Let Me Hear You

CHAPTER 2

"You're late, why am I not surprised?"

Mallory rolled her eyes at Malcolm (who looked more proper than yesterday) and said that she was 15 minutes early. The usual people were seated on the sides of the long table. Around 6 people maybe? They were the department heads that she never bothered to learn the names of. Not like she needed to.

"As the Boss' granddaughter, you should be at least 30 minutes early." Malcolm replied as he helped her get seated. "Since your brother isn't here yet, we wanted to ask for your help."

"Let me hear it then."

One of the older men in the room nodded at Malcolm and fiddled something on his phone to play the recording on the speakers. Soon, it resounded in the well-appointed meeting room.

It had a horrible quality. Static made the conversation all fuzzy and even unintelligible at some point, but it's nothing that Mallory's Stigma couldn't handle.

Throughout the recording, Mallory would spot lines from the people talking as if they were written on air. These are the lies that they uttered. They were bright red and differed in fonts, the more complex lies looked like some fancy calligraphy and the small ones would look as if a child wrote them.

Some lies are beautifully written and some are aesthetically horrid. And to think that the society, or basically the world they were living in, are held together by these flimsy red lies. Pathetic.

After a while, the recording stopped and Mallory began to write down her observations for counter-measures.

"These are all the faults I've found. If you want to get better info, then you better run it again with Callum." She explained as she handed them the paper she wrote on.

"Run what with me, Mal?" A voice said from behind her.

All eyes then shifted to two men as they enter the meeting hall and took their place at the head of the table. One of them was older than the other by several years, but there was no mistaking their resemblance to each other.

"We apologize for being late." The older one said.

Garret Pryce, their grandfather, and the current head of the Pryce family and the 'Regalia Pursuit'. He looked fairly young for his age, with his salt and pepper hair (that for some reason, he never bothered to colour in) and stormy grey eyes. As with the rest of the group, he was wearing a formal business attire and the family crest pinned on his the right side of his jacket.

"I'll try and listen to whatever it is you want to run through me later, maybe after the meeting."

Beside him, wearing the same attire, was Mallory's twin brother, Callum Pryce. Like Mallory, Callum had jet-black hair and blue eyes. He was obviously taller than her by a head. His body was sturdy looking, but slender in a way that didn't give him trouble when putting on suits. She noticed that in a sense, Callum's voice sounded like their grandfather; playing between being cruel like a knife and pleasing like a symphony. How was that even possible? She had no clue.

Sometimes she wonders what others thought of her voice.

Malcolm gently nudged her back to reality as their meeting started. The agenda was passed and the minutes to their last meeting were read. Nothing was out of the ordinary. All operations were running smoothly and in no time at all, the meeting was finished. Heck, they didn't even talk about yesterday's assignment. That made her question why she was even there in the first place.

Mallory looked over at Malcolm who was twirling his pen as he listened to the others. If she asked that question to him, he's probably say something along the lines of, "Cause you're a Pryce. You have to be here".