the gym, yoga mat in hand. She climbed the stairs to the second floor where the class filled with mostly women was already packed. There were conversations going on between the ladies and Nyla slipped to the back hoping that she could avoid everyone.

It wasn't that the women weren't friendly, because they were. However, Nyla just preferred to do her yoga in peace and silence. She loved doing yoga outdoors, but the weather was getting much colder making in impossible for her to do that. She laid out her mat before stretching her body, the class was about to begin in a couple of minutes.

Nyla's eyes were closed, as she focused on her breathing. She ignored the voices around her and counted her breaths. Everyday, Nyla liked to clear out her head and focus on herself. Her life was so busy and these few minutes where she internally reflected were important for her sanity. Here nothing that was happening at Renne mattered, it was all about her.

"Okay class, it's time to begin."

The instructors voice echoed through the room, and Nyla opened her eyes again to see most people sitting on their mats. She looked to her right and did a double take. She couldn't believe what she saw.

Darius was seated beside her on a black mat wearing a pair of grey joggers and a white sleeveless shirt. Nyla could seat the outline of his biceps and the muscles. Her fingers itched to run hand over them before she controlled herself. Darius opened his eyes and they met Nyla's.

What are you doing here? She mouthed.

He raised an eyebrow and Nyla understood that he hadn't been able to read her lips.

She repeated the question in a slight whisper.

"Yoga, what else does it look like?"

She was about to say something else but quite a few heads turned their way. It looked like they hadn't been as silent as they had hoped.

"Now we are going to move from the locus to Adho mukha svanasana."

Nyla did as she was told and watched as Darius did as well with ease. He did yoga often, she realized. His movements weren't stiff, and he knew what he was doing. It seemed like the other ladies were also enthralled as the back of the room was getting more looks then it ever had before.

Nyla tried blocking out Darius and focusing on holding the next position, Bakasana but she was distracted by the conversation that the instructor and Darius were having.

"I haven't seen you before."

"Yes, it's my first time here."

Nyla opened her eyes slightly and her position wavered as she watched the instructor compliment Darius' pose. Then she turned towards Nyla, "You might want to arch your back more."

Nyla scowled and watched her retreating figure. Beside her, Darius' eyes were filled with mirth. Clearly, he found it funny that she was being corrected. So, she did the only thing she could and stuck out her tongue at him like a child.

Her smiled widened. "I could always show you the correct way. Beatrice seems to think I have a great form."

"Fuck off," she said aggressively.

"Is that the way to speak to a yoga master?"

"Yoga master my ass."

Darius laughed, a low sound—but it caught the attention of the females around him. She scowled even further.

"Partner up with the person to your right and one person will be on the ground while the other person will place their stomach on the ball of their feet."

"Come on partner," Darius said lightly before he laid down on the mat completely.

Nyla ignored the rib and grasped his hands tightly. He tried lifting her into the air and all seemed well until the last second where she tumbled off and fell on her right shoulder. She was momentarily blinded by the pain and she knew there would be bruises the next day.

Darius concerned voice was right next to her ear, "Are you okay?"

She shot him a glare. "For someone who has muscles, how on earth did you drop me!"

Seeing that she was not in pain, Darius shot back "It was your sweaty hands that made me slip."

They were back into their good nature teasing and Nyla was relived. After the shoot, things had been a bit weird between them, but it seemed that everything was back to normal. The heat she had seen in Darius' eyes must have been a reflection of the light that day, Nyla thought to herself.

"Have you both tried the pose?" A perky voice spoke up from behind them.

Beatrice was back, her hair in a tight bun. Nyla truly loved coming to her class, there was something soothing about Beatrice's deep voice that was calming.

"Yes," Nyla answered her question. "He dropped me pretty hard."

Beatrice laughed. "It's all about trust, and the best way to do that is to gaze into each other's eyes, start with that."

"Like right now?" Darius asked.

