It's Too Late To Love Me Back

Chapter 17

It was eerily calm the days following my confrontation with Younes Merabat..

It was the sort of calm that keeps sending a sense of forboding in me, whenever I do my small daily rituals like taking lengthly walks in the refreshing garden, doing my readings, or even as I barge into the kitchen and waste hours trying to improve my nonexistent culinary skills I'm constantly having a coat of unease covering my peace.

I haven't thought about that day, I've been forcibly blocking every thought of him, because the moment I allow myself to revisit his explanation I'd remember the way I was pushed against the car as well and was toyed with, it was a pointless struggle to try to objectively think of that day without feeling hurt.. So I decided not to think at all, it worked better.

Other than that, there was nothing of significance happening, my jobless life is very much eventless, to the point of boredom, while I'm contemplating plans later on of finding a job and leading a regular life like that of my parents once I'm no longer needed to stay at the villa to carry any sort of social obligations, something in me was telling me I will not be granted such normality once the storm that befell my family finally passes.

Honestly, I didn't have any sense of danger at the beginning, or at least not until Adem strangely commented while the family was sitting at the large dinner table the other night:

_" ... Father, they were seperate complaints, also it is expected to lose few investments at this level after dissolving our partnership with the Merabats, but I'm alarmed at the speed of it all, recently in particular, I'm feeling like the threads are being knoted with malice intentions these few last days, we're missing something, why do I keep thinking we are being distracted with these little problems to miss a bigger plot? "

I have never been interested in business talk, I'm a literature graduate, obviously my interests and knowledge lie in a complete different field, although whenever I have my meals with the family there's no escaping hearing their discussions about work related matters, still it normally goes one ear out the other, however, upon hearing these words from Adem, Younes's name suddenly flashes through my head as if it was a sign from Allah, senses beyond my comprehension were telling me something was wrong and Younes had to do with it, I felt a must to give my family a warning..

But did I act on such senses?.. of course I didn't, rationally and logically I shouldn't.. if at that time I said any word at all to my family I would have made a joke out of myself, and no one would have taken my words for serious, or so I believed..

Also, after few days of peace and quiet came a time when Samira strangely started packing my schedule with events and parties, to the point I almost had to be out on a daily basis and there were days when we had to go through more than one event, it was alarming how the number of events increased, and strangely how I didn't meet Younes Merabat at any of them, more precisely, how he didn't show up to any of them, at the time I had no clue a storm was blowing in the stillness of my family under the surface.

Then it started..

One morning, unlike the calm I'm used to, I hear the thud of rushing steps walking in the corridor outside my room as I wake up grudgingly, although I wanted to ignore the noise at first, but I was completely shocked out of sleep the very next moments.. becaus I start to hear the sound of things being smashed and crashed interwining with the screams and yelling, and it was all coming from somewhere within the villa.

Is hearing such a noise at the villa a frequent recurrence? absolutely not.. the last time I heard the sound of crashing here was when I found Marwan punching his brother to death years ago, that fight had so much consequence that my strict grandfather promised to disown whoever stirs a mess of that caliber again.