The company was gracious enough to give Rita paid leave for the four weeks she was officially recovering. She had pressed charges on Penny, Lucinda, Sandra, Kelly and Jennifer for being accomplices of Theo’s sexual extortion of her, they were not her friends, just tools for Theo to get what he wanted.
They all denied it of course, Penny told everyone it was just a campaign of one of her rivals to drag her name through the mud, Lucinda’s agent put out a statement saying the same thing, Jennifer just blew the whole thing off, it hardly touched her with all her influential fuck buddies, it was just the right blowjob here and that was it. They all called her a Liar.
A Federal investigation that had been launched into the incidents of that Friday had found fifteen people, supernaturals and humans alike to be responsible for the the event, Theo’s entire family and soon to be in-laws included.
The suspects were charged with kidnapping, blackmail, human trafficking, illegal surveillance, supplying humans for direct feeding and sex, possession of drugs and illegal narcotics, sextortion, sex with minors, embezzlement, money laundering, forgery, bribery, twenty-nine counts of murder, indirect cause of nine suicides, indignity to human bodies and possession of illegal firearms.
A private additional investigation into Theo proved that Penny, Lucinda and Jennifer were his accomplices and apparently Sandra was not Sandra and Kelly was not Kelly, their names were Delia and Penelope, they were small-time criminals in the south that specialized in blackmail and extortion, Theo paid them to bug her apartment the last time they were all in there.
And guess what? The bachelorette she was supposed to go to did not exist, neither were the wedding plans or the dates she had with her “boyfriend”. Penny’s fiancé was a fake too. A James loyre or something.
Talia, who had been playing the concerned girlfriend dropped the act like a hot potato and practically threw “her ever so loving boyfriend” under the bus once the investigations were launched.
Penny, Lucinda and Jennifer could not keep up the farce and the indifference any longer after that and boy did Rita enjoy the repercussions they had to face.
Theo got served with a whooping seven hundred and eighty-seven year sentence in a specialized federal prison, his monologuing bitch of a sister got three hundred. Penelope and Delia got twenty years respectively while the backstabbing bitches three got twenty-eight years respectively.
After the news broke with no more intricate details, their popularity rapidly declined, Penny’s buisness quickly went down the drain seeing as the head had been detached from the body and those left to run it were hyenas.
Lucinda’s acting career was never going to recover. From a soon to be A-list actress she descended into the bowels of industry forced obscurity.
Jennifer did not like the thought of jail and neither did her fuck buddies, they quickly abandoned her. She struggled quite a lot before they took her away, maybe she could find some in prison.
She did not know much about colours in fashion or design like Theo or the mean bitches three but orange looked good on them. It matched their manical and hopeless expressions.
Rita had held on to a hair’s width of hope that they had done it because Theo had blackmailed them too…but he had not, they did it, all of it, out of their own free will. Why? Because they wanted to play around with a foolish human to pass the time and get rewarded on the side. They were never her friends to begin with.
They made it sound so normal like playing with someone emotionally was the most common thing in the world to do. It made Rita sick to think she called those monsters her friends.
It also served as a lesson for her, find more friends within your species. As if tensions were not already high in that department, globally speaking.
By the time Rita headed back to work not one person in Alvas or probably the whole country had not heard about what happened that day, the investigations, the trials and sentencing.
Her psychologist told her to stay off the topic on social media or better yet, stay off the internet entirely. So for three weeks she completely disconnected, no phonecalls except from her little sister all the way in Switzerland and her mother somewhere in the Bahamas
She could not even go to the bakery because she was still being tailed by journalists, pro supernaturals and “friends” from Theo’s family. She had been moved twice from the locations she had been at. Rita never went back to her apartment, she did not feel safe there anymore.
All this being moved, couped up, disconnected and having appointments drove her nuts, sure she played games, read some books and watched a T.V but the boredom and ticking insanity was inescapable and so was the soul searching.
How could she have been played like that? How could she have been she so stupid?
She was happy to get out even if it meant back to work. With that happiness, however, came immense anxiety.
She was happy to get out even if it meant back to work. They had told her a week before that she was not being tailed anymore but with that happiness, came immense anxiety. How was the office going to be now? No one knew the details of her interaction with Theo, they didn’t know who the victims of his extortion were. The only information she expected them to know was Theo’s attempt at making her a blood bag.
Still, it would not be the same going back, everyone would be looking at her, whispering behind her back and if the complaint she had placed before had taken effect, pointed glares and a bit more constant exclusion.
Rita looked at herself in the mirror, hair kept down with a series of pins and an elastic hair band, nothing too tight. Her head still hurt and she was not sure she was ready for weaving just yet, the frizzy tangle still pouffy at the end of the band. She had gone for a work ready suit with a cream coloured blouse, black jacket and pants, she felt okay in the outfit, it said she was ready for work and the world while it kept her closed and protected. Perfect.
She took her new work bag from the table top, everything she needed, her new ID cards, work files and other necessities inside and exited her new apartment.
He should have known better than to send those men when any of his own would have done the job and far better too.
She was supposed to come out of there without so much as a single scratch on her own two feet instead she come out with a head injury, a concussion, a broken arm, a bruised throat with both her wrists joining the category. Bloody, unconscious, on a stretcher and in need of a psychologist no less. The morons should be grateful that he had not put a bullet between their eyes, bunch of useless dickheads.
Samuel had since then taken the duty of seeing to her himself. That included her more expensive hospital expenses and her protection. There were many that had been snuffed out completing that goal, figuratively and literally.
He was sure there would be some talk amongst his agents about his aim for doing all this, the ones who knew better knew than to ask questions. His aims, goals and reasons were his own, he had a debt to settle and by all he was, he would settle them.
The complaint she had placed before rushing out that day had made its way to this desk a day after per his order and he had taken care of the problems stated within. She would be coming back in today and wondered what she would think of the new adjustments.