Holding on and Letting go [Complete]

24) A bedlam.

Her surroundings dwindled amid the words of Masooma still echoing in her ears as her flip-flops slid against the polished marble floor of the corridor. A rush of adrenaline mixed with the tingling of despondent nihilism while her dupatta swept the surface below her lifeless feet. What with her seeing Ammar's photo, that award-day memory came rushing back to her mind and that teal eyed man was none other than Ammar. She still remembered the loathsome gaze he was looking Raza with. It was awful. Everything was dreadful.

Just when she had thought life was worth living, it slammed the bitter truth right in her face; a perfect life that could never be hers. A wishful thinking! But now it wasn't even about her, it was about her parents. They were murdered. It felt horiffic more than it sounded, almost like slitting her entire existence.

It was appreciable that despite the dourness of the words she had just been the victim of listening to, she managed to not lose her cool in front of Masooma and remained calm, shoving the havoc that had just set each and every organ inside her to frenzy.

With angst-ridden body, she pushed the door of their bedroom open and rammed inside, her eyes glittering like two intoxicated oceans of fire shedding out chunks of morose from every nook of her scarlet face as her unparalleled breathings intermingled with the clinking of delectable bangles Masooma had just gifted her.

Ahid who was on call with someone, standing by the window, turned around and his eyes met her unruly appearance which generated the effect he was scared of from the very moment they had gotten married. The agonizing fire of revenge washed over her and she dug her fingers into the hearts of her palms to the point where they started bleeding.

As his breaths hitched, he dragged his trembling hand down his sullen face which had suddenly turned pale and forsaken on seeing her cluttered, grumpy, and gruesome expressions, cancelling the call in the middle of a conversation. His worst night mare was coming true. He knew she knew; her ghastly expressions serving as a testament to her desire of wanting to raze the edifice of this family's existence just like they did hers.

"You okay there?" With a thudding heart, he asked the question his intuition and her vagary had already given him the answer of while his synapses tied together in tight knots.

Like a torpor, she mordantly trudged forward as her piercing gaze fissured trough the supplicate ruckus of his cerulean eyes.

Once she had reached towards him, she stealthily pulled out the picture from where she had hid it under the covers of her dupatta.

"I'm gonna ask this once and I want the answer in just one simple word. Either yes or no. No explanation." Her grave voice spurted through his ears like an eulogy.

"Ayat, listen---," he had just said when Ayat pulled out her hand in front of him and he halted, swallowing hard.

"I haven't even asked the question yet." Her tone was unrecognizable as if she was talking to a stranger; harsh and bitter.

"Did you know your father murdered my parents?" Flashing the picture in front of him, she asked and before he could say anything, added with animosity. "Yes or No? No explanation, remember?"

His heart constricted and goose-bumps rose through his entire torso. "Ayat, please!" He begged.

"That's not an answer to my question?" She beseeched, her unblemished face leached into a rainbow of colors while his devoid of any. "Did you or did you not know?"

Gulping down the ball of saliva he looked at her like a kid who sees another kid with a toy he had been yearning for but know couldn't afford.

"It's complicated." With much struggle, he finally uttered and she gaped at him with incredulity, her brain; a hodgepodge of scrambled feelings. She really wished he didn't know about this. But even if he didn't, would she still continue to live with a man whose father killed her parents?