Chapter 66 Endurance!

Chapter 66 Endurance!
Saintilia’s POV

My brow furrowed slightly. Her lack of common sense, her inability to see the depth of her betrayal, perhaps may not be a front at all. She might genuinely believe she had done nothing wrong.

Baffled, I headed for the kitchen to begin cooking. I had no patience for her pretense, no energy for her theater. The vegetables needed cutting, and these small tasks gave my hands something to do while my mind worked.

From my peripheral vision, I caught Emilio's expression. He didn't seem pleased. I turned to look at him expecting him to speak up, to assert some opinion about Tina's visit or her questions. Yet he said nothing. He only watched.

Gradually, the silence hung in the air. Emilio's irritation with Tina became obvious. The tightness in his jaw, the way he glanced toward the door, the subtle shift of his weight. He attempted to convey his desire for her to leave in various subtle manners. I was surprised by his behavior. Was he trying to make me jealous?

Tsk…

‘Not happening.’

“It’s late Tina.” He stepped toward the doorway.

Tina seemed either oblivious to his cues or purposefully disregarded them. As far as I was aware, this was her first time here and he wasn't too happy about it.

He took Tina's hand with practiced grace and told her he would walk her back home.

It was impossible to miss the way Tina looked at Emilio; a deep infatuation that radiated from her. Her reluctance to leave his side was a heavy thing.

‘She loves him. Or thinks she does. And he knew it.’

It was clear that Emilio was not yet ready to grant her the access to his home, to his private life, that she so desperately craved. He kept her at arm's length, offering just enough to keep her tethered.

They truly believed they were shrouded in secrecy; that I was unaware of the affair happening right under my nose. And I found his treatment of her, a mix of fleeting attention and cool distance, to be peculiar and calculated. She had gone to such lengths to devise a plan, a pretext to send me to Emilio's house. Now, looking back, there seemed to be a flicker of regret in her actions, a shadow of guilt she could not quite hide. So the question burned in my mind: if she wanted him so badly, why drag me into it at all?

After he returned from walking Tina home, a palpable agitation clung to Emilio like a second skin. He summoned me into his private room.

The request sent my heart into a frantic, panicked rhythm against my ribs. Though I managed to put on a mask of calm. Over the years, I had mastered the art of concealing my true emotions whenever he was near, a necessary shield for my survival.

Still, I was taken aback by his audacity; the sheer nerve of calling me into the one space that had been strictly, explicitly off-limits from the moment I first entered this house.

I was astonishing to me that he so casually broke his own rule. I remembered his warning with perfect clarity, the low, menacing tone he'd used to caution me about the "regrettable consequences" of entering his room without his permission.

What Emilio could never seem to grasp was that I held no desire for him. I didn't simply dislike him; I detested him, and I had not a single shred of curiosity about his life. His carefully constructed air of mystery was a performance for an audience that wasn't me, and my unshakeable indifference rendered all his efforts utterly meaningless.

‘Let him keep his secrets. Let him keep his room. I want none of it.’

I was fully aware of the unspoken threat behind his warning. The implication of what might happen to me if I were to violate the sanctity of his room. Emilio's reputation for practicing voodoo was infamous, whispered about in our village and all the neighboring ones. Dark arts, curses, rituals that bent reality to his will, or so the stories claimed. Yet my avoidance of his private space was not born of fear, but of completely lacking interest.

I took a quick glimpse of the room when I first arrived, because I didn’t know it was restricted. I saw nothing strange that caught my eyes. a bed, a small table, a cabinet with its doors firmly shut. Ordinary things. It did occur to me perhaps there were some dark, invisible elements he worried that I would discover; but beyond that fleeting thought, my disinterest in him as a person was more than enough to keep me out.

‘He means nothing to me.’

The moment I entered the room, my body acted on a deeply ingrained instinct. My knees found the hard floor before the command ever left his lips; a reflex carved into me through repetition, through necessity.

In his twisted perspective, this act of forcing me down was a victory. A method of eroding my sense of self through a show of his authority, a demonstration that he owned not just my circumstances but my very posture. But he was wrong.

To me, it was a hollow gesture, a meaningless position I could assume without a flicker of inner feeling. My knees on the floor meant nothing. My head bowed meant nothing. It was a small, physical concession I made to preserve the appearance of surrender, a shield for my inner world. He could have my body in whatever position he demanded. He would never have my mind.

"What did I tell you about seeing Jacob?"

The name hit me like a physical blow, sending a jolt of cold dread through my veins that had nothing to do with his hand and everything to do with the impossible question.

‘Jacob. Why is he asking me about him?’

When did I see Jacob? The question spun through my mind, frantic and searching. I had been careful. I had been silent. I had practiced the virtue of invisibility.

I knew the two things he despised most: my silent treatment, and my habit of answering his interrogations with questions of my own. Both were acts of defiance, though he probably didn't understand why. Silence denied him the sound of my voice. Questions denied him the satisfaction of my submission.

So I chose the first weapon. I let his accusation hang in the stifling air between us, unanswered and unchallenged.

A frantic thought raced through my mind. How could he know I had gone to Jacob's place? Who had seen me? Who had reported back to him? The network of informants he controlled stretched through every corner of this village, but I had been so careful.

I pushed the panic down and maintained my mute stance, knowing from bitter experience that my silence was a provocation that guaranteed a violent response. But violence was preferable to revealing what I knew, or what I didn't know, or what he thought Jacob might have shared with me.

Continue...........