Beatrice nodded and so the two of them sat down on the yoga mats and simply stared at one another. She saw a flicker of something in his eyes, but it was gone a second later. After what seemed like eternity, Beatrice broken their contact with a small good.

"Try again," she instructed. "I'll watch your movements and tell you where you go wrong."

They both nodded and Darius gripped her fingers once more. They were no longer clammy but firm. Nyla felt the callousness of his skin but didn't comment on it. He lifted her onto the ball of his feet and Nyla did her best to focus on not falling. Miraculously, she didn't tumble to the ground. Darius held her very firmly and she looked into his eyes to see the determination.

There was a slow clap beside Nyla and she almost slipped off his feet.

"Bravo," Beatrice said with a smile. "That's the way to do it."

She called the rest of the class to observe their technique and the two of them had to remain in their position like statues. She saw Darius' hands quivering and she narrowed her eyes. "You better not drop me."

He shot her a smile, "Don't worry, I've got you."

♠♠♠♠♠♠

"Are you sure that these are the correct numbers?"

The man in front of her desk, a middle aged, slightly overweight man nodded. "These were the reports from all the departments."

Nyla glanced at the next excel columns once more. "It just doesn't make sense." she mumbled more to herself.

The head of the accounting department nodded. "I thought the same thing, which is why I was rushing to book a meeting with you, but your secretary said that you were sick."

Nyla nodded absentmindedly. Her mind was still on the budgets and purchase orders in front of her. Something wasn't adding up, and she didn't know what it was. It was bugging her.

She compared the projected numbers to the actual ones once more and came up to only one conclusion. "Someone is stealing from the company."

The man in front of her looked alarmed and hastily fingered his tie, trying to loosen it. "That's very unlikely..."

Nyla placed down the papers and scrutinized him. "That's the only thing I can think off, besides your department screwing up the numbers for some other purpose."

"We would never do that!"

Nyla sighed and massaged her temples. "It's a good thing we caught this before we released our actual financial statements, it would be a nightmare if the auditors caught this. Deloitte would have a field day with this, as would the Securities and Exchange Commissioner. He truly despises me; I think it might have been the time where I told his wife that he was cheating on her. Not to mention the joy of our own board members..."

"Ms. Malhotra, but why would anyone want to steal from Renne? Our employee satisfaction is one of the greatest."

Nyla shrugged her shoulders. "Your guess is as good as mine. Somebody is not happy and is doing their best to sabotage us..."

Nyla's eyes lit up as she made the connection. It was possible that is was the same person who had left the open chemical in their vitamin factory. The police themselves had suspected and inside job and this only further proved their theory.

She fixed her gaze at the CFO. "This stays between us. If I hear any gossip among the employees, I'll know who opened their mouth."

Her CFO nodded; he was sweating but Nyla was almost a hundred percent sure that he was not the guilty party.

"Just observe the departments and maybe we will be able to at least narrow down our search."

The man nodded before leaving her office. Nyla leaned back in her chair. This was much more than she had bargained for. She needed to hire a private investigator. Remembering that George had offered the name of his contact, Nyla rang the phone to Hyeon's line.

"Get me George in here as soon as possible."

♠♠♠♠♠♠

Nyla stood up and stretched out her hand. "Thank you so much for meeting me on such a short notice. I'm so thankful to you for taking on this case."

The investigator, whose name was Ted shook her hand firmly as well. He gave her an oily smile. "I'm delighted to be able to help such a beautiful lady. Could I please get your phone number if possible? That way it will be easier to contact you if I find anything."

A voice in the back of Nyla's head told her not to give him her number in any circumstances. He might have already gotten in through a bit of detective work, but she didn't like the feeling she was getting from him.

"My personal phone is usually shut off." she said with a polite smile before handing him a business card. "However, if you do require more information, my business number is listed on there and you can get in touch with my secretary."

