The Cursed Proposal

Chapter 24: The Cold Dinner

Kaya watched Sebastian's car disappear down the driveway, the taillights blurring through the tears pooling in her eyes. She stood frozen, her heart aching with every passing second as the distance between them grew.

"Are you okay, my lady?" Arthur asked, his eyes filled with concern, knowing he had witnessed everything. Kaya nodded a bit and went inside in silence.

It had already been a month since the day Sebastian kissed her but abruptly went cold on her. She had never seen Sebastian so distant, so—unreachable. And yet, she couldn't shake the memory of the look in his eyes. Broken, and filled with turmoil that it made her chest ache. Was this what they had come to? Is a house full of silence and walls too thick to break through?

Kaya couldn't understand how they had come to this—longing for each other, yet distant. She knew something was happening with the kiss, but couldn't comprehend what was with the kiss.

As Kaya lost herself in thought, Ethan called to remind her that this would be the second court trial, hoping it would conclude soon, as the evidence was favoring their side.

Kaya put aside her uneasiness about this tension between her and Sebastian and let the case go first. Kaya thought that if she could win the case, she could prove to the world and Sebastian that she could stand side by side with him.

***

"Now we wait," Ethan said after the supreme judge dismissed the court trial for today and would continue next Monday. Ethan had always been a cool-headed lawyer to Kaya. He was gracefully leading the jury to their side. Although he was a good-looking lawyer, you couldn't help but get swayed by his soft baritone voice. Ethan's soft baritone voice was like a balm, steadying Kaya's nerves as they waited for the judge's decision. She couldn't help but feel a flicker of hope under his confident leadership.

Kaya was hoping the jury would find Aegis Therapeutic guilty so that their employees would finally be at peace with their salary and settlement, just as Benson wanted.

"So, where are we headed, little lady?" Oliver asked as he sat in the driver's seat after helping Kaya with her belongings.

"To the hospital, I want to tell Benson about the progress of the trial and check him up since we never know when Aegis would play dirty," Kaya said as she opened her laptop and started typing immensely about the court progress.

After Hannah Doyle's scandal was revoked, many publishing companies wanted to hire her, but she refused, thinking they were only interested because she was Sebastian's fiancée. So, with a little money and Oliver's help, she built her own website, where she could write articles about anything she wanted.

Ethan suggested that Kaya start writing again to make this case go viral since Kaya used to write articles for publishing companies, but Kaya didn't want publishing companies to take credit for her work, so she asked Oliver to help her find a way to publish her own article.

Right now, mostly it was about the Aegis Therapeutic case and her old article that went unpublished due to rejected by Jade Alonski, her former supervisor and editor. The website might not have had that much traffic right away, but after she kept posting, it gained subscribers and lots of people tried to ask her for help investigating their cases.

Kaya wasn't sure about this, so she tried to put them on hold for a moment since she didn't have enough resources to do a solo investigation legally.

As they arrived at the hospital, Kaya straightaway went to Benson's room and told the whole court progress. Benson was pleased with the progress since lots of his co-workers were against him taking any legal action because it would cost them their jobs if the company went bankrupt.