Chapter 31 #2
“My client would like to present an alternative offer,” Daniel’s lawyer says from beside him, his beady eyes trained on Zayn.
Of course Daniel would know what I wanted from the divorce before he came in; the fact I want the apartment isn’t news to him.
I realise what I’ve been dreading is what Daniel would counter-offer with, what terms he thinks I would accept.
“I see no other options,” Zayn says bluntly. I want to look sideways at him, to check his expression, but I can’t tear my gaze from Daniel. “This is a very good deal for you, one I advised my client was far too lenient. I suggest you take it before it’s off the table.”
Daniel’s lawyer is an older man, and what I would presume under different circumstances would be a formidable lawyer, but it seems Zayn’s reputation proceeds him. He eyes Zayn cautiously before continuing.
“Mr Sanders is… reluctant to end his marriage.” The lawyer shifts in his seat, causing an unnatural cold to settle in my bones. “He would like to propose he and Mrs Sanders attend marriage counselling-”
Zayn doesn’t let him finish his sentence, cutting him off with a scoff. “Yes, well, he has proposed two times too many now. My client’s offer doesn’t change.”
Despite Zayn’s instant dismissal, Daniel’s eyes glint salaciously. I feel nauseous. Marriage counselling?
“I must insist that you think about this-”
This time it’s Daniel who cuts his lawyer off, speaking for the first time. His rough voice scratches my skin like sandpaper, making want to shrivel in my seat. “Give me one month of counselling, Gia, and if you still decide to leave I’ll give you the apartment without a fight.”
Shock almost renders me speechless. He’s serious about this? “Why?”
“You’ll be giving up the apartment regardless, so this is wholly unnecessary,” Zayn says lazily, although I sense more than a hint of impatience behind his words. I throw a glance his way. His facial expression is cold confidence, but his shoulders are tense. He doesn’t like this.
“Why?” I ask Daniel again, confused. “Why won’t you just let me go?”
All this time, I thought Daniel just didn’t want to let me leave with anything that belonged to him. Now I’m starting to think that he doesn’t want to let me go. And why would he? I let him use and abuse me for ten years. I was his perfectly trained little pet.
“Because you’re mine. You made me promises, Gia. Vows.” Daniel speaks between clenched teeth, his temper peeking through the cracks of his carefully constructed facade. He doesn’t like to be questioned, especially not by me, and especially not in front of other people.
“What, in sickness and in health?” I scoff incredulously, my voice rising with hysteria at every word. “Are you really holding me to our vows when you fucked someone else? After what you did the night I left? Along with the rest of what you put me through for ten long years!”
“The rest?” Zayn’s voice is soft and calm, cutting through the red haze of my vision. It drips with violence; I can feel it reverberating off him. “The rest of what?”
Fuck.
Daniel shoots me a warning glare. We were always so fucking good at hiding what went on behind closed doors, like some unspoken agreement between us, but I find myself not wanting to hide anything from Zayn anymore.
I don’t want any agreements with Daniel, especially when it involves hiding my suffering at his hands. I’ve done too much of that.
“Daniel knows what I’m talking about,” I spit at him. “Are you sure you want me baring my soul to a marriage counsellor? Could land you in the middle of another lawsuit.”
“This is getting a bit out of hand,” Daniel’s lawyer pipes up, placing his hands palm up on the table in a gesture of good faith. He’s obviously concerned about ‘the rest’ that his client hasn’t filled him in on. “Let’s sort this out amicably, Zayn.”
Daniel’s head snaps up the second he hears the name. His eyes narrow dangerously on Zayn as he roams his face the same way you’d inspect a crime scene, and then in what seems like slow motion, his face morphs into a scowl the second realisation hits.
“Zayn? Zayn Romero? You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he spits incredulously, his eyes flicking between us. “I should have known something was off when I was told the best divorce lawyer in Melbourne was representing my wife for free.”
For free? Wait, what?
“Don’t tell me you two are fucking?” He gestures between us both. “This is too rich!” Daniel’s handsome face is twisted with fury now. “How dare you touch my wife!”
Completely opposite to Daniel’s red hot anger, Zayn’s own fury is quietly lethal. It leaves a chill on my skin when I glimpse his impassive face, the way his gaze penetrates Daniel like a silent dagger, deadly and devastating.
“She won’t be your wife for much longer if I have anything to do with it.”
Any pretence Daniel was trying to maintain is obliterated when he slams his fists down on the table. I jump back, my hand flying to my throat.
“I’ll never let her go, you fucking asshole. She’s mine.”
“I suggest you stop talking now,” the older lawyer advises his client brusquely, but Daniel doesn’t heed the advice.
“Well,” he says, and a humourless grin starts to spread across his face.
I know the look well, and I brace myself as he reaches down into a bag and pulls out what looks like a stack of photographs.
He smacks them down onto the table in front of Zayn and I.
My heart jumps into my throat as I inspect them.
“Looks like I have more competition than I thought.”
I stare at the pictures taken of Brett and me outside my apartment building from Friday night. It looks like Brett’s embracing me in a passionate kiss, but I know it was a drunken mistake on his behalf that was completely unreciprocated.
Zayn doesn’t know this.
I feel him tense beside me. I pull my gaze away from the pictures to find Zayn’s face. His jaw ticks relentlessly, but that’s all he gives away. His eyes are glued to the pictures.
“I knew you were fucking lying to me all those years ago,” Daniel seethes at me, but I can’t bring myself to care about him. Zayn is still staring at the pictures. “There was something going on between you and Brett, and now I have proof.”
He spreads the images out. There are ten in total. None showing me push Brett away, might I add.
