Chapter 20 - Feliks
After Timur tracked Jenna’s location to the hospital, my heart skipped a beat; what if she was hurt? However, she’d taken one of the cars from in front of the mansion, so she couldn’t have been injured badly, even if that was the case.
I pulled into the hospital parking lot and parked in a space where I’d have a clear view when she returned to her borrowed car. Then, I sat in the car waiting for her. After a while, I was surprised to see another man approach the car, leaning on it as she walked across the parking lot, staring at her phone.
They began to speak, but I was too far away to read their lips, let alone hear the conversation. In any case, the rage building inside me had no doubt what it was I was seeing.
“Just as I thought,” I muttered, watching her with him.
So, I was right—she was cheating on me. It was all because of that man that Jenna ignored me and rushed to see him instead. She’d even called him ‘love’ in her text to him.
I gritted my teeth, and anger began to boil from within. I tried to stay back in the car for a while longer. It was evident they knew each other, and it didn’t seem like they were just friends. Before I could process everything in my head, the man pulled Jenna into his arms and kissed her.
I gulped and clenched my fist. My eyes were not deceiving me. Jenna didn’t stop him from kissing her; she enjoyed the kiss. It was hard for me to believe. My wife was cheating on me.
This is undoubtedly the man she referred to as ‘love.’ I wondered why she would cheat on me with that man.
***
The drive home was a quiet one. Jenna’s eyes were glued to the floor as she could not bring herself to look at me. I was staring at my cheating wife through the front mirror, and the more I stared at her, the more anger I felt.
I kept seeing her face as she kissed him. Why would Jenna do this to me? I kept wondering if I wasn’t enough for her.
Staring at her that way made my heart beat very fast. I wished I could go back there and beat the man even more. I shouldn’t have left him. I didn’t hit him enough to pay for what he did.
We finally got home, and I opened the car and alighted. It was taking Jenna ages to step out of the car, and my fingers were shaking. I could not wait to finally have alone time with her.
“What happened to your legs?” I asked her.
She flinched and moved more quickly, but it wasn’t enough for me. I felt like pulling her by the hair and dragging her into the house, but I stopped myself.
My fists were folded as I entered the mansion behind her.
Jenna was now standing before me with her face lowered to the ground. She could not look me in the eyes. Her gaze was heavy with guilt, and the only thing I felt for her at that moment was hatred.
I took a step forward, and she took two steps backward. It was like deja vu since this wasn’t the first time between us.
As she kept retreating, I followed her patiently until her back touched the wall. Exactly as I’d known it would. What was she thinking? That she’d continue taking steps backward till eternity?
She thought that she’d be able to walk past the wall and find herself outside.
I was still a few meters away from Jenna. She’d increased her steps earlier, so she hit the wall earlier than I expected. Although I wasn’t too close Jenna, I could still hear her heart beating very fast. I stared closely at her hands and legs and noticed how they wobbled in fear.
“Feliks, please .. .” Her voice barely came out as a whisper.
I ignored her and closed in on her. She gulped and screwed her eyes closed. She grabbed her dress tightly and muttered a few words that only she could hear. I thought to myself that it could be her last prayer, but it was none of my business.
“I can explain,” she muttered as she opened her eyes and looked up at me for the first time today.
I was a little surprised that she’d stare up at me after what she’d just done. I’d made her relax so much, and now she thought that we were friends. She was no longer scared of me. As scared as she should be. Jenna was supposed to tremble in my presence.
I kept walking toward her with my eyes red with rage.
“Feliks, please—I swear, I can explain!” Jenna kept trying to bargain.
I didn’t let her say another word before grabbing her by the neck. I knew if I gave her the opportunity, she’d keep singing the same words in different stanzas, and I wouldn’t allow that. I was deaf to her pleas. There was no way I would listen to whatever crap she wanted to vomit from her mouth.
“How dare you?” I asked.
“Fe—”
She tried to speak again, but I tightened my grip around her neck, blocking her oxygen supply. She gasped and grabbed my hands. She tried to claw me and take my hands off her neck, but my grip was so tight that, even if she had four hands, they wouldn’t be able to compete against my two.
“I hate treachery,” I spat at her. “What you did was unforgivable, and you will have to pay with your life.”
