C1 Mr. Castillo Calls Her Up

It was late autumn and the studio was freezing cold as Frederica shivered outside the frame of the camera. The moment she had the chance, she ran to her seat and put on her windbreaker. The production colleague who was fiddling around with his phone at the side said, “Your phone has been ringing nonstop.”

Frederica didn’t seem to care too much at first and said casually, “It’s fine. It’s probably my brother.”

The colleague said, “It’s actually an unknown number! But no worries, it’s probably a scam phone call.”

Frederica was too shocked to at first speak. She knew it as a fact that her private number was well protected. Only one number was saved on her phone and that happened to be her brother’s. Usually, other than her brother, there would be only one other person who would call her. She didn’t dare to save this person’s number. She then asked her colleague, “You didn’t pick up, did you?”

Her colleague shook his head and said with pride in his voice, “I reported the harassment call and left things at that. Aren’t I smart?”

In a panicked state, Frederica quickly dialed back. The beeping sound went on for a very long time before the phone was finally picked up. Right away, Yates’s cold voice entered her ears. “Be in the parking lot at nine tonight.”

Frederica had no idea when Yates arrived in S City, nor did she have any clue what he was doing there, but she knew better than to ask.

After all, Yates was a shrewd person. How else would he have been able to command the world for all these years? He paused right then, zeroing into the fact that she sounded a little off. “What’s the matter?”

The thing was, Frederica couldn’t come right out and say, “My colleague reported your phone number, so I’m a little nervous about that.” She quickly reassured him, “Everything’s fine. I should go and wrap up the shoot.”

At the same time, Yates was too lazy to respond to this kind of nonsense. He blurted something out lazily and hung up the phone.

Frederica didn’t dare to neglect Yates’s matter, nor did she dare to ask for leave from the filming site, nor did she dare to ask the big-name male and female protagonists to accommodate her, who was a small-time artist. The only thing she could do was concentrate on filming seriously and she actually was able to end her work before nine o’clock that night.

Yates’s driver was right on time and he arrived at the hotel parking lot at 8:55 p.m. sharp. Frederica got into the car with a sweater and windbreaker on, but she still thought that it was freezing and shrank her neck deeper into her windbreaker. The driver saw that she was shivering a little through the rearview mirror and asked thoughtfully, “Do you want me to turn down the air conditioner, Miss Austin?”

The driver had known her for a long time, but he was as polite as the first time they met. This showed that he had great customer service.

After that, Frederica was directly dropped off at the hotel where Yates was staying. When Yates still had yet to return, Frederica paced around the empty suite alone. She preoccupied herself with studying the patterns on the carpet and the menu of the restaurant for a while. After a while of this, bored, she finally turned to her phone and went online.

On the other end of the line, someone at a forum answered, “What’s the matter with the canary? Good service attitude only, okay?! The sponsors are paying for you to do this. What’s wrong with him being a little late?”

As it turned out, this batch of netizens were really ruthless.

Frederica had no other choice but to grit her teeth and take a bath and change her underwear. She braced herself on the bed for what was to come and waited for the investor to arrive.

It might be because her first time with Yates had been so bad, but even now, every time she changed into a bathrobe in a strange room, Frederica couldn’t help but feel afraid. The tension and distance that emanated from Yates’s person didn’t seem to change with time. In fact, their relationship had been going on like this for two years, but every single time Frederica saw Yates, her throat dried up and she felt like she was at a loss, like a child who had failed math but was forced to go to participate in the Olympics. She definitely felt way over her head.

However, Frederica clenched her fists tightly and waited for Yates until she fell asleep on the bed.

In the last few seconds before she fell asleep, Frederica vaguely thought to herself, ‘What will I dream about today? Will it be about that nightmarish car accident, or will it be me sitting in the hospital corridor all night long? Or will it be about the embarrassment of falling in front of the camera, or the helplessness of pretending to be an adult at my brother’s parent-teacher conference?’

But by the end of it all, she didn’t dream of anything at all. Filming had exhausted her and the mattress on the king-size bed was just way too comfortable. It had been more than a month since she had slept this soundly. That was until the phone rang and she lifted it to her ear in a daze. “Hello…”

Yates’s voice was on the other end. “Come to room 1907.”

As it were, 1907 was the room next door. Frederica didn’t react for a long time. “Hmm?”

Yates said, “The meeting ended just now.”

It turned out that this person had been having a meeting right next door to her all along. This luxurious presidential suite was merely a waiting area for the canary to sleep in. The life of the rich made her speechless.

Frederica put on her coat and walked up to the room next door. When she got there, the door was ajar, but she still knocked on it before entering. Yates was standing in the center of the room, flipping through some documents. When he looked up to see her there, Frederica subconsciously straightened her posture.

Yates, who had just finished the meeting, was still wearing a black suit. In fact, he still had a fierce look on his face and that paired with his custom-made suit made him look like the leader of a gang. His eyes were like two bottomless pits and looking into his eyes was like looking into the hypnotizing gaze of a snake.

She knew he would never ask her things like “Have you eaten yet?” or “How have you been?” He always got straight to the point. That familiar feeling overcame her again. Frederica felt like she was in the territory of a cobra and that she was its prey with no way out.

However, Frederica was already feeling better. She nodded with a smile on her lips and went to the bed to wait for Yates to bathe himself. The sound of water in the bathroom was grating on her ears. She gradually became a little nervous and clenched her fingers, telling herself over and over again, “It won’t hurt all that much. Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid…”

But the more she mulled it over in her head, the more frightened she became. Even though Yates was fierce-looking and had a cold personality, he had always been gentle and considerate when it came to others. However, he was never gentle in bed and the two of them were too different in regard to size. In the beginning, Frederica would feel so overwhelmed by pain that she couldn’t even cry. But both of them had been so busy that they weren’t able to see each other for the past two or three months and Frederica felt the fear wash over again at the thought of what was about to happen.

When Yates put on his bathrobe and walked out, he spotted Frederica sitting on the bed with her back facing him, her head lowered as she played around with her phone. The bathrobe she had on was a duplicate of his.

Originally, Frederica was here to film a movie. He didn’t even know when exactly she had arrived in S City.

He always put self-control above anything else, so he was naturally a little unhappy that Frederica was doing as she pleased, but when he saw the beautiful girl waiting for him with her head down like that, his anger seemed to subside and he even felt a little pleased with her.

Yates immediately lifted her up in his hard, water-stained arms from behind and laid her down on the bed. Yates stood in front of the bed and looked down at her. Only then did he come to the realization that she wasn’t fiddling around on her phone. As it turned out, her hands were empty and she was simply in a daze.

Frederica stared straight at Yates with eyes wide-open. From this angle, Yates was upside down and a few strands of his hair were dripping water from his shower. If the word scary wasn't imprinted in her mind whenever she thought of him, he would've been quite a handsome and sexy man.

She made an attempt to untie the belt of her bathrobe, but Yates grabbed hold of her wrist. “Keep it on.”