‘Kill you foster father’ his words replay in my head for the umpteenth time as I sink into my bed, staring up at the ceiling as many thoughts came flooding my mind. I have only seventy-two hours left, and if I don’t do it, I will be in real trouble.
Why me? Why do I have to go through this shit? I know I may have done wrong in the past, and even in the recent years of my life, but fuck! This punishment is just too much for me, don’t you think?
‘Ariel’ her name ring in my head, and I sit up on the bed, slowly clenching my fingers tightly into a fist. I hate her so much with everything in me, and realizing that she’s Mr. Daniel’s daughter now makes me want to kill her, knowing she’s going to take my place in that family. She has just been there for the first time and they neglected me like that. What if it has been long that she was there? Maybe I would eventually be disowned by the family.
I know that Mr. Daniel and his wife did something wrong to me, but killing them is totally out of proportion, and there is no way I’m ever going to do that. Never!
The sound of my ringing phone pulls me out of my train of thought, and I roll my eyes when I see that the caller is that bastard, Dennis. What the hell does he want from me again?
“It’s not yet seventy-two hours. What do you want now?” I snap at him as soon as I answer the call, and I hear him scoff.
“I need another thing, Jessica…”
“I told you to stop calling me that. What the hell do you want now?” I yell at the top of my voice frustratingly, not giving a damn if other people in the hotel would hear me. Why the hell should that bother me?
“Why? It’s your name,” I can feel the touch of sarcasm in his voice, and that is driving me crazy.
“I’m going to hang up on you if you don’t go straight to the point and tell me what you want!” I snap at him again, and I hear him sigh briefly.
“Max… I want him dead,” His words strike my heart like a thunderstorm, and I find my eyes narrowing by themselves. My hand trembles and I gulp down nothing, trying to digest what he just said.
“What did you say?” I ask him to be sure my ears weren’t deceiving me.
“I give you forty-eight hours to do that,” And with that, the call drops and my heart sinks into my stomach. This is crazy. I know I have always hated Max, I have never wanted anything to do with him, but killing him was never part of it.
“Shit!” I curse under my breath as the realization dawn on me that I’m in deep shit.
The rest of my day in the hotel was filled with boredom, until I decided to take a walk down the street in the evening, to clear my head and get fresh air.
Taking a walk helped me pretty well, but suddenly feeling this hunger that came with full force, I rush to the restaurant close to me to get something to eat. As I walk into the restaurant, I stop on my track when I find Max and Alex sitting together and talking indistinctly.
“What? Those two…” I pause and blink my eyes rapidly to be sure that I’m seeing right. Those two are not on good terms. They are supposed to be enemies, so what are they doing together?
Reaching out for my phone in my pocket, I hid behind the pillar in the restaurant, and dial Alex’s number, while sticking out my head to check his reaction. I watch as he rolls his eyes and shows the phone screen to Max before he swipes the answer button. At this point, I feel my heart wrenches painfully at what he just did. Have they been close now that… No, don’t think about it, Alicia. It’s not something serious. I try to convince myself that it’s not what I’m thinking.
“Hey, baby… Where are you?” I whine as soon as he answers the call, trying to sound natural even as my heart is bleeding inside.
“Hey… I’m at home. Why are you calling at this time of the night? Are you ok?” I watch him roll his eyes as he asks me those questions, and I slowly clench my fingers tightly around my phone. Tears brim in my eyes as the realization dawned on me that he betrayed me. Although I haven’t gotten the picture of the whole thing, but it’s killing me.
“Hey… Why are you not saying anything? Are you ok?” He sounds worried this time, but the look on his face doesn’t even show that he cares about me, or about what happens to me. Is this how it has always been? Have I been fooling around all this while, thinking that he really loves me?
“I’m fine… I need to attend to something… I will call you tomorrow,” I reply to him after a long silence.
“Let’s meet tomorrow, Alicia. I have something to tell you,” He utters, and I nod my head as if he can see me.
“Hmm,” I hum before I end the call, dropping my hand beside me. The tears I’d been trying to hold back finally find their way down my cheeks, my heart feels like it was being hammered, and my blood was boiling in rage toward myself that I have been a fool all this while to never have noticed that there was something wrong somewhere.
“Don’t conclude yet, Alicia. You are not even sure of what they were discussing,” My subconscious mind reminds me, but there is no way I’m going to fall for that. To start with, he showed Max that I was calling him, he rolled his eyes when he was talking to me, and he even lied about being at home. That is a red flag I shouldn’t just ignore like that.
Taking a deep breath, I wipe the tears from my cheeks before I turn and stride out of the restaurant with my heavy heart that feels like it’s carrying a load. It’s indeed carrying a load, anyway.
I take a cab back to the hotel as soon as I leave the restaurant because I don’t even have the strength to walk back there. My legs are too weak to carry me that long.
‘Let’s meet tomorrow’ I scoff as his words replay in my head. What does he want to meet me for? To feed me with lies of being in love with me when he is not even feeling anything toward me? That’s crazy. If he thinks he can deceive me again after what I saw today, then he better learn more about how to do that shit.
“We are here, ma’am,” The cabby’s voice jolts me back to reality, making me realize that we are already in front of the hotel.
“Thank you,” I say to him as I hop out of the car and head toward the entrance door, not after paying him…