radicalducati 28
28
Alex’s POV
I could sense Jennifer silently sobbing with her back to me. She tries so hard to hide it but I could still hear her soft sniffs and her back vibrating slightly.
This chick is completely driving me crazy in a matter of just two days with her.
I haven’t the slightest clue as to what the hell is going on through her mind most of the time.
One second she’s terrified of me, the second she threatens me about touching her, and the third she tells me boldly to ‘fuck off’.
A complete fucking personality disorder.
And she had the nerve to accuse me of pretending to be concerned for her.
I was beyond fucking concerned, I was frantic with worry.
When I woke up at the sound of her watch and didn’t find her next to me, I bolted into the bathroom imagining the worst.
She looked horrible, sweating, shaking, and dizzy. I also smelled vomit when I entered the bathroom.
Her retorts to me in there were both amusing and annoying at the same time.
It made me wonder where that feisty girl act came from all of a sudden.
She was not afraid at all of talking back to me now.
What the hell changed in the course of seven hours?
I resist the nagging urge to confront her and demand to know what’s wrong with her.
After about an hour, I find myself drifting back to sleep.
I only manage to get an hour of sleep before my body decides that I had enough.
I roll into my other side, and come face to face with a sleeping Jennifer.
She was hugging the pillow between us snuggly, her wild red hair fanning her head.
Her face had traces of dried up tears.
I get up, take clean clothes from the closet, and go to the bathroom to take a shower.
By the time I finish, it was 7:45 a.m.
I leave her sleeping and unlock the door as I head out and close it silently behind me.
I go to the kitchen and find everyone there, alert and awake already.
“Good morning” my mom says warmly to me as I sit on my chair.
“Good morning” I reply back.
I begin putting some eggs into my plate as my mom wonders “Aren’t we waiting for Jennifer to come?”
“I didn’t wake her. She had a rough time at five in the morning and struggled to go back to sleep again” I said grimly.
My mom looks at me with worry as she asks “What happened?”
“She threw up and had hyperglycemia but couldn’t get up from the bathroom floor because she was too dizzy to move. I was woken up by her watch ringing nonstop. I moved her back to bed and helped her with her injection, she stabilized after a couple of minutes. But it took her sometime to settle down enough to sleep again. Is this a common thing mom… with her condition?”
By the time I finished rehashing what happened, everyone was paying attention. Even Lucas had some kind of mild concern on his face.
My mom’s face becomes troubled as she answers “I don’t know, it could happen from time to time especially at that hour of day. Maybe you should take her to the hospital when she wakes up to get a regular check up”
I nod my head in agreement. Better safe than sorry.
“Did… something happen between you? She was awfully nervous at dinner, and you followed behind her right away. Please tell me you weren’t hard on her again Alex” she asked carefully.
I don’t consider what happened between us hard per se. She did freak out so much at the beginning but I made sure she knew that I wasn’t going to hurt her.
“Nothing happened between us to cause this mom. She went to sleep just fine” I said firmly, remembering her cute little threat before we went to sleep. She said it with such boldness, it caused a spontaneous grin to break wide open on my face then. I wanted to touch her just for the sole purpose of finding out what she might do to me, but I thought better of it and kept my hands; and other parts, to myself.
We carried on with our breakfast in silence after that.
Just as I was about to get up to check on Jennifer, Mathew came into the kitchen and said rigidly “Jack Walker and his son are outside in the front yard. They want to speak with Jennifer”
“What do they want with her this early in the morning?” my mom questioned warily.
I head out through the front door and I sense mom, Lucas, David, Sara, and April all following behind me.
Jack and his son were standing in the middle of the front yard looking rigid and stoic.
“Jack” I address him while totally ignoring his backstabber of a son.
“I want to see Jennifer” Jack says harshly.
His tone made it clear that he was looking for trouble as his eyes were raging mad.
“She’s not feeling well at the moment. You can come back later or tell me the problem” I said firmly.
“Uncle” I heard Jennifer saying coldly from behind me.
I turn around and see Jennifer making her way around the rest of my family to stand in front of her uncle, a few feet next to me.
She was wrapping her arms around herself. She looked really sick. She was visibly shivering despite wearing a thick Jacket, her hair was held up in a messy bun above her head.
Her unsurprised reaction to seeing her uncle at this hour told me she was expecting that visit.
My curiosity was piqued as to what this was all about.
“Where the hell is your mother? I went to her house to check on her and when she didn’t answer I came inside and saw the house empty” he asked furiously.
She replied triumphantly “She flew to Canada this morning. She will live with my aunt there from now on. She’s never coming back here again”
Things start clicking in my head. Her insistence to visit her mom yesterday, her emotional state when she left her house and full red eyes all day, her refusal to tell me what it was about. She went there to see her one last time and say goodbye to her.
But why did she feel the need to hide it from me? Why would she insist on keeping it a secret?
Her uncle stares at her with utter shock and increasing anger.
He bellows “Who the hell gave her permission to leave this town without letting me know?”
She doesn’t miss a beat as she answers him curtly “She’s a free woman she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to go wherever she wants. Her husband is dead, she no longer needs his approval”
A vein starts bulging at the side of his head as he hisses “It was you, wasn’t it? You convinced her to run away. You set the whole thing up. Your mother is not capable of doing this on her own”
She hisses back at him fiercely “You bet your life I did! You think I will let her stay here for one damn minute after what you’ve done to me that night? You think I will let her be forced to marry you against her will? Over my dead body, uncle”
What? What did he do to her?
His eyebrows furrow with rage “You little…Is this how you speak to me now? Your father apparently didn’t raise you like he should have! How dare you speak to me this way?”
She ignores his words as she says coldly “You came asking about my mom and I gave you your answer. Something else you want to talk about uncle?”
