98

CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT.
“Master Jamal is in the Garden with Mr. Leonard.”
The Servant answered.
Adele didn’t knew who that Mr. Leonard was, but it didn’t
seemed convenient to ask the busy servant more questions, especially as she stopped her earlier when she was walking rather fast and when she was answering her, she was panting.
So Adele thanked her, then headed towards the garden to personally know who that mighty guest was, especially
as Jamal had trusted him enough and invited him to the mansion despite the problematic situation they were currently facing.
When She finally walked inside the garden, she spotted
Jamal and another man standing at the far eastern
corner of the large space. She stepped carefully towards
them to have a closer look at the guest.
As she did that, she noticed that the man was holding a lot of files between his hands he was discussed some
matter with Jamal while flipping the papers. When she
walked closer to them, Jamal was the first one to notice her.
“Baby, do you need anything?” He asked, concerned.
Mr. Leonard calmly closed the top file and decided to
watch the scenery in the garden which, of course,
included everything, but Adele. Since it was clear that her
coming interrupted an important matter and brought
inconvenience to a serious employee.
She felt a bit shy.
“Jamal, can I speak with you for a bit?”
Mr. Leonard instantly dismissed himself before she even got Jamal’s reply.
“What’s the matter?” Her husband asked calmly.
She took a deep breath before answering.
“Grandma is suddenly enraged about what your father did to you and she has asked him to bring your mother immediately to the mansion.”
Jamal did not have even the tiniest change of expression after hearing this. He acted like he had just been informed that they should expect the weather to be sunny that day.
He simply nodded.
“Okay, you go bring Grandma and wait with her in the grand hall, I’ll join you when I finish.”
As Adele was walking back into the Mansion, Mr. Leonard went back to his initial position then they resumed their business discussion as if she never went there in the first place.
It was inevitable for Adele to notice the huge difference
between Grandma’s emotional control and Jamal’s. They both stood on opposite extremes!
Unfortunately, the victim who had to be exposed to both stirring fire and hard ice at the same time was poor Adele.
Her in-laws didn’t take much time to arrive, within an
hour they were already standing in the hall with very
cold faces, with Shannelle by their side.
No one among then was courteous enough to do any
greetings, since obviously no one was happy to see the
other. However, her mother in-law was the first person
to open the talk, she immediately expressed her total
displeasure by complaining.
” How dare you order your guards to inspect us Jamal?
Is this how you treat your parents and sister? You inspect them like criminals!” She eyed Adele coldly and continued, “…instead of wasting your time disrespecting your family why don’t you teach your wife some manners!
How come she leaves us standing in the hall without inviting us to sit down!”
Adele didn’t even reply to that, she had no intention of doing so.
“How dare you speak about manners, you filthy woman! It was my mistake accepting you as my son’s wife in
the first place! You snake turned Dominick against his own blood and flesh and you’re still not
satisfied!” Grandma blamed everything on her daughter in-law eventually and acted as if her own son did nothing at all, just the same way Aliya always succeeded in putting every blame on Adele, excluding Jamal.
The two of them quarreled endlessly and the others just stood like statues and didn’t have the chance to say anything for a very long time.
It so happened that during their verbal dispute Grandma Devon suddenly lost her sanity along with her temper and she insanely held some pottery vase that was only put in the grand hall for the purpose of decoration and she threw it at Aliya with all her might!
Nobody expected that to happen.
Grandma had very poor eyesight. The vase that supposedly targeted Aliya landed on Shannelle’s head instead.
The pottery vase was thankfully made of hard material,
so it didn’t break on her head, even when it fell on the ground it still only cracked.
But a hit on the head was still a hit on the head.
Aliya shrieked in terror looking at her daughter while everyone’s hearts stopped.
Shannelle screamed as she immediately put her hands on the spot with her face grimacing pain. They all ran towards her panicking and Aliya was by far the most emotional among them. She circled her daughter with trembling hands.
“Are you okay? Shannelle! Answer me!”
While Aliya and Grandma were still yelling nonstop and pointing fingers at one another regarding the accident, intermittently interrupted by Jamal’s worried inquiries to his sister. Adele’s sharp ears still caught another sound amid the total chaos.
