Mason rushes through the hospital’s halls and into the patient’s room where he is told his best friend has been put in. After he heard about the car wreck this evening, he feared the worst and dropped everything to get here ASAP. Unfortunately, Lucas’s father and uncle were already there. CEO and head director, the brothers were twins but because David was born first, Davis will never get to be the CEO.
David looks surprised to see Mason race into the room like a bolt of lightning but his surprise switches into aggression quickly when he finally has somebody he can interrogate. “Did he go see that woman after I told him not to?”
There was an intimidating edge in David’s voice. He was extremely worried about his son but he expressed it in the worst way possible. Mason looks behind David and at his friend who is still unconscious on the bed. His heart twists with worry but he does his best to remain focused. He finally looks at his boss. “From what he told me, yes… but by the sounds of it, he crashed before he could get there.”
David scowls and looks back down at his unconscious son. Behind the anger, there was a worry so deep that it was breaking his heart. He was already a widower, he couldn’t bear to lose his only child too. Davis puts his hand on his brother’s back. “It’ll be alright. I’m sure he’ll wake up soon.”
The CEO gives a small nod and takes in a deep inhale as if trying to suck in his tears. He then turns back to his son’s best friend. “Mr. Miller.”
Mason squares his shoulders, prepared for his boss’s words, but before anything can be said, they hear a pained groan behind them. Everyone spins around, shocked to see Lucas sit up.
“LUCAS!” David hugs his son tightly, almost leaping at him. Mason lets out a deep sigh in relief meaning Davis says nothing.
“Who…?” Lucas mumbles confusedly and David leans back right as he speaks again. “Who’re you?”
Everyone’s emotions that had gone from worried, to shocked, then relieved, quickly plummeted into tension. David looked especially startled.
“I’m your father, Lucas… you’ve been in a car crash. Do you remember what happened?” His father asked concernedly but Lucas just looked at us one at a time perplexedly, the look on his face gave them his answer.
“It must be amnesia,” Davis murmurs worriedly.
“I’ll go get a doctor!” Mason bolts out of the room as quickly as he runs in and glances over his shoulder one last time at his confused friend. The look on his face was worrying. Does he have amnesia? How bad is it? Will he ever recover? And what happens now?
At the exact time Lucas’s car flips, Aria is still standing outside the venue, waiting for him. Eventually, the concert starts and she has no choice but to go inside and get ready to sing on stage. But even as the Songbird sings, she still keeps her eyes peeled for that familiar face but she never sees him. As the concert starts to come to an end, it becomes clear that Lucas isn’t coming.
During the last song that’s being played on stage, Aria and her band sit at the bar and drink. Aria has never been much of a drinker, even if she was down in the dumps.
“I wouldn’t dig too deep, Aria. He’s the heir CEO of the Augustine Company! Someone like him must have piles of work.” Chris tries to comfort his friend.
“He seemed to like you last night. I highly doubt he stood you up. As Chris said, time probably got in the way.” Noah adds in.
“Ahh, who cares? You always got us, Birdie!” Mandy jokes while chewing on more blue gum as she wraps an arm around Aria’s shoulders.
Aria smiles gratefully at her bandmates. “Thanks, guys… you’re the best.”
“Of course we are!” Mandy gives Aria a little kiss on the cheek before standing up. “Sorry to ditch the party so soon but I got somewhere I need to be. I’ll see you guys later.”
“See ya, Mandy!” Chris calls after her.
Aria smiles as she watches her go, being around Mandy always cheered her up. Their attention is grabbed and shoved into a sour situation as a familiar voice sits next to Aria. Of course, no surprise, it was Roxanne.
“Aria! I heard what happened. Are you ok, doll?” The redhead asks kindly. If it wasn’t for the fact they all knew she was a snake, they would’ve believed she truly cared about Aria.
Aria gives a little shrug and looks away. “I’ve… been better. But it’s nothing. I’m fine.” The pretty woman says two words that she says too often, making Noah and Chris frown worriedly.
Roxanne gently rubs Aria’s back. “I know the feeling. Falling for a man that you thought was love at first sight but then it turns out to be a fling. It’ll be alright, he probably wasn’t worth your time anyway.” Though they were fake words of sympathy, they still made Aria feel even worse when she used the word ‘fling’.
“How about I buy you a drink?” Roxanne asks while summoning the bartender with a wave of her hand.
“N- no thanks, I already had a drink.” Aria declines her offer with a raise of her glass. Roxanne snorts when she sees the kind of drink that Aria had bought before the glass became empty.
