C - Suite

25 | Pain

NYLA HADN'T EXPERIENCED such a long day in quite a while. Once the news of Vincent's hospital stay was released, the media hounded everyone and anyone that might know anything—that included Nyla. Her office received numerous calls asking her to comment on the situation and when Nyla was about to tell them to mind their own fucking business, Hyeon had taken the phone and instead told them she had nothing to say.

Furthermore, George had stalked into her office a couple of minutes later demanding to know why the press kept calling him as well. Once she'd explained the situation, his mood had turned sour.

"I told you those boys were trouble. We never should have gone into business with them. They don't know how to run an organization. This could ruin us."

Nyla had frowned at his attitude but told him that she was handling it. She was close to telling George to fuck off as well but once glance at him told Nyla she couldn't destroy this relationship. He was too vital to the business. He was her right-hand man and she'd learn a lot from him the last couple of months. As much as they liked to disagree sometimes, George was important to her, and she needed him.

After George's prompt comments, she'd shut her office and buried herself into the various plans and finances she needed to look after. There was commotion outside her office, but she did her best to ignore it. Her sour mood wasn't needed anywhere. Nyla worked a couple of hours, but time seemed to be passing excruciatingly slowly.

She sighed as glanced at her phone for the tenth time. She'd texted Darius earlier asking if everything was okay on his end and he still hadn't replied. She wasn't too worried—but then again, he hadn't been in the best state last night. They'd come back from the hospital close to five in the morning and Nyla had given Darius the spare room instead of making him drive all the way home. She'd known that his head wasn't in the right space and he was tired. That was a recipe for disaster.

It took some convincing, but Darius agreed. This morning when Nyla had woken up, she saw that her apartment was empty. No note, no word, no sign of Darius. It was as if he'd vanished into thin air. She'd be lying if she wasn't a bit annoyed that he'd left with saying anything. Then again, she wasn't his girlfriend, so he didn't owe her much. But she was his friend...

Her thoughts were interrupted when he computer screen blinked. She'd received an email from someone she didn't know but what made her do a double take was the subject line. Her Vouge, pictures were here. She smiled, hopefully this would put her in a good mood.

Nyla opened the email and she immediately began frowning. The pictures were in high definition and gorgeous, but it didn't look like her. Her skin had been air brushed and she looked about five shades lighter than her natural skin tone. Nyla didn't like that. It had taken her quite some time to accept her dark brown skin. Years before she was comfortable with it and the editor had removed it in seconds.

As a child, she wished to be lighter so that she could be prettier. The aunties in her community recommended bleaching creams so that her skin would become lighter. She'd used them all, in hopes that her skin would like the people on T.V she saw. It was only as she'd gotten older, she realized the troubling message that had be pushed down her throat. Brown was an ugly colour and only light skinned people were pretty. 

It took a while for Nyla to realize that she was beautiful, and she didn't need any bleaching cream. Brown could be beautiful too. Now she did her best to push that message forward and make sure that other Indian girls didn't hate the colour of their skin or were forced to believe a different narrative. It was important to her.

Nyla glance more closely at the photos and was annoyed to see that her stretchmarks on the sides of her legs had also been removed. She didn't like seeing this beautiful, perfect image of herself. She knew she wasn't perfect and to have other people think she was didn't sit well with her.