Not a loud one.
Just the sound of lots of papers dropping on the
ground.
She instinctively turned to look at the source of the sound. Surprisingly, She spotted Mr. Leonard standing not so far from them with a frozen expression. The files he was holding earlier were all over the floor near his feet as he stared at them with a pale face, precisely at Shannelle.
“I’m ok” Shannelle finally whispered taking Adele’s full
attention again, so she turned to look at her.
Jamal frantically took her hands off of her head and inspected that spot, then he immediately held his sister between his arms and lifted her like she had the weight of a leaf.
Get the car ready!” Jamal roared.
Mr. Leonard instantly ran outside ahead of Jamal, probably to execute his orders, while both Nana and Aliya followed Jamal, panicking.
Only Adele and her father in-law were left in the living room.
She noticed the man had seen the important files falling on the ground and she knew he was waiting for everyone to leave so that he would get the chance to take the papers and have a good look at the info written inside before swiftly putting them back in their initial spot.
It wasn’t so hard for Adele to read him at all, especially after hearing all about him from Jamal.
She took a deep breath, looking straight at the man.
“Father.” She called. Her tongue almost twisted after uttering the word “father.” “You must be really worried about Shannelle. Jamal is taking her to the hospital, I’ll ask the guards to arrange a car for you to follow them.”
Mr. Dominick smiled like a gentleman,
“Indeed I am worried, I’ll be thankful if you do so. Aren’t you coming as well? We should go together, Jamal will be worried when he notices that you didn’t follow him.” The man sneakily suggested.
In the past, Adele didn’t have a specifically good relationship with him. She just had courtesy and respect, but now that she could see with her own eyes how he wasn’t affected at all, not even the tiniest bit about his own daughter’s accident, she realised she was indeed standing in the face of a heartless man. She knew such a person wouldn’t even hesitate before harming her, a mere stranger.
When she was listening to him, it was akin having
a dialogue with a criminal who is holding a knife and
threatening to stab her with it. She was so terrified.
But what was most important for her was to protect
those files that could cause irreparable damage to her
husband.
She tried to put on a smile as well before replying to him.
“Jamal asked me earlier not to leave the villa no matter what the situation was. I better do that.” With her eyes focused on him, Adele loudly called the servants to come because she truly was scared of being left alone with the man. Some female servant who thankfully, wasn’t as gossipy as the others came into the mansion to curiously see what was happening. She apparently kept doing her work in the kitchen because she came from that direction when Adele called.
Adele made sure to remember her face because she would be getting a generous reward from her husband later.
Although she was genuinely happy because the servant had come, she was the only person who came.
Adele still feigned displeasure and yelled.
“Where are my personal guards? They are supposed
to be around me all the time! Aren’t they paid to only do
that? You call them here immediately!”
The servant looked quite surprised with Adele’s rude behavior since she never acted that way.
She was genuinely scared of man standing in front of
her.
She couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t just push her
to the side and go take the papers he was drooling for?
Only respect and courtesy were preventing him from
doing so, and he clearly didn’t have any of them! The servant ran to the door. Few seconds later, the whole hall was full of armed men.
Adele randomly selected one among them and ordered him to prepare a car for her father in-law and follow him
out.
Mr. Dominick smiled sinisterly at her.
“We’ll meet again pretty soon then. Stay safe and
take care of yourself.”
Adele just nodded because at that moment, she felt like her life was threatened and she was at the brink of having a panic attack.
As few of the guards were guiding him outside, Adele strode towards the files that were carelessly left on the
ground and collected them frantically.
“Master lady, are you ok?” One of the guards asked. and she nodded. She held the papers and ran towards Grandma’s bedroom since unlike hers, grandma’s was the nearest and at the same floor.
The moment Adele walked inside her room holding the
papers, she locked the door with her trembling hands and fell on the ground, weakly trying to calm her quickening breaths.
Her state of mine was chaotic.
While trying to calm herself, she held onto those papers like they were her son she feared to lose again.