able to contact Lia or Vinny in a week since the cryptic text message was sent. The only person who was able to contact the girl was Ren but even then, every time he asked about the situation with Thyme Lia seemed to disappear or change the subject. The boys all attempted to go over to the Nakamura estate but were greeted with security guards thus, they were unable to get any form of explanation.

Obviously this only angered Thyme more. His frustration was beginning to bubble and practically bursted at the seems. Perhaps he finally snapped, that would explain why he was marching across the driveway of Liliana's house in a fit of rage. Kavin, MJ, and Ren followed closely behind — each of them were trying to calm down their friend but were unable to do so.

Thyme was now face to face with the body guard. He was breathing heavily and had furrowed his eyebrows in an attempt to appear more intimidating. The security guard simply raised an eyebrow, "name?," he asked in a nonchalant voice.

"Thyme," he sneered, "along with Ren, Kavin, and MJ."

The security pressed some sort of communication device and mumbled into it the names of the four boys. He paused and nodded his head before stepping aside to open the grand gates of the mansion, "The young miss should be expecting you in the pool room,". With wide eyes the members of F4 stared at each other before hurrying past the gate. It was as if they feared that if they stood around any longer the guard would close them and refuse them entry. In a weird way, Thyme felt a sense of pride as he walked through the front garden and made his way into the house.

The sound of the pool balls hitting the side of the carpeted green table could be heard down the fall. All form of confidence that Thyme had mustered up was slowly depleting with every step closer to the two french doors that would end up revealing his friend — ex friend? enemy? he wasn't quite sure — that had destroyed his way of living. He let out a deep breath as he pushed open the two doors.

The scene in front of them felt so familiar that it was almost painful. Vincent and Liliana were playing a game of pool. It was obvious that Vincent was winning since he cockily held the cue with a mischievous grin on his face. A bowl filled up with ripe strawberries was placed on a barstool right next to the pool table. The faint smell of the strawberries wafted through the air accompanied by the bitterness of cigarette smoke. If you breathed in deeply enough you also would be able to pick up the scent of wood from the crackling fire in the fireplace as well as the signature perfumes of the two of them. Everything about the scene made the F4 boys feel a sense of longing. Hell, they even missed the fact that Liliana and Vincent were wearing somewhat matching outfits.

"Hey guys!" Liliana exclaimed as she placed down her cue and made her way towards the boys. Vincent chuckled and did the same. Kavin placed a hand out to stop them from coming any closer, "stop, you guys can't just pretend like you didn't cause Thyme to go bankrupt and then proceeded to ghost us," he yelled.

"YEAH!" Thyme yelled at the top of his lungs, "Explain yourselves!".

Liliana sighed and grabbed the white envelope from Vincent's hands. She held out the envelope and Thyme grabbed it hastily. He ripped it open and read the piece of paper that was inside, his eyes growing bigger as he read every word.

"It's yours, Thyme. The entire Paramaanantra company is yours," Lia said with a small smile before continuing, "and all of the Nakamura family companies will fully —and publicly — support your company."

———a/n

soul(me): "i'm going to upload daily again!"
also soul: gets writers block and can't form a basic coherent sentence for over a week~