OLDER MEN | THE WEEKND

14

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   ISABELLA HADID IS HATCHING a plan, and that plan is as destructive for her as it is for her cheating father. The night before turned her pain into vengeance, her soul — into a web of dark thorny woods, having little sunlight to splatter them with hope.
 
  She's curving out the sharp edge of her smoked-out pastel wing when she hears three careful knocks on the door. Still breathing heavily from the breakfast scene, she takes a moment to recollect herself before calling a swift—"it's open!"

   She hoped it'd be Gigi, but it's him.

It's her father.

   Her wing smudges carelessly, and she curses under her breath, dirtily, like she'd never done before. In the reflection of her mirror framed with white wood carvings she can see the face of Mohamed lengthen in poorly concealed resentment.

  "What do you want, daddy?" She says— spits.

  He stares at her for a moment before plopping onto her pastel pink bedsheets and straightening them absentmindedly. Bella can see that he's struggling to collect his thoughts. "Bella..." he begins. She whirls around, pink skirt flying around her doll-like legs (—as she'd been told countless times by her dad's older men. It's a quality she's come to adore about herself, adore selfishly, narcissistically.). "I'm sorry for earlier. I need to talk to you." He looks up at her. "Why don't you sit down?"

  Bella can't stand nearing another meter to the man she once thought to be a brick wall she'd always be protected behind. Now, all she sees is a cracking facade.

  And yet; she takes a few steps, calculated and airy, and she's sitting next to him, her chin resting on the knees she'd drawn up. "Yes?"

  Her father exhales. "I... I feel as though I shouldn't ask you this. You're my daughter." His hand moves to pat her shoulder comfortingly, yet Bella, horrified, jerks away from it as if it's an element of wildfire. She masks it for irritation quickly, a smile flashing on her glossy lips. "You're my daughter," he repeats, "so your help is... necessary. I rely on you."

  Every sentence is a staccato, just as each one of Bella's heartbeats.

"—I rely on you, and so I ask you, as a father asks a daughter. Luca Nicholson—"

  Bella chokes on the laugh that's about to escape her throat.

     "—is a nice guy. Don't you think?" The question is rhetorical— Bella's eyebrow crawls up her forehead. "His father is nice, too." He gulps. "Influential. His help is quite necessary with the situation at hand, —remember Guylian?"

  Bella nods. The man that complimented the flushed red of her cheeks as she greeted him a year ago at one of Mohamed's dinners. 

  "Guylian's only agreeing to the rather... profitable... project if more investors are involved."

  "And that investor is Nicholson."

"Quite so."

  Bella smiles.

   "Not in any case would I suck faces with Luca for your profit, daddy."

  Her father's mouth falls slightly agape as she rises from the bed gallantly and makes her way towards the vanity mirror.

  The anger in her veins is blinding. It's ruling each and every one of her moves.

  With a trembling hand, she takes the makeup wipes from one of the drawers and carefully rubs around her tearing eye.

  "What is this tone, Isabella?" Her father inquires coldly.

    "I don't fancy being the pawn in your little chess game. Especially not with Luca Nicholson. I've told you this already." She looks back. "Twice."

  "Why?" He presses, now rising from the bed, and Bella wishes that it wasn't an eyeliner in her hand now, but something sharper and much more dangerous.
 
  Because you cheated on us, she wants to say. Because you betrayed us.

   "Because I'm already seeing someone," she finally lies, her tone neutral.

   There are steel notes in Mohamed's voice once he speaks again. Surrounded by pink walls, he looks absurd with his face masked, — absurd, yet terrifying. "If it's Abel Tesfaye, Isabella—"

  "So what if it is?" Her heart is in her throat at the mention of his name.

    Her father looks as if he's about to faint and commit homicide at the same time.

   "Bella, you can't be serious!" he pleads, taking a step towards her. "What's happened to you, sweetheart? He's almost twice your age!" Then, softer and harsher, "Tesfaye."

  She whips around once more. "Can you leave? I'm kind of getting dressed. And I'm late for school."

  Opening and closing his mouth, her father blinks rapidly. "I'll be speaking to your mother about this."

  "Oh, you will be, alright," Bella mutters under her nose and she turns back around. It takes everything in her to not violently swing the makeup box on her vanity at the back of his head. "Motherfucker."

  Her father doesn't hear—he's at the door already. He turns around once again at a helpless attempt to catch her livid gaze. Bella's lining her lips now, engrossed into the task at hand, yet her cheeks are burning. "Think about this, please, Isabella, dear."

  Mohamed closes the door softly behind him.

Bella's phone begins to ring.