Episode 1

This should've been a great day to

go out for fishing, but Catalina's stuck with

her tangled and chaotic office, trying to catch a different fish—or maybe she thought it's a damn shark—that she needed to free her grandfather from the nearing clutches of Death Penalty.

She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. For the past three weeks, all she got was an hour of rest. Her head was spinning but there's no time to stop for beauty rest nor a much longer sleep. She only has 30 days. 30 days before her grandfather's extinction. And for the past three weeks, not even the tail of the fish she could find.

Not to mention, she's already holding the RECEO, a private team much bigger and more capable than federal agents that manages private affairs and crimes by a specific person or anyone who requested and paid for their skills. Most of the time, they accept requests from well-known companies and powerful business tycoons. They are group of individuals with diverse backgrounds and skills, which is why whoever asks for their help must outlaid thousands of dollars, and Catalina already paid millions for them but it seems that this case is much harder than she can think of.

As she run her fingers through her nougat brown hair, her eyes caught something from her messed up table in which among all of the things bungled up was the only one that was still on it's right place, like where it should've always stands. It's a small picture frame of her grandfather, looking at her with a genuine smile on his lips, a smile so bright and sincere, as if the world was a much better place.

That isn't the smile of a murderer, she thought. She balled her fist as her mind drowned her back to the memories of her grandfather. Memories that she'd always thought was even brighter than her success, than her future. Until she found herself again on the day where she was able to feel the sensation of fear and darkness, the pain of her heart slowly breaking, and when as if she had felt the anguish of heaven.

Approximately three weeks ago...

Inside Casa Guiremo, a currently booming Italian restaurant, Catalina was having a small conference meeting with four other people. The two females sitting across her were members of the management team and beside her were her secretary and a new associate on the empire.

As usual, Catalina was quiet as her subordinates were speaking. She's far way younger than them but their respect for her was so evident. She's dressed in a perfectly tailored white bralette top under a cream wool blazer and cargo pants, combining demurely a little of her feminism and deep lavish look, and tucked under her feet was a pair of  Christian Louboutin heels, glimmering devilishly as she swayed her foot slightly back and forth. There's an aura hugging her. Something that whoever enters that door will instantly know she is someone who's in command of storms and hurricanes. She had that movie star look, not overly tall and willowy, but she looked more like an action star than a business woman.

She sat there with the confidence of someone a decade older, her elegant fingers running through the side of her face as she listens thoroughly with her chips of emerald eyes anchored to the one speaking in front of her.

"We might need to do the remaining designs as soon as possible." Jamie Walter, the current creative director, paused as she slowly reached for her cup of coffee.

"But we still have a couple of months before our due dates. Alora and some of our competitors circling in the beauty industry had already launched their new retails. But as I can see, they lack so much and still thriving." The new associate suddenly spoke, grabbing everyone's attention. "Here, I have a sales graph. This shows how well we are selling our products this year." She laid a couple of papers in the table showing everyone the graphs and some other related company issues. "This line is the sales of our products and this line is the sales of our competitors products. We are currently far higher than them. We even surpassed our estimated sales. There's no problem at all. We can first focus on the other franchise since cosmetics are already stabilizing on top of the pyramid, right?" She looked at each person on the table with glint of confidence in her face.

Everyone was silent; she couldn't name their reactions until she reached Catalina's eyes focused on her, dull and disinterested.

"I didn't know someone like you is sitting in this table with us." Catalina's flat and dispassionate voice prevailed in silence.

The woman was a little surprised and confused by Catalina's remark.

"About what you were saying earlier, do you think as the president, I didn't know all that?" Catalina continued, her eyes were cold and piercing, "The competitors are thriving, so as we. I absolutely know there's no problem at all. But the world of business is not as reassuring as knowing that evening will fall later and the sun will rise in the morning. We are here not just to envision but to take action on whatever unjustly things we are going to pull to stay at the top. This is not just how to be always at the top, but, also how to make them not just one step but ten steps behind us. If it is possible to make them stay far beneath the ground, we do it. Do you understand?"

A moment of silence before the new associate managed to respond in a low, hollowed voice. "Basically you're saying we are purposely dragging them down?"

"Exactly. We don't stay still." Catalina bluntly replied. "Beauty market is crowded and competitive. We compete to get the crowds, even to the extent of cutting the competitors hands and gradually pulling off their limbs."

The new associate only managed to blink when she realized she was actually clueless of what they were discussing, and a second later started apologizing. "I-I apologize—"

But Catalina cut her off. "Pieces of advice, if you're the junior member of a party, don't dominate the discussion, but try to make comments and just ask questions."

The new associate lowered her head in embarrassment, suddenly being sensitive of all the eyes looking at her.

