Chapter Seven. Ember #10
“I already know what you’re thinking. You don’t think I can do a damn thing.
But you’re wrong.” He edges closer to me, and not willing to appear weak, I stop myself from retreating, but an unease begins to creep through my veins.
“You let me know—give me the word to get you out of this bullshit, and I’ll do everything in my considerable power to help you.
You see, Ember, plenty of people underestimate me, and I don’t mind that.
I can show you better than I can tell you.
Are you going to give me that word, Em?” He inches even closer.
The unease blooms into a chasm of discomfort low in my stomach. Though I want nothing more than to be extricated from the miserable trap that marriage to Asad would be, I’ll use the shears still coated with Carter’s blood on my own hand before offering it to Kareem for help.
“I got it under control,” I say.
Fuck it. I don’t care how he perceives it. I retreat a step, inserting more space between us.
He arches an eyebrow and moves forward, reclaiming that space. Reaching up, he wraps a finger around one of my curls and tugs on it.
“Em, I shouldn’t have to remind you who or what Prince is—you grew up with him.
He showed you more than any of us. Now imagine being married to him.
When he can legally claim you as his property and you’ll no longer have any control over your life.
Do you really think he’s going to change and give a fuck about you?
Do you honestly believe he’s going to be faithful?
Prince is going to fuck everything that moves just like he does now and expect you to sit at home like good little silent, obedient wifey, wasting away.
Is that how you see yourself? Is that the life you want? ”
The life I want? I almost laugh in his face but manage to swallow it back.
This hasn’t been the life I’ve wanted for thirteen years.
But at twelve, others made those decisions for me, and at twenty-five, Asad was still trying to steal my choice, manipulate and sculpt my future into a nightmarish something that I didn’t recognize.
But why does Kareem suddenly give a fuck? He never did all these years. At least not enough to step in and defend me against his mother’s and Asad’s “tender mercies” before. So why now?
No. I don’t trust it. I don’t trust him. At the end of the day, he’s his mother’s son.
I guess he takes my silence as me considering his little speech because he smiles at me, rubbing my hair between his fingers.
“Look at tonight, for example. Mom may have invited Aryn here this evening, but Asad damn sure didn’t tell her to leave.
And then he had her sit beside him at dinner instead of you.
They’ve been together for a while now, and it’s been no secret.
It’s also no secret, at least to me, why he’s forcing you to marry him, and it has nothing to do with actually wanting you.
The Cross DNA. Keeping you chained to this organization so you can’t take your talents elsewhere.
You’re the moneymaker, Em, and Asad and Mom will never let that go. ”
He’s not informing me of anything I’m not already aware of or hasn’t occurred to me.
That shrewd, too-sharp gaze studies my face like hard calculus, but I’m proficient in concealing my thoughts and emotions.
He and his family instilled that in me long ago.
So though his well-aimed darts struck their target, he’ll never know it.
But I’ll never be my mother, though I love her with all my heart.
I will never be a man’s trophy—golden, silent, and decorative—while he disrespects me, fucking anything that moves and expecting me to shut up and take it.
I’ll walk away. And if that’s not an option, I’ll kill all of us first. And I mean that shit with everything in me.
“Kareem, you know what they say about touching a Black woman’s hair.” I wrap my hand around his and squeeze, digging my nails into the sensitive flesh between his fingers until his mouth flattens and he releases me. “Don’t.”
“Ember…”
I cease listening to whatever else he’s saying. His words are drowned out by the deafening pounding of my pulse in my head. My heart lodges in the base of my throat, the rapid beat nearly strangling me, while a shower of heat pours over me.
The door to a room a little farther down the hall opens, and Aryn walks out with Asad behind her.
This shouldn’t have fury and humiliation pumping through me.
Slivers of betrayal for damn sure shouldn’t be sliding between my ribs like splinters under fingers.
A terrible … ache shouldn’t be yawning wide inside me like an empty, dark abyss.
And yet …
Yet, as I stand in this hallway with Kareem as a witness to my goddamn fiancé exiting a room with his lover after probably fucking her in apology, all of that shit is coursing through and over me.
“I told you,” Kareem murmurs, not bothering to hide the pity in his eyes as they head in our direction. “I warned you. He didn’t wait until you were out of the house to go back to her. I’m sorry, Em.”
Shut the fuck up, my mind screams at him. But the words stick in my throat, crazy-glued by the hurt I have no business experiencing.
Asad and Aryn notice us and stop mid-step.
Surprise flickers across both of their faces, but then a smirk curves Aryn’s wide, full mouth.
A mouth with smeared lipstick. Even as I yell at myself to not give a flying fuck, I can’t stop my gaze from traveling over Asad’s aloof, impassive mask, down his shirt, and lower, to his pants …
to the red stain dirtying them right over his dick print.
It’s almost indecipherable on his black pants, but I see it; I know what it is.
And when I drag my gaze back up and meet his narrowed, molten eyes, he knows what I’ve seen. Knows that I’ve guessed exactly what went on in that room between him and that bitch.
I don’t care.
He’s forcing me into this charade, bullshit marriage.
It doesn’t mean—
“Fuck you.”