Love Arranged (#1)

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Five: Maggie

"None of your fucking business,"

I felt my knuckles practically turn white with the way I was gripping the railing of the stairs so hard, as I refused to turn around and meet his eye, but his presence alone was too palpable.

Despite the distance between us, I still feel like he was cornering me and breathing down my neck, like a predator trapping its prey. But I refuse to be overpowered by this man, to let him assert his dominance over me and to be a puppet of his strings.

That he could stomp down on me and keep me in one place, but I don't wanna give him that much power over me. Not now and not over my dead fucking body.

"What the hell do you think you're doing here?" I hissed as I glared at him from the corner of my eye, but even if I wasn't completely facing him, I just know a certain smugness was etched on that face of his.

"Well, for starters, I bought this house-"

"Don't you fucking dare say some condescending bullshit, I swear to God." I swiveled around and stared menacingly at him, "Don't you dare come back here and try to claim this house as your own, for it's the least you could've done after you abandoned us."

I arched a challenging brow at him as I crossed my arms over my chest "Unless that is, you also wanna take this house with you when you leave again, once and for all? Put the cherry on top of being the worst father of all time? If so, be my guest, it's not the first time you've shown how truly heartless you are."

It seems as though I've finally succeeded at hitting a nerve I never thought existed as he took a step back and clenched his jaw, just the littlest bit, but the agitation was evident on his face as he spoke "I can rest assure you that I am not going to take this house with me when I leave, and for that matter, I am also not leaving until you agree to come with me, Maggie."

I snickered, shaking my head dismissively at him "You just love saying the most absurd nonsense today, don't you?"

I didn't even give him the chance to respond as I turned my back on him and went straight up to my room, with the sole purpose of packing up my belongings to leave for tomorrow as I had planned. "I'm serious, Maggie." he called out to me as I ignored him.

I opened my room and locked it before he could even have the chance to barge in, thinking if he got the slightest hint of my upcoming whereabouts he'll go ballistic, so I might as well get this over with.

I pulled out a suitcase from the top of my closet, throwing it onto my bed as I unzipped it. I then returned to the clothes hanging on the racks behind me and tossed them all in a pile, thinking I'll get back to that soon, but for now, I need to hurry.

The lingering doubt of whether or not this was a good idea was still itching restlessly on the back of my mind, my paranoia not failing to chastise me for my lack of consideration, for a moment I paused to digest the situation in all of its entirety and tried to think to myself if this was really the last resort.

But the banging on the doors broke me out of my reverie as I came back to reality and resumed back to the task at hand, realizing if I wanted to leave without anyone being suspicious and with enough time to write an explanation letter to mom then I should-

I jumped when the locks to my bedroom door forcefully clicked open as my father walked into the room, appearing every bit infuriated as his gaze narrowed into slits.

Without even giving me the chance to curse at him due to the damages he's done to my poor door, he shut me up as soon as he was quick to take notice of the disarray of clothes scattered messily onto my bed.