An abrupt ringing sound from Catalina's phone saved them from the intense silence in their table. She reached for it, and as she heard what the call was about, she pushed herself off from the couch in one graceful move, leaving everyone from the table without even excusing herself and effortlessly walked towards the door. Behind her, the others return to their conversation.

"I warned you to do nothing but listen." Catalina's secretary snapped at the new associate beside her, in a voice so low, almost a whisper. "I know I haven't told you anything yet about how the company works, but I was planning to after this." The new associate stayed quiet, looking more devastated. "But I never forgot to warn you about Ms. Haytham. By just what I've told you about her, you should've understood the possibility of putting your *** on fire. Sure, you took her so lightly and tried to show off, huh?"

As Catalina reached the outside entrance of the restaurant, she'd stood beside a large Norfolk Island pine as she spoke to her phone.

"Where are you? Didn't you see the news?" A tensed voice of a man came from the other line.

"I have more important things to do than watching the news, Radford." Catalina replied, eyeing some people swarmed up and down the sidewalks. Mixed noise from cars and taxis was deafening, with scooters roaming along car rows and the amount of other vehicles that were illuminated in traffic lights, zooming by or creeping along.

Quite a busy street, yet, the warm and earthly ambiance of autumn somehow relaxes Catalina. This is the season of inner calm, the gold and red leaves that carpet the pavements, the gold and wet scarlet of autumn days, the bold and homely colours.

"Of course, you haven't seen, if you did, you must be running your *** straight to the Sanctuary by now." Radford snapped from the other line.

Catalina was a little confused. Her forehead furrowed. "You said earlier this was about my grandfather. What Sanctuary?" She paused, "Sanctuary Regional Prison?" There's uncertainty in her voice as she straightened with an unfocused gaze at her surroundings.

"Yeah, he was arrested just an hour ago... for the murder... of a ten-year-old boy, Cathy." Radford's voice was slow and unsteady, like his words were unwilling to take flight.

"W-What?" Radford had said it so clearly but the words Catalina had heard seemed cracking, mistakenly wrong. Words so unacceptable she needed to hear it again. "That's the dumbest joke I've ever heard, Radford." She cracked, and heard a deep, heavy sigh from the other line.

"Oh, I really wish it was just a joke, Cath."

Her brain stuttered for a moment. While her thoughts catch up, every part of her goes on pause. A sudden surge of running away from where she was standing right now and seeing her grandfather radiated rapidly to her, that her feet shifted automatically toward the seven steps stairs at the entrance, until she reached down the pavement.

"They might be interrogating him, right now." Radford added as Catalina goes silent. "I thought you already know, that's why I didn't call you right away after I heard the news. I just felt uneasy that's why I called, turned out you really didn't know. It's all over the news."

This thing was something Catalina would not easily believe. Something very impossible to happen. Her grandfather is the kind of man who couldn't even bare to look at a pig being slaughtered. It's ludicrous to even try to believe it, yet, she felt her body shaking, recoiling in shock. The breath of warm autumn and the feeling of nature flowing back and forth in the air suddenly vanished, the bright and warm street in front of her, as if in a blink of an eye, brutally plunged in darkness.

She tried to overcome the tingling sensation that lingered in her body and as her mind churned with unpleasant thoughts, someone abruptly passed by her side, bumping slightly her trembling, unsteady shoulder. Catalina dozed off at that moment, her legs folded gently and she subsided slowly on the ground, the black garden barricade was cold at her back. While she struggled to inhale, exhale and to adjust her vision, she tried to compose herself.

As the young man pushed forward on his skateboard, he glanced over his shoulder to see the woman he just happened to bumped with was already on the ground, hyperventilating. He instantly jammed his foot down the pavement to stop his board, and turned around in confusion as he studied what the hell had just happened to her.

One of his brows slightly arched while his deep, dark eyes stared at her, almost bewildered. He studied her with piercing scrutiny for a second until his senses kicked in.

Heart palpitation, a hurricane of sweat, muscle tension and trembling hands, abnormal blood flow, heavy, unbalanced breathing, volatile hearing and vision— all of that frantically strike before his pupil that traveled in increased velocity through his brain. Like a radar detecting the exact elements of human cells.

It wasn't me—he thought in relief—the reason why the woman suddenly fell on the ground. She's already on the verge of falling and losing control before he bumped into her, besides, no one so stupid will fall easily into such a weak impact.

Catalina on the other hand, tried to adjust her dwindling vision as she gazed at the fuzzy figure of a young man walking towards her. Then everything became a blur, until she could see nothing at all. Throughout the darkness her heartbeats pounded loudly, echoing in her ears, alongside, her brain was fighting helplessly. Senses in her body began to shut down until everything went black.

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