Healing ✔

Chapter 43

I caressed my father's head with tears running down my face. He was not aware of his surroundings because he was in and out of consciousness. All I could do was pray and so that is what I did for perhaps the ten minutes out of the twenty I was given.

"Dad?" I whisper. My voice hoarse from all the cries and screaming. "Dad?" I place a kiss on his head willing him to wake up. "Please open you eyes. Please talk to me. I have but minutes until they take me forever. Please look to me for one last time."

He does not move and I keep my palm on his chest to feel his heart beats. At least he was still alive. Feeling his heartbeat was the only thing comforting for me at this very moment.

I glance into the dark shadows but I don't see him mainly because my vision was blurred from all the crying. He is sitting there but he does not speak that is until another 5 minutes of crying that he finally breaks his silence.

"He'll live."

Kareem chose to sit avoiding the light. When he spoke it's almost as if the darkness had spoken.

He had escorted me to father and not left ever since. Most probably baby sitting so I won't run or do anything stupid.

I begin to sob and shake and soon could not bare the sight of my fathers unmoving form. I move away gently placing his head on the ground and cover my face.

"Please help me." 

Kareem doesn't say anything as usual. To every question he responded with silence. I didn't expect him to help either, yet I kept asking because I was so desperate in saving my father.

"I promise you. He will live." 

"How do you know?" Yet again no straight up response. I hear him breath and then the chair legs scrape against the floor and I grit my teeth and swallow hard trying to get a grip of myself.

"I know because. He is your weakness. That's how they control everyone. By using their weaknesses." Kareem simply puts.

I look and find him staring at fathers limp body. He didn't seem evil as he had been with me before yet why was he siding with them.

"And let me guess. Your weakness is money?" I say out of spite remembering the way he had touched me. He doesn't respond and his eyes pierce me with a glare so intense.

"Shut up." He shoots me harsh look before looking back at the spot between his feet and hanging his head low once again.

"Why are you doing this? You don't have to."

"You don't know a thing about me so shut your mouth." He says after a while shaking his head and dismissing the topic quickly, but I needed to know and so I wipe my eyes and resist the smell coming off my clothes. I stank so bad but I couldn't care less.

"Tell me one thing. Was Ismail part of a gang?"

Kareems head shoots up and he looks to me a little surprised.

"What makes you say that?"

"He would come home bruised and bleeding some day's. He wouldn't tell me anything. He would always hide it from me."

Kareem looked to me for a brief moment before responding. "He wasn't. He tried stopping me from joining Harlem. We fought. He put himself in harms way. It was never my intention to hurt him." He admits. 

"Was kidnapping me your idea?" I ask cautiously afraid he may snap and close up altogether. There was no way that Harlem could have known so much unless someone close to us told them.

He doesn't respond but there is a distant look on his face. A look of pain.

"You regret it?"

His eyes snap to me and he looks furious.