“Seriously?! That’s mostly juice! C’mon, one more can’t hurt for the road, right? Well, not enough where we’ll get a DUI.” Roxanne laughs at her joke that neither Aira, Chris, or Noah found funny.
Aria heaves a sigh. “Alright, alright… one more. But the same thing only.”
“Well, aren’t you no fun? Fine, fine, you deserve it after tonight. Here, a toast.” Roxanne lifts her drink as the bartender hands out hers and Aria’s. “To brighter futures!”
Aria finally cracks a smile. “To brighter futures.” She says before softly clacking her glass against Roxanne’s. Chris chimes in with something smart while Noah gives a sarcastic comment and Aria laughs at them for being silly. As the three conversed, Roxanne took that split second to slip some tasteless powder into Aria’s drink and it dissolved so fast that nobody could tell that anything was in it. And within a few seconds later, Aria finishes her drink. Roxanne smiles.
“Well, the night is nigh and I have a hot date so see you guys later!” Roxanne chirps as she suddenly leaves.
“Good riddance,” Chris grumbles.
“Be nice!” Aria couldn’t help but giggle at his grumpiness.
The group of three spends a little more time together before they part ways with affectionate goodbyes. As Aria gets into her car, her body becomes dizzy and her vision slightly blurry but she thinks nothing of it at the time because her mind still rotates around Lucas and why he didn’t come to her concert tonight.
What her friends said about him had to have been right. There’s no way he’s the same Lucas from back in the day when he used to bully and haze her endlessly, right? He seemed changed but she was also so naive that it was hard for her to decide what was the real truth.
Her thoughts buzzing in fear of being stood up and being drunker than she should be, she starts up her car and drives off. Her vision only gets more blurred to the point she’s swerving back and forth between the lanes. Her unsteady drive made her phone slip out of her purse and onto the floor of the passenger’s seat. Aria was worried that Lucas may try to call or text her, or somebody important in general, so she leaned over to try to pick up her phone without thinking. And right as she turns her head away from the road, she feels her car hit something solid followed by a human scream. It makes Aria jerk her wheel to the side and slam on her brakes, almost making her car flip in the process.
Aria struggles to catch her breath as she tries to register what has just happened. She had run into something and it screamed. She hopes so deeply that it was just a wild animal that she ran over but the moment she opens up her bloodied door, she sees a familiar pack of blue bubblegum. Aria’s heart begins to pound in fear and then devastation as her gaze follows the blood trail that leads straight to the body of the life she just took.
Mandy.
Aria La Belle is charged with a DUI homicide and spent time both behind bars and doing community service. Meanwhile, Lucas was in and out of hospitals for regular checkups on his amnesia which showed no improvement other than his family and the Augustine Company. Everything except for Aria, even the awful way he bullied her back in high school was a forgotten memory. Within the last three years, Lucas’s father had passed away, and because of Lucas’s condition, Davis became the new CEO while Lucas became the head director. The Songbird’s dreams shattered along with her reputation and career to the point her friendship with her bandmates faded away too. Now she was an advertising agent for a company owned by Roxanne’s friend, someone who enjoyed making life hard on Aria just as much as her rival did. And Lucas was unaware of it all because nobody told him anything about Aria. The day Lucas was diagnosed with amnesia, David told Mason to never tell him about the woman he met at the conc
“So, what do you think?” Lucas asks his best friend. It was the next day and they were both at the Augustine Company within Mason’s office. Lucas was hanging out here with him even though they were still within working hours, sitting on his desk. Even with the amnesia he’s had the past three years, the man has never changed.“Think? Well… I think it’s great that you’re getting your memories back. Even a tiny bit counts…” Mason’s words trail off and he sweats as he remembers his boss’s threat from yesterday. Davis ordered him to not mention Aria and to keep her name out of his head. The distress could make him sick. Lucas is his best friend, how could he lie to him? They’ve been friends for years. When Mason had a nasty divorce, Lucas let him stay at his house for as long as he liked and even gave him rides. Hell, he still does. And now he’s being forced to lie to his face. But what choice does he have? He doesn’t know what Davis is careful of.Mason clears his throat to make sure his
“So if we do this, then…” Aria explains to Lucas while pointing from paper to paper within the files she had collected to help them with his project. The pretty woman was so caught up in explaining their plan and layout that she didn’t even stop to ask Lucas for any opinions of his own. But when she finally did look at him, she spotted him staring at her from the other side of the table that they sat on. Aria becomes flustered with a blush as she raises her voice. “Mr. Augustine!” Lucas jumps when his surname is yelled at. By his reaction and sudden change in expression, it was obvious that Aria’s words had gone in one of his ears and flew right out the other without registering anything in his brain. Aria heaves a tired sigh and crosses her arms while shaking her head. “Honestly, sir, if you want my help then you need to take this seriously!” The former heir gives a sheepish grin since he was just caught gazing at her in a trance from her beauty once again. “Sorry. And, again, call
