Chapter 43

Day three of staying in Hawaii and Cara was already settled. She had gotten a room, for a week but the lease could be renewed if she wanted, it was a small room ,very small, barely the size of her apartment in New York but it was close to the beach and it was cheap. It wasn’t anything fancy either, just a normal dormitory for tourists. She had spent the first two days familiarizing herself with the surroundings The locals were nice and she spent plenty of time sunning at the beach. It could get quite boring, but she found ways to entertain herself.

She even already had her favourite spot. It was in the afternoon and she was relaxing under the shed while she read a book one of her neighbours had lent her. He was a German man named Alex and he was super nice but introverted. It was a sappy romance novel but that didn't stop her from reading it.

She ate well, she spent most of her mornings and evenings in restaurants, she slept a lot and didn’t use her new phone. She decided a few days cut off from the world will do her some good before she jumped back in. She managed to stay hidden too. Dressing in long frocks and covering herself in a large shawl and hat when she was in public. She knew it was extreme but she didn't want to risk someone seeing her.
Especially since there was a possibility that the canceled wedding would have garnered a lot of attraction online.

Of course everyone would be speculating what happened, they'd want to know and she wondered what sort of statement Alexander was giving or making as regards that. And she wondered what lies their families were spinning to cover it all up.

Or did they even care about covering it all up?


As relaxing and beautiful as Hawaii was, Cara was positively bored. Bored to death. Sure she loved relaxing, soaking up the sun on the beach and eating fresh fruits and food but it was hardly her usual routine and she was somehow tired of it already.

She missed New York and more importantly she missed her phone.

So on the fifth day of her being in Hawaii she plugged her new phone.

And she wished she hadn't when she finally logged into some of her old social media pages.

It was horrible.

Alexander had leaked the photos he took of Nicholas and her and it was plastered all over. People were saying such nasty stuff about her.

Oh God it was worst than she thought.

That night she couldn't sleep.

She cried and cried till it was physically impossible for her to cry anymore.

She had thought it couldn't get bad, but apparently it could get a lot worse.

Majority of the tabloids and gossip blogs were carrying the story and it became an even hotter sensation with Alexander's father's senatorial elections barely a few days away.

Whoever had spun the story certainly did it in a cruel and malicious way, so much so that she began to doubt that Alex was the one who leaked the story.


Alex could be mean but he wasn't that cruel. He was never this wicked.

This must have been Jean's handiwork. Jean did this. Cara decided as she curled up in her small tiny bed, thinking of what to do.

She wondered what her parents were thinking, how they would feel and what they would be saying.

She couldn't bear to look any further as she turned off her new phone, ready to be disconnected from the world again.

She wished she had never checked it. She wished she had never even got the stupid phone in the first place.

On her seventh day of being in Hawaii Cara was more careful about her disguise, more meticulous, sun shades to match too. No one would bat an eyelid, after all it was Hawaii and it was very sunny.

She had gotten over the news. Even though it was hard to forget she pushed it aside. The mere thought of it made her sick to her stomach. She was in Hawaii now, she would consider staying longer, if that would mean she didn't have to deal with all the things that were going on at home. All the things people were saying online. She would delay the inevitable. She wasn’t quite ready to face the consequences of her own action.

Staying off the grid for a few weeks seemed like a good idea.

She would have to send a message to her parents to show that she was fine though. Maybe an apology to the Greenes too. Maybe, she’d have to consider that.

She would deal with all that later.

She thought as she looked out of her window.





"Oh! You thought you were getting away with this?"


Alexander said as he circled Jean. She was shaking.

It had been very hard to find her, harder than he had thought it would be. She wasn't in her apartment, neither did she show up for work. He only caught her when he decided to check her apartment for the second time, in which she tried to call security on him. It wasn't until he told her he had dirt on her that she let open her dingy tiny apartment for him to come in.

Her apartment was a mess. Small dark and dirty, it was no wonder why she was miserable all the time.

There was a basket of laundry right in the middle of the coffee table and Alexander cools see a bright pink bra on top of the pile.

He cringed.

He looked at the letters on her couch, there seemed to be about a dozen of them, he eyed the ones marked with big red stamps on them. Seems like she had quite a lot of bills to pay too, lots of overdue bills.

Strange, he never knew much about Jean. But he had assumed that since she was from Cara's circle she'd be rich too.

Maybe he was quite wrong. At least it now made sense, why she would do something like this.

She was desperate for money. It was too bad she wasn’t that bright. If she had any common sense she would have sold the pictures to him, he would have paid her off just to make sure she didn’t release the story to the press.

But she went to the press and they probably paid her little to nothing for the story.

Jean was barely settled when Alexander kept on hounding her.


"I don't like being humiliated Jean. And this stupid story that you sold out to those vicious blogs are humiliating, to me and my family."

"I told you I didn't do it! I didn't send anything! Leave me the fuck alone Alex."

Jean said with a shaky voice. The guilt was written all over her. It was so hard to hide.

She kept touching her temple and was pacing around the living room.

Oh she definitely did it.

Too hard to hide in fact. There was no way he was letting her go with everything she did.

Alexander chuckled.

"All I had to do was make a simple phone call. One simple phone call and the told me who it was."

"You're quite stupid, you should have made them signed an NDA."

"Well, now you have a case on your hands and my family fully intends on taking it up. We'll serve you the papers when it's time."

Jean was shaking. She fell to her knees.

A case?!

An actual case against her?!

She didn't!

She didn't think it'll escalate. The chief editor of the blog had assured her she would remain anonymous and they had rewarded her handsomely for it.

They assured her, promised her that they would keep her anonymous!

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

"Save your apology Jean. I warned you!"

"I did! I told you what would happen if you did this and you ignored me!"

“This! These are the consequences of your actions!”

He added as he paced around her tiny apartment.

“I mean! Why did you even do it! If you had just come to me…”

Jean shrugged.

“I was stupid. I wasn’t thinking straight… I was just so angry…”

Alexander composed himself as he got ready to leave, he took one last look at Jean and shook his head.

She was pathetic.