Till Death Do Us Part | ON-HOLD

Chapter 37 : Asraar

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【 37.

Thirty-seven

Asraar 】

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[ Asraar • secrets ]

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      AFTER ZACH LEAVES, with the duffel bag he brought with him slung over his shoulder and Garry at his side, Rosaline turns to face her parents with an unintentional smile on her lips.

“Well, then,” she huffs out a breath, feeling the past few hours suddenly catch up with her. “I better call it a night.”

Both her dad and her mum stare at her with similar expressions of uncertainty and surprise, though of course her mother tones it down better.

“What?” Rosaline asks, shifting her gaze between the two of them.

“Nothing,” her mother responds easily, not missing a beat. But there’s a certain calm in her eyes that hasn’t been there in the past week. “I’m glad your spirits seem somewhat lifted than it’s been for a while now.”

Oh. So that’s the cause of their sudden shift in attitude. Then again, it’s not only them—Rosaline must be displaying a very startling change in her entire demeanour too, for the first time since her return to Chicago.

She’s positive her parents are somewhat aware of the reason for her current peace of mind, of where her sliver of happiness and normalcy comes from during such a horrible time in her life.

Which reminds her… “Hey, dad?” she pauses for a moment, biting the corner of her lip softly. “Thanks for… you know, tolerating him. I understand you did it for me.”

Her father sighs and rubs the side of his nose. “I was about to storm up to your room and haul him out of there when Izzy told me about it—especially after what he said to me in the morgue.” He releases another sigh, heavier this time. “But she said it was a few hours since he arrived, and considering that you hadn’t run out of that room either in tears or anger within the first hour itself, I figured he wasn’t doing anything that needed my intervention.”

“He’d never do something to me that would require you stepping in and handling the situation, dad,” Rosaline tells her father gently. “Trust me.”

“I do,” he tells her instantly, “I always do, love. But one night of decent behaviour doesn’t change the fact that Zachary Hawthorne is a dangerous man, a man of influence and power—and I can’t imagine a scenario in which I ever learn to trust him.”

“Dad,” Rosaline sighs, stepping towards him and taking his hands in hers. “You’re a man of power and influence too. That doesn’t change who you are at heart.”

“It does if I ever march up to a man and threaten his daughter to his face.”

Rosaline stares at her father. “What?”

He exhales heavily and cranes his neck to the side, ridding the exhaustion of the day. “At the morgue,” he explains, “when Garry and I ran into him… Well, words were exchanged. I wanted to thank him after finding out he was the one to take you into the ER—I mean, the guy saved your life. But… But I guess finding out he saved the woman who’s my daughter was the last straw for him. He snapped. In the place of the man who saved my little girl was a man who wanted to give her hell instead. It took a snap of the fingers—” her father performs the gesture for emphasis, “—for him to turn into someone else entirely. I can still recall the way he looked that day, absolutely feral and like a wild animal that’s been cornered.”