I tightened my grip around her neck with every passing second. I didn’t care what pain she felt. While I strangled Jenna, I saw the image of her kissing the strange man, and I felt fulfillment from watching her suffer. In fact, it felt like the pain I was causing her wasn’t enough.
It was nothing compared to the pain I’d felt when I saw another man holding my wife and kissing her like that. I’d warned her, but she still went ahead and cheated on me.
Jenna opened her mouth to speak, but there was no way she could speak with how firm my grip was around her neck. She kept opening and closing her mouth widely while trying to say something.
“You can explain?” I asked her.
Jenna struggled to nod her head. Tears flowed freely down her cheek, but I ignored them.
“What do you have to say now?” I asked her. “I wasn’t good enough for you, and you found someone better to cheat on me with? What does he offer you that I don’t? Didn’t I warn you from the start?”
I spoke as though I expected her to reply to me. The truth was, she was struggling to do so, and she’d gladly explained herself if I’d let her, but there was no way I would allow it.
She didn’t have the right to speak. She wasn’t allowed to say anything. I’d been faithful to her, but she cheated on me.
“You have crossed the line, Jenna, and I cannot forgive you. I would have forgiven any other sin—and the worst part of this is that I warned you. You knew the consequences before venturing into it. You deserve to die.”
I spoke harshly into her face. I wanted her to see how badly I was hurt, to die knowing the pain I felt when she cheated on me.
Life was slowly draining from her eyes as she rolled them up and only the whites could be seen. I didn’t care about her reaction or her pain, I only cared about myself.
“You even ignored me so that you could run to your lover and kiss him in public. You couldn’t even bother to give me a reply. Was it that bad?”
Her feet slowly lifted from the ground as I pinned her higher. I noticed that she was struggling with something in her pocket. She’d removed her other hand from around mine, and it was now inside her pocket, while the other was still holding my hand firmly, although she’d stopped struggling to free herself from my grip.
Jenna had realized that she wouldn’t be able to free herself from my grip, no matter how hard she tried, so she’d decided to give up.
While she was struggling, I gently loosened my hands around her neck, since my attention had been shifted a bit. I watched as a piece of paper fell to the floor, and it got me curious.
She wanted me to see it. I couldn’t stifle my curiosity, so I let go of her neck, and she crashed to the floor. Jenna began to cough roughly while she placed her hands around her neck. She was gasping for air while also coughing very loudly at the same time.
Her neck had now turned red because of how tightly I’d held her.
I bent over and grabbed the paper that she’d dropped. It was rumpled, and I knew it would tear if I didn’t handle it gently.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked. I didn’t expect a reply; she couldn’t speak.
I gradually opened the paper, only to see that it was a pregnancy test result. My interest was piqued even more, and my eyes opened more widely as I unfolded the paper quickly.
I began to search for the only thing I could understand in the whole of the report. My mouth went wide open when I realized that it read positive.
It was Jenna’s.
I looked down at her. She’d calmed down a little but was still struggling with her breath.
“You . . . you are pregnant,” I breathed out.
My bones immediately became weak, and my knees felt like they would collapse. My head began to ache, and my vision went blurry for a second. Jenna was carrying my baby.
I didn’t know how to feel about the news. She’d cheated on me with my baby in her womb. How would I be able to kill her without hurting my child?
She lifted her head to look at me. It was as if she wanted to say something, but I looked away from her immediately.
I squeezed the test results in my hands and dropped them to the floor.
How could this be? Why now? How will I be able to hurt her with my child in her womb? Those questions ran through my head over and over again, and I felt a bell ringing in my ear.
I gulped and tightened my fist as I began to grit my teeth. The thought of this was making me go crazy. I walked toward the small table by the living room couch and kicked it—hard.
It flew to the other end of the sitting room, almost hitting the large television set. Finally, it crashed to the floor and split into two.
Jenna sobbed silently, and she flinched at the sound of the table dropping.
My foot began to hurt because of the force I’d applied while kicking the table. I stared at the pillows lying on the couch and took my eyes to the result I had squeezed and dropped.
It was still lying on the floor.
Jenna was quiet throughout the drive home, and she didn’t tell me that she was pregnant. She’d kept it to herself until the very moment she was about to give up. What if I’d killed her before realizing that she was carrying my child?
I stared at her again, and all I felt for her was hatred and disgust.
“Argh!” I groaned out as I pushed the couch forward, and it fell, facing the floor.