He takes a step towards her and she immediately takes one step back. I instinctively stand in front of her and address him cruelly “Jack, don’t forget she is my wife now”
“Then I suggest you teach your wife some manners on doing things behind your back! I bet she didn’t tell you about her plans to smuggle her mother out of town, did she? If you won’t do something about it then hand her over and let me deal with my niece”
She cuts me off before I answer “You gave up the right to do anything to me when you sold me at that church. My husband is the only one who can deal with me now”
“So you’re hiding behind your husband now Jennifer? How awfully quick of you to turn into a Snow overnight! He is responsible for your father’s death! How dare you forget that?“ Simon snarls at her.
“Ask your father Simon not me! Ask him, who was Alex when he beat the living hell out of me to force me to marry him? who was he then huh? As if that wasn’t enough, he threatened to kill my mom right in front of me if I refused. Who was he then tell me? He wasn’t responsible for his brother’s death then no. He was just the reason to keep you all alive over my fucking life!” she shouted in rage as her tears started falling.
I heard several gasps behind me at those words that were just said. Probably from my mom, Sara, and April.
I turned around to look at Jennifer with complete astonishment.
My ears couldn’t believe what I just heard her say.
I turned my head back towards Jack as I asked him tightly “Is it true?”
His pale face betrayed him as he shook his head and said viciously “She’s lying”
I look at Jennifer but she’s totally focused on Jack as she retorts venomously “I’m not a liar. I suggest you take your son and leave now, unless you want me to share my proof of it all in front of them”
What proof?
It all suddenly comes back to me at that moment. Her gasp of pain that first day in the front yard during our first conversation, and her agony at night as she clutched her upper chest.
“Take off your jacket” I order her impatiently barely holding my anger in check.
She looks at me with hesitation and a flicker of fear swirls in her eyes as she clutches her jacket around her tighter.
I’m in front of her in an instant and I don’t miss her small recoil as she stares at me with fear shining in her eyes.
I shrug her jacket off her despite her futile attempt of struggle as I toss the Jacket on the ground and stand completely stricken with horror at the sight in front of me.
“Oh my goodness!” my mom sobs as she puts her hand to cover her mouth. I see all of my family who were standing behind Jennifer, gape with wide eyes at the sight of her back.
She was wearing a low cut, thin straps, white shirt underneath the jacket, revealing her deep purple bruised arms along with some shallow whip marks and her upper chest, which had a white bandage covering the side of her collarbone.
I move around her and take a look at what my family saw on her back.
The small part that was visible on her upper back; and I would bet my left arm that it covers her entire back, had similar bruises, but the deep red whip marks there adds to my overwhelming chagrin.
I stand in front of her again, her eyes were staring down at the ground while the tears silently fell down her checks.
I remove the white bandage slowly and my heart sinks at what I see underneath.
A long diagonal cut, red, swollen, and oozing puss. It was stitched up but a small part at the top was ripped.
I was one hundred percent sure that it was me who ripped it unintentionally when I held her neck against my car, her gasp of pain and anguished look during that time added to my certainty.
I was breathing fire at that instant as I kept staring at the horrible bruises, marks, and cut on her body.
“Explain everything that happened that night… right now” I said tightly.
She didn’t need to be told twice. Even though her eyes never left the ground she could sense that I was not messing around this time, and her only option was to start talking.
She spoke in a small shaky voice “He came to our house to tell me about his deal with you and when he said that I have no option but to marry you, I refused... He dragged me to my room and locked my mother out, then he started hitting me with his cane everywhere he could reach. When he asked again, I still said no. So he began whipping me with his belt…then when I refused, he went into the kitchen, grabbed a knife and threatened to slit my throat…I told him I’d rather die so he… cut me as a last warning and when I begged him to kill me because I’d rather die than marry you, he held the knife to my mom’s throat and said he will kill her in front of me. That’s the only reason why I agreed to this. Then he vowed to make her his wife after a month”
She did have a death wish after all.
The pain she must have endured that night would have made anyone agree to do anything, but she never broke, not until she was faced with a horrible choice she could never allow.
She chose death; begged for it even, over marrying me. She would have been dead if her uncle didn’t hold her mother as leverage.
I didn’t get it though. She didn’t know me at all, and yet she favored death over me, why?
There was still a piece of the puzzle missing, but it wasn’t the time for it. It was time for something else right now.
I slowly turned around to face Jack. My expression must have been deadly, because the second our eyes met, he stuttered nervously “You told me… it was the only.. Way to make peace. You said to… to get her to agree.. To it”
I grabbed him by the collars of his shirt viciously as I snarled in his face; not recognizing my own voice as it came out in a beast like roar “I said can you get her to agree, AGREE! Not force you sick bastard! How the hell could you do this to your own niece? No fucking peace offering is worth what you’ve done to her and her mother! I should kill you right now!”
It took Simon, Mathew, and David to grab him from my hands.
The guards in charge of protecting the gate hurried over to contain the situation as they started to pull Jack and Simon into the gate.
Lucas held me back as I shouted at them “If I see any of you within ten feet of this front gate, it will be your last fucking day on this earth, mark my words”
I turn around towards Jennifer and see her looking at me with a weird expression on her face. As if my anger at what was done to her didn’t make any sense to her. What the hell kind of man does she think I am?
Her uncle.
The answer pops into my head immediately. She thinks I’m like him. That I wouldn’t have cared about the gruesome torture she went through that night. That’s why she hid her marks from me. She was positive that it would mean nothing to me.
This realization breaks my heart into a million pieces.
Her expression changes drastically as her eyes break contact with mine and become full of anguish. She sways in her spot and begins to lose consciousness.