The pictures look bad. I should have told Zayn about the kiss, and now he’s finding out about it from Daniel, of all people. My hands shake under the table, but I don’t want to have this conversation with an audience.
Useless. Dumb. Nothing.
Daniel’s words slam back into me with a dizzying force.
“I can add stalking to the list of your crimes against me, can I?” I ask Daniel as fury ignites inside me like kerosene being thrown a naked flame. I try to grab a hold of the anger. It’s more comforting than the cold terror I feel at Zayn finding out about Brett this way.
“It’s called a PI, darling. Perfectly legal to hire one.”
My stomach hollows out and I get the same feeling I did after discovering Daniel had been inside my apartment. Vulnerable and violated. How fucking dare he have me followed?
“These photographs have nothing to do with the divorce proceedings,” Zayn says coldly, finding his composure. “Nothing has changed here.”
“Hasn’t it?” Daniel looks deranged as his eyes dart between us. “Looks to me like these photographs have changed a lot. Maybe you’ll return my wife to me now and this can all go away.”
Zayn’s fists clench and unclench under the table.
“Next time you refer to Gianna as an object to be passed around I will make life very unpleasant for you. Neither you nor I tell Gianna where she will be going and it will do you well to remember that.”
His words jolt me. Did he just threaten Daniel on my behalf?
Daniel’s lawyer looks thoughtful as he takes in the scene before him, causing my temper to flare. Is he thinking he’s found Zayn’s vulnerability? AKA, me?
“Was that a threat to my client, Zayn?” He says, barely containing his glee. It takes everything in me to resist the urge to reach across the table and slap him.
“Not a threat,” Zayn drawls calmly, pinning Daniel with a glare. “A promise.”
I cut in, needing this meeting to be over now before it escalates further. Daniel and Zayn already look like they’re moments away from throwing punches. “You’ll sign the papers and agree to the apartment if I do the counselling?” I ask Daniel quickly. “You’ll sign a contract stating this?”
Zayn makes to say something, but I place a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. I glare at Daniel, but he just smirks back at me as though he’s won this round.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll do it.”
I stand and walk out of the room.
Zayn slams his office door and I spin around to face him.
“What the fuck was that?” he asks, and it’s only now we’re alone he allows his mask to slip. He’s furious. “Tell me what the fuck you were referring to in there with ‘and the rest’, before I go back out there and fucking beat it out of that asshole.”
I take a deep breath, ready to tell Zayn the whole truth.
“Daniel wasn’t a very nice husband.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need a bit more than that, Gianna.
” Zayn’s voice shakes with the effort to control his tone with me, causing a fissure to rip down my heart.
I want to go over to him, calm him with my hands on his body, but I stay rooted to the spot.
I need to get it all out, now, before I change my mind.
“Daniel was abusive to me in almost every sense of the word.”
A weight instantly lifts off my chest and a sob threatens to escape my throat, but I hold it back. I have to get through this before I can break down.
“He controlled me financially, drip feeding me money only for things that were necessary. Making sure I never had access to money he hadn’t already approved.
He abused me emotionally, cutting me off from my friends and any sort of life I had that didn’t directly involve him.
He controlled who I saw, what I did, what I wore, what I ate.
” The words spill from me now like a dam that’s burst, rushing and tripping over each other to make sure they all get out.
Tears leak from my eyes but I talk through them, not able to stop now that I’ve started.
The colour drains from Zayn’s face.
“He mentally abused me. Constantly criticised everything I did and how I looked. He made me feel so worthless. So unloveable. He played on the fact that you left me and that he was the only one that would ever want me, until I started to believe it.”
Zayn’s shoulders go rigid. His eyes grow darker, and I feel the waves of anger reverberating off him.
“We tried to have a baby, and when that failed he let me know how worthless I was every single day. It was all my fault. He even stopped coming to appointments with me, but he wouldn’t let me stop the IVF process because he wanted us to have a baby.
I don’t even know why, I’m not sure he’s even capable of love.
I think because his teammates had started having babies and the narcissist in him couldn’t be the odd one out. ”
My legs shake so hard I grab a hold of the chair.
“I know what you must think of me. I’m so stupid and weak for staying with him for so long.”
Zayn goes to speak, but I don’t let him. I can’t bear the disappointment from him. Anyone but him.
“Then I found out he had been cheating on me, and believe it or not that was the final straw. By then I already hated him, not that I would admit it to myself,” I continue harshly, self-hatred driving every word.
I can barely see Zayn through my tears now.
“He raped me when I tried to leave, which you know, and that’s the whole sordid history.
He thought I was too weak, too broken to actually leave him.
I snuck out that day when he left for training.
He knew where I went, obviously, but he thought I’d eventually go crawling back him.
” I lift my chin, finally meeting Zayn’s eyes.
My bottom lip quivers. “But I need you to know that Brett? That wasn’t what it looked like.
He was drunk and he kissed me. I pushed him away and told him I wasn’t interested in him like that, and he left.
I should have told you and I’m sorry I didn’t.
My heart is yours, it’s always been yours. ”
There’s a loud knock on the door and it’s pushed open before Zayn can respond. I turn away and wipe my face with my sleeves, shielding my face from the intruder.
“Zayn, we urgently need to discuss the Clint Branch case. There’s been a development. The wife’s pregnant.”
I recognise Martin’s voice. He sounds serious as he strides into Zayn’s office.
“Martin, this isn’t a good time.”
“It’s fine,” I say, quickly grabbing my bag before Zayn can object. My vision is still blurry, but I manage to duck between the two men and reach for the door. “I was just leaving.”
Zayn calls my name but I’m already through the door before he can stop me.