My Ruination

Chapter 23.

~Maahira~

The sound of an incoming call on my phone woke me up with a start. I had no recollection of how I had gotten to my bed after I gotten into the car but I woke up at 3 am at night to get out of my corset top and thick skirt and change into a night dress. My hair was in my face when I accepted the call and mumbled a groggy "Hello". I didn't bother checking the time but I knew it was too early for me to be ambushed anywhere. "Come down here, right now." Zaeden barked orders, sounding enraged as if I didn't let him sleep at night. "Why?" I questioned.

"Because your fucking father is here and my lawyers have reviewed the contract." He growled in a deadly voice again and suddenly, my mind refreshed itself from the remaining drowsiness. This again? I had assumed Zaeden was never going to go through with this, that exchanging property with women was something from the 1900s but apparently not. He sounds elated and hurried to sign the papers and get what he wants. My family might hate Zaeden, his new money and his ruthless methods but they were all cut from the same cloth.

That's alright. I knew how to take my autonomy back. My brother taught me alot of things, one of them was being insensibly and rashly brave, to not be scared of anyone's fathers, not even my own. It's time I stop letting them think I was a pawn for both Zaeden and Dad to control.

I pulled myself out of bed at 6:00 am in the morning, slipped a pair of flats and dragged myself down the stairs. At the bottom step, Zaeden noticed me arrive and his glare just got violently torchurous as it travelled down my body. I was wearing a deep purple satin nightdress with ruffled, deep neckline that hit below my knees, longer than what I daily wore to college anyway. I wasn't wearing a bra, ofcourse, which could have been a reason for his licentious scrutiny but I wasn't an idiot. My nipples were not poking out and nothing more than my cleavage was visible. This is the best I could do at 6 am for matters that concern him and his self-centered deals.

He actually looked like he hadn't slept all night, the hair all disheveled and the stubble just a little overgrown. The black compression shirt made his shoulders and biceps look ridiculously thick or maybe, it was just me fantasizing my catnips on this undeserving man and is that...a watch strapped on his wrist? He was too much of a perfectionist to keep up with. I ignore his prodding glare as I moved towards the congregation and sat down on the opposite end of the couch Zaeden was on. My father looked up, his undereyes uncharacteristically...red as if he has been insomnic too and he greeted me, "Good Morning, Maahira." I nodded my head, wishing him the same and tried stifling my yawn but he noticed that too, "Just one year, and after that, you can live comfortably in your house." He mocked Zaeden.

It is funny my father considered living in a house where some people, including him, hate you without a good agenda and worked hard to give me suicidal thoughts as "comfortable" but I couldn't bother trying to change his perception. All in due time. Both the lawyers, one from my father's side and from Zaeden's, finished hashing out the last details and placed the papers and pen before us. One of them said, "Before you sign the contract, I suggest you read through them and let me provide a rough evaluation verbally. So..."

"There is no need for that anymore. Just get this over with." Zaeden irritatably said, snatching the papers and pen off the glass and clicking it open as he begun signing them off as gracefully as a bull in a China shop. Zaeden will always be an anomaly to me, that particular set of numbers I will never be able to decode. Why did he go through all that blackmailing and threatening just to end everything like this? Or maybe he always planned to end it in an year and this was just an additional bonus. And that thought really makes me mad.

"Could you hurry up? I need to go back to sleep." I said. Okay, I didn't care about sleeping anymore but I knew how it would provoke him and judging on the basis of the disintegrating glare he casted, that made me want to crawl in some corner, it hit the spot. Neerja is also glaring at me from her hiding spot and eavesdropping from the pantry and I just smile at her and blow her a kiss. She worried too much about me- my clothes, my tea, my future. But she didn't need to. No one should. I was gentle, not a doormat.