Chapter 98 CHAOS SERVED BURNING HOT
AMARA’S POINT OF VIEW.
A FEW DAYS PRIOR…..
I stood in front of my mirror, dressed in the same pink dress Ace had fucked me in last night, my nerves thrumming in my veins, spiking my heart rate. I drew in a large exhale and tried not to cringe at the sight before me. I looked like my father’s perfect princess.
I hated it.
Being the daughter of a mistress was horrible. I was everything my stepmother hated, especially because my father actually still loves my mother, even after being married to her for the past thirty years. I didn’t miss her glares every time I walked past, or the way she tried to get my father to hate me, or throw me out of the house. I didn’t spend every day in this cold mansion because of her, preferring rather to stay with my mother in her small, crammed apartment fit for only one person.
I would take the roaches and bugs any day in comparison to the cold walls and cold sneers of my father’s wife and her thirteen-year-old son, who doted on his mother’s every word.
My father loved me….I knew it. He tried to hide it from his wife, though, every time he yelled, or snapped at me, or acted like he didn’t hear me sobbing every time his wife did something else. I remember the night she called me the daughter of a whore at dinner.
I’d never seen my father so angry in my life. The way he slammed his hand on the dinner table and yelled at her, not caring about us present, scared me. I’d never seen his wife, Caroline, so scared before. She always had this ‘I know better than you’ sneer on her face, something I wished I could wipe off with one smack.
The reason I’d fled to Australia months ago was because I couldn’t take much of her antics anymore, so I lied to my father that it was for fashion school, when I hadn’t even registered, and took the first class ticket to the country, where I met Ace.
Now, I have to lie to my mother about my whereabouts, because if she knew about my father trying to force me into this marriage arranged by my stepmother, she would storm in here angrily and cause a scene.
My mother might be a simple gardener, but she had the anger of a million wild cats when it came to me. Hell, she said she never wanted him to know of my existence, but she wasn’t able to stop him from seeing it the night he knocked on the door of her house in a drunken stupor.
She said that ever since then, he always tried to find a way to see or speak to her, using me as an excuse to do so.
She still loved him too….I could see it in the way she nursed the small box of letters and pictures of them in their youth, tucked under her bed.
Caroline was the bitch who forced her way into my father’s bed, using my grandparents’ snobbish attitude towards my mother, who was their maid at the time. She made them think she was the best choice for my father, and they forced him into an arranged marriage with her, after telling lies about my mother that she took a cheque from them in exchange for leaving their son.
Caroline robbed me of the life I could have had with my parents, and till today, she still tries to. I knew of the way she always tried to prevent my father from dropping me off when it was time for me to go back home. She always found a reason, either a headache, an ominous feeling she had, or the nightmare she would suddenly have the night before.
It was pathetic.
I remember the night she pitched the idea of my marriage to a friend’s son at dinner. My blood had run so cold, I was sure I was as pale as a corpse. My father didn’t like it either, but for some reason, when it comes to her, he hardly said no.
He would want to, I could see the hesitation in his eyes, but in the last minute, he would give in and let her have her way.
Now, here I am, dressed in the colour I hate the most, and the aesthetic I loathed more than anything, because my stepmother thought my fashion choices were meant for the ‘less privileged.’ It was a shade towards my mother, but I bit back, knowing what would happen if I ever spoke.l
Instead, I poured itching cream in her shower gel and watched as she lost her mind that morning.
A knock sounded at my door, halting my thoughts, as I walked over to open it.
I was greeted by the sight of my father, dressed in an impressive black tuxedo, his hair oiled and jelled back, making him look as young as he was in the picture on my mother’s bedside table in her room.
“Father,” I said, my voice low, as I shot him my most hateful look. He knew how much I hated this, how I hated what Caroline was doing, because I knew it would be up to no good. I’d researched the Montclair family, and what I’d found about the youngest son, the one she wanted to set me up with, was an absolute asshole, and a fucking pig.
He was the biggest snob there was in all of America. He hated women, hated the poor, and thought the world was meant to revolve around him. The news of him pouring scalding hot liquid on the hands of one of his maids because she had arrived two minutes late with his morning tea hit the gossip blogs and news stations the second it was published, as well as the news of her lawsuit against him.
She lost the suit, though, too weak to go against the Governor’s family.
It was pathetic.
And now, I might have to marry into that family, all because my father wasn’t man enough to tell his wife the word, no.’
“You look…”
“Different?” I finished on his behalf.
“Well…that’s one word for it.”
He knew how much I hated this look, because I took after my mother; I always wore what she did. And Caroline hated how much that made my father remember his first love.
“Are you really going to make me do this sham of a dinner?” I asked, and he looked at me with his brown eyes that mirrored my own.
“Mia cara.” He started, his voice soft, because no one was around to make him sound mean. “Tonight will go as expected, just trust me.”
I stared at him wordlessly, pulling my hand out, and waited for him to take it.
“Let’s get this over with.”