Realizing that he wasn't going to be able to get anything else out of her, Ted smiled once more before shutting the door behind him. Nyla collapsed onto the chair and shivered. There was just something about him that made her sense tingle—and not in the positive way. She trusted George's opinion and she hoped that he wasn't wrong with the hiring of Ted. She needed Renne to be running smoothly, without any shenanigans or she would be out of a job before she knew it.

"Your next appointment is here Ms. Malhotra." Hyeon's voice came through the door.

Nyla frantically searched her calendar to see that she had scheduled an interview for a marketing position they had open. "Send them in." she called out while taking a sip from the now cold tea.

Her mouth was parched and that was the only thing available to quench it. The door swung open and Nyla was surprised to see that she knew the women standing in the doorway.

Her name was on the tip of Nyla's tongue, but she couldn't remember it.

"Everly," the young women stretched out her hand and Nyla shook it.

"Nyla," she replied. "You were at the conference in San Francisco."

Everly smiled, it was a warm, inviting one that made Nyla immediately like her. "What are you doing here?"

Everly opened her mouth to speak before Nyla realized how rude she had been. She pointed to the chair in front of her. "Please, have a seat."

"I heard there were a couple of openings in New York City in the marketing field, so I decided to interview for them. I've always wanted to live in New York..."

"You say that now, but your opinion might change after you've been flipped off by hundreds of taxi drivers and nearly knocked to the ground on a daily basis."

"We shall see." Was Everly's coy reply.

Nyla flipped through Everly's resume which Hyeon had snuck onto the corner of the desk. She fixed a polite smile onto her face that she hoped wasn't too intimidating to Everly. "Now, it says here that you did an internship with a media company in Chicago. Can you tell me about your experiences and what you learned?"

♠♠♠♠♠♠

Nyla took a bite of the teriyaki chicken while flipping through the graphic samples that Everly had submitted. The lights twinkled behind her in the darkness and most of the office members had left. Realizing that Nyla wasn't going to go home in the next hour, Hyeon had order food for her before leaving the office. Nyla was very grateful to her.

Her interview with Everly had been the only bright spot in her day. She really like the young women. She was eager to learn and had one of the most important characteristics she valued—creativity.

Her phone rang and she glanced at the caller ID to see that it was Darius. She didn't know why he was calling so late.

"Hello, is everything okay?"

There was a yawn on the other line. "Hey, I haven't received the signed leasing forms from you yet?"

"Shit," she swore. She had forgotten about those forms and they needed to be submitted as soon as possible. Hyeon wasn't here and Nyla didn't know where the forms were, so she scrambled around madly looking for them.

"Everything okay there?"

She put him on speaker, "Yeah sorry I'm just looking for them. I'll sign them as send them over right away, it's just been a long day."

There was a silence on the other line and then some static. "You want to talk about it?"

Nyla finally located the forms under a folder labelled signatures needed, and she swiftly wrote her name before scanning the documents and emailing it to Darius.

"You should be getting them soon now." She said before remembering he asked her a question earlier. "I'm sorry, what did you say earlier?"

There was another pregnant pause before Darius low voice filled the room. "I was asking if you wanted to talk about your day."

Nyla relaxed back into the chair and she realized, that yes, she did want to talk about it. She needed some advice but also needed to get the terrible feeling of betrayal off her chest.

"You might want to get cozy," she warned.

"Ooh, this sounds juicy." Darius joked. "I love gossip."

She raised an eyebrow. After hearing everything she was sure that Darius would be singing a different tune. Sure enough, after she was done telling the story Darius swore on the phone.

"I don't know what to say, it's a shitty situation."

"Say that it will be alright."

There was a pause on the other line before Darius smooth voice reassured her. "It will be alright Nyla, your brilliant and you'll work this out."

Somehow, Nyla did feel better and suddenly, it was a lot easier to breath.

---------------

Can we all take a moment to thank Beatrice for bringing Darius and Nyla closer? Anyways, who do you think is stealing from the company? (It's been hinted before briefly ;)