Favouritism

Her dresses are like pale frocks. She silently walked down the corridor, only the sound of her heels could be heard. For others it may sound like danger whenever she stepped into the office but however, you could hear her colleagues rejoicing after her shadow left the office. She sat down at her desk labelled, "Director". As soon as the clock chimed eight, her timid-looking secretary served her a fresh cup of dark coffee and flipped open a diary and stuttered out the schedule for her for the entire day. However, after listening to the same things for a week, she raised up her hands for her secretary to stop.

"Now what else is there except meetings, and meetings and meetings!" She almost howled.

"W..well, there are t..two letters f..for y..you, Miss Mae.." Jessica stuttered, almost too afraid to look right into her eyes.

Jessica handed over the letter and scurried out of the room leaving the neatly printed envelope and one that was clearly being handwritten on the edge of the desk. She took the crumpled envelope and using her sharp nails, tore open the top and it was from her adopted son, James. It was a rather short letter indicating that he needed money for investments. James had already lost a large sum of money and no matter how much he lost, Mae will try every way just to fork out that sum of money. She reached out for the neatly printed letter and it was from Amy. She also needed a sum of money for setting up a company. Mae was Amy's last option as she could not tolerate how her foster mother treated her in the past.


Ever since young, Mae had always favoured James more. He was always the one getting into trouble and he even got expelled from school, but her love for James can never be compared for the hatred she had towards Amy. Mae only chose Amy because she looked like a little doll when she was young and in the end, Amy grew up to be more beautiful than Mae herself and she felt inferior standing next to Amy.


Ignoring Amy's letter, Mae decided to help James instead. She first sent him a sum of ten thousand dollars. But he requested for more. Over a period of three months, Mae had already lent him close to a million dollars, which landed her heavily in debt. While Amy's company was thriving ever since it started with the help of Amy's newly-wed husband, James kept getting his fingers burnt in the stock market. This made Mae more furious and wanted James to do even better than Amy. After James' last letter which came in days ago, Mae mortgaged her whole company to the bank. Penniless to her name, she felt insecure but she could not leave her son in the lurch.


James was later being caught by the police for investing in illegal market and with Amy's refusal to help both mother and son, Mae was left alone, on the streets, with nothing, nothing at all...