YOURS, JANNAH

#SIXTY TWO

With purposely strides of a jaguar panther, Adnan traipsed into the warehouse with a straight face. He didn't react to what Bilal had told him. His body sizzling as onslaught of wrathful form of energy cascaded on him like an avalanche. Bilal followed closely behind trying to see how the man is going to react but he said nothing and did nothing. Was he really expecting Adnan to say anything about this?

Adnan ferried past the broken plasters, doors hanging loosely from broken hinges, rats and mice altogether skittering through debris, trash-covered stairwells decorating the area, spiderwebs hanging off old light apricot fixtures, a broken elevator posing in the middle. There are exposed pipes and loops of loose wiring hanging through holes in the ceiling, torn-up flooring, dirty windows with missing panes, with rusted grates, with boards over them, condom wrappers. Adnan didn't even bat at that, of course, some sleazy filthy people would do that there.

He continued up the crumbled brick stairs and other rubble. He badly wanted to wrinkle his nose at the smell of rotten carpet -is there anyone there?- mildew, dirt, urine and feces, body odor, dead things, wet dog fur, a rancid smell from God knows where but the myriad acerbity souring his mouth won't permit him. At least he should get the place cleaned and closed.

Adnan entered the weak, tea-stained light lit the stairwell and debris clouded cemented floor. He picked a path through the litter and rat feces, avoiding the wires spilling from the broken wall like a corpse's innards. The sight of his two preys filled with him with delectation, he gave a menacing grin. They are both tied. One to a rotten chair with three legs and other to a pole inside the large room.

He walked further and instead of his feet carrying him to Jibril, he went for Bakri for reasons bizarre and to unknown him. The pain, anger, self-loathe and frightening tears he's seen and heard in Jannah whenever she talks about the man that took away her virginity and left her came all at once resonating in his ears, drumming like persistent pulse. His breathings altered as Bakri's eyes snapped open to look at him.

Adnan's resentment was too incarnated, he felt it in his bones.

Before he would see nothing but a daddy's boy that got everything in a silver platter but all he could see right now is a monster, a womanizer and assaulter reminding him of his own bestial past. They really do have something in common with Jannah, huh? His hand swung, the gloved fist landing straight on his right cheek in double fist punch. A hammer fist met with his nose, a crunching sound emanated in the whole room but there was no satisfaction in him.

Bakri groaned through excruciating pain and yelled out. "Dra-Draco what is all this? Bilal yes but you? Why?"

Adnan had experienced complete rage before, the blinding hot emotion that raced like fire in the veins, but this went beyond that point, to a frozen state in which he could think with ice-cold clarity. Methodically, quickly, his mind sifted through a dozen possibilities and selected a course of action. Bilal watched him uneasily, shifting from one foot, to the other. This Adnan is after blood. Adnan stood in thought for a moment longer, and then he lifted his head.

"You slept with my wife after lying to her that you will marry her. Bauchi rings a bell?" Adnan smashed his head together in between his two palms making sure Bakri's brain jingled inside his cranium.

Bakri gasped in both pain and galvanization because he remembered everything perfectly. It felt as though the smash on his head made his memory more clearer, he's remembered. Firdausi is the Jannah Adnan is married to? She was the one he met that day in his mansion? And didn't she recognize who he is then, too? Because he surely didn't, she's changed a lot from the girl he's met years ago. He would've ran away had he recognized her!

What a small world. He hanged his head, Draco won't be tenderhearted, not when they had nothing to begin with. After seeing Jibril Shehu, he is going to accept it and hope he won't be annihilated.