Aria’s frozen body is followed by a pounding heart as Lucas’s face leans closer to hers. She instinctively closed her eyes just to hide her panic mostly. As she begins to feel his warm breath against her skin, a knock at her office’s door makes the lovebirds jump and spin around right as Aria’s boss walks in.“Are you two- oh…” Her eyes were wide with awkward surprise when she saw what she had just walked in on and then she pretended to fix her shirt and act professional, even lifting her chin a bit as she spoke. “Ms. La Bella. Don’t forget you have an appointment with someone else as well. You’ll have to wrap up what you’re doing with Mr. Augustine soon.” The woman says before walking out of the room, her high-heeled shoes leaving behind loud clacks as they hear her walk down the hall.The black-haired woman lets out a tired sigh. “Oh, gosh, I almost forgot!” She then looked at the man apologetically. “Sorry, Lucas. We’ll pick it back up again tomorrow.”The look in Lucas’s eyes sho
“Thanks for coming with me, Mason. I knew I could rely on you.” Lucas says to his best friend as they wait in the doctor’s office.“Of course. Whatever you need, I’ll always be right here for you.” Mason smiles back at him, doing his best to make sure it doesn’t look like it’s being forced. The man still felt awful for lying to Lucas about being a supportive friend.The situation Mason was in felt like torture, having to lie to the one man who had had his back through the best and worst of times. But he was still terrified over what Mr. Augustine would do to him if he refused to follow his orders. All he had to do was report to his boss about Lucas’s activities, lie to his friend about what his uncle was up to, and attempt to keep him away from Aria. Everything was going as Davis wanted but what he didn’t know was that he was failing to keep Lucas away from Aria. As a result, his friend has regained more memories. What will happen to Mason if Davis finds out about this?The two men lo
The look in Mason’s eyes couldn’t be hidden from Lucas. He could tell that his friend was very distressed and he would even say afraid. But afraid of what? His uncle? The two friends had their suspicions about Davis’s actions and behavior since his twin brother, Lucas’s father, died. But just because his personality changes doesn’t mean that his uncle has turned into a villain. Right?Lucas knew that their meeting had nothing to do with him so it was best if he didn’t interfere. The former heir decides to get back to work on his job but there was still another troubling question that crossed his mind. Why would his doctor on amnesia relay a message from Davis to Mason?The Augustine Company had an infirmary built within the building a long time ago, David cared about his employees and wanted to make sure that if any harm came to them, or even a mild headache, there would be a place there for them to feel better. This is where Lucas has been seeing his doctor for amnesia. At the same t
Papers are dumped on top of Aria’s head, making the woman flinch as all of her hard work gets scattered on the floor and it even messes up her black hair that she had struggled to put into a clean bun. “Unbelievable.” Her boss then tosses her files to the side. The anger in her eyes revealed the fuel behind her cruel fire: jealousy. “Un-fucking-believeable! Why the hell would Augustine be interested in someone like you? A failed singer. Roxanne told me all about how pathetic you are with your little singing career that got flushed down the drain because you were an alcoholic! Oh yeah, I bet he doesn’t even know that you’re a felon!”The rumors that Roxanne had spread about Aria weren’t true. Aria hated alcohol but she’d only make an exception when it was with her friends. But even then, she still doesn’t drink very much. Aria remained silent as her boss released her ire upon her. Her hands were balled up in tight fists where they rested on her lap. Even her whole body was completely
Lucas couldn’t help but watch Aria as she worked. She was speaking to him and yet, once again, her words fell on deaf ears. It’s not like he did it on purpose however, his head was merely full of over things. There was one thing that echoed in his mind the loudest, something that was bothering him the most - Aria wasn’t looking at him the same way she had always done before.Why is that?“Mr. Augustine.” Her pleasant voice speaking his last name caught his attention. But when he looked at her, her gray eyes didn’t hold that tender warmth that they usually did ever since he met her after getting amnesia. “What are your thoughts on the matter?”Lucas bit the inside of his cheek when he realized she was only questioning him just to see if he was paying attention. She didn’t look like she was in the mood to have extra patience for the man who spaced out so often. He finally decides to come out and speak his mind. “Ms. La Belle, I need to ask you something.” Aria put her hands together and