Red diamond

Ana found Lucas outside with Jack discussing something seriously. Now she understood the reason why they looked cagey and suspicious in the morning. It must have been because of Lucas's taking over the office and other handover stuffs. Ana decided to ignore the pouty girls and talk to Lucas in detail later during lunch break.

After all, she would be working under him in the coming days and they'd have plenty of time to discuss things anyways.

She went back to her cubicle and started replying to all the emails awaiting her attention. After completing a few tasks on her PC, she went to attend a meeting with an artist whose art display was planned for an exhibit next month.

She felt relieved and peaceful.

Now that Lucas was her boss and Oliver not being there to constantly shut out her creative ideas, Ana felt that this would be a good chance to showcase first class craftsmanship.

The entire day she was fully energetic, and worked with utmost love. When she finally got a little alone time during lunch break, Kathy and Ana both expressed their heartfelt wishes and excitement to Lucas.

When asked about why Oliver was leaving, Lucas just told them that he was taking a big break and going on a world tour.

That totally seemed like him because he mostly liked partying, spending money and irritating people, nothing else. It was a big surprise that he still had money and didn't go bankrupt already.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She was fully exhausted for the day because of all the back to back meetings and works she had to do. After a fruitful day of good work, then drinking and partying with her colleagues, Ana went back to her apartment completely drunk.

She had a red Honda Odyssey gifted by her parents for her previous birthday. Her current birthday was coming up soon and she was excited what this year might entail. She cherished the gift and always maintained the car like it was her child. Since she was already drunk, she called up a designated driver and reached home.

Ana lived in a cozy one bedroom apartment with plenty of room for herself and pepper. She never liked staying in a shared apartment, so as soon as she got a job and could afford an apartment on her own, she moved in there. There were 25 floors in that apartment in total and she lived on the 24th floor. It was more like a penthouse and she loved that she could see the entire city skyline from her balcony.

She quickly took a hot shower and changed into her comfy night pants suit. She took pepper along with her, made a soothing lavender tea and curled up inside a thick rug of her cozy chair on the balcony.

She was joyful and it seemed like nothing could make her feel sad again. Just the day before she was in complete despair and today the roles reversed.

In the mayhem of Oliver resigning, all her colleagues forgot everything that happened to Ana and Joshua, and it was two birds with one stone scenario. She was smiling thinking that when one door closed another sweet one opened.

Maybe she could restart her life from scratch. She could concentrate on her career for some time, and aim for applying to the Paris scholarship program for curators.

When she joined, she was just a junior curator there, but because Oliver disliked the head curator, quoting that "She was boring", he fired her only for Ana to take up all the responsibilities of the job.

As Ana was new, she didn't know anything about the work and she was overwhelmed by the sheer pressure of it. It also served as a great opportunity for Oliver to walk all over her, and one day she finally lost it and yelled at him with all her might. She tried quitting that day and applied for other jobs, but Oliver got her blacklisted from joining elsewhere. 

Now even if she wanted to quit, she would either have to do some odd illegal jobs or sit at home doing nothing. She had to support her parents, so it wasn't a choice. So she decided to tough it up and give that rude son of a bitch hell every time he got on her nerves.

All that did was make him enjoy her little temper tantrums every now and then and he made it as a habit. He picked on her every single chance he got, passed snarky judgements about her ideas and had fun seeing her get ruffled and frustrated because of him.

Good riddance that she didn't have to ever see his face!

"Ufff!", she let out a big sigh and could already feel all the tension melting away. She predicted a worst day but ended up having the best day ever!

After quietly resting in her balcony for some time, she cleaned the tea cup and was about to go to sleep when something from her handbag caught her attention.

She moved closer to the couch and took the handbag which she casually threw over as soon as coming back home.

The package was almost tattered and the wooden box was peeking out of it. Ana completely forgot about the courier she received and to do an analysis on it. But was it even a specimen which belonged to the museum? She wasn't sure.

As a curator, she always had a spare gloves in her home. She quickly took that from her bedroom drawer and strapped herself with it. She laid down a black mat on her coffee table and laid out the box on it. Ana felt a bit drunk, so she tried to be extremely careful. 

"Let's see….. What have we got here…!", she was mildly speaking to herself while carefully opening the box.

Pepper was curious to see if Ana had something hidden for her, and enthusiastically climbed on Ana's lap, peeking at the wooden box in her hand.

Ana still couldn't make much sense of whatever that ceramic or the stone was. In fact, upon close inspection she found that it wasn't ceramic but just clay.

If someone unearthed a new specimen, they should at least send her some info or a geographical location about it. Who gave a blank completely useless note like "Use it wisely"? "This is stupid", she thought. Maybe it was a prank or something like Kathy suggested.

She was about to put back the clay inside the wooden box when pepper jumped up suddenly and Ana lost control of it. It slipped from her hands and hit the coffee table hard before landing on the living room rug.

"What the... Pepper…! Bad kitty….", she chided her cat and bent down to pick up the broken pieces. It was now broken beyond repair and she felt morose because what if that was actually an important piece sent by someone? Now it was completely damaged.

Pepper ran away soon after causing all the chaos and now Ana was sadly collecting the pieces. It was a bad idea to open the package in home, she regretted.

While examining the pieces on the rug, she noted that the red coloured diamond was actually a pendant and it broke away from the clay piece holding it. It glittered and sparkled under the yellow light of her living room.

"Wow…..!", she marvelled at how amazing of an ornament it was. After seeing it as a whole, it was actually slightly rounder than she initially thought and it had a dark maroon hue almost like a blood moon.

So, instead of a prank, was this someone's gift to her?

The note did say, "use it wisely", which meant it could be from a secret admirer. Oh my god! Could she even use it? What if the secret admirer was someone she knew well?

The diamond was too beautiful and shiny that she wanted to try it out.

Drunkenly, she clasped the pendant in her hand and quickly ran over to the bedroom and combined it with a thin silver chain from her dresser. She wore it around her neck.

It fit her perfectly and it looked gorgeous even in the night suit she was wearing. She couldn't help but wonder who would've given such a big expensive gift to her? Was it from Joshua?

"What!", she said when realization daunted on her.

Maybe Joshua finally wanted to apologize, so he sent over that gorgeous piece of jewellery? He must've felt bad for the way he behaved, even ashamed so could've decided not put his name on the sender's address!

Ana started spinning theories in her head. He could've been scared that Ana might be furious after what happened, so she would reject the package if it came from him. Maybe that could be the reason why he sent it to the museum and not to her apartment? It totally made sense!

How nice it would be if that were true? Ana was debating to herself if she should try calling him again and see if he picked up this time but in case if this wasn't from him, she didn't want to take the risk of rejection again.

She didn't know how to thank Joshua or what was to be done, but she loved the pendant so much. She saw the package again and couldn't find any other info other than the note in it.

She decided to wear it anyways and decide what to do with it later tomorrow after talking to Kathy. She was already picturing Kathy's excitement and her wanting to try the pendant as soon as Ana showed it to her the next day.

She looked at herself once again in the mirror and observed how the big red diamond perfectly fit in between her collarbone like a puzzle piece in its right place.

She thought that maybe more good things are on her way.

With that thought, she went to bed.