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MARRIAGE PACT Chapter 16
ZARA'S POVAt last, Kai had won his battle. I woke up to a smelling fresh linen foreign in my nostrils, with a throbbing head. The previous day's events crashed over me, and I opened my eyes to the soft morning light that seeped through heavy drapes. Slowly, I rose into a sitting position, around me surveying the room clearly. My mind had been so weak with the word opulent when I took in a grand four-poster bed, antique furniture, and lush carpeting. All that luxury in the world could not make this place look more less than a prison, a gilded cage meant to hold me. I began kicking my legs across the bed and then down onto a cold floor below me, anchoring myself into reality. I needed to get out. Groggily, I looked around the room for some exit, anything. But there wasn't as all doors and windows closed tight at their handles while I pulled at them frantically.The door into the hall was open a crack. For one fleet moment, hope pumped through my veins. Maybe I could slip out unseen
MARRIAGE PACT Chapter 17
Mrs. Adler's eyes sundered into mine, filled with a poison running my blood cold. Her dark, sharp features twisted into a scowl as she stepped toward me. In that frame, her elegance screamed of power and made me feel so small and inconsequential."'So this is the little runaway,' she sneered, her words dripping with contempt, loathing. “The ingrate who had the gall to humiliate our whole family before the whole city.”Somehow I swallowed and did my best not to step back, but oh, that bite from her words. And I felt my resolve weakening."Mother, enough," interposed Kai, stepping in between us. "This isn't her fault."Mrs. Adler turned on her a look that could freeze hell over. "Not her fault?" she repeated, very loudly. "She took off halfway through your welcome party, Kai! After everything that we did for her, after everything I did to her, she runs off like some common little thief!"I flinched at the razor-sharp tone, but Kai merely stood there, that hand still out to catch me shou
MARRIAGE PACT Chapter 18
It was a little after mid-day, and I was pacing the floor. I tried to drive some of my thoughts from my brain when there was a knock on my door. My heart stopped a beat, and the door creaked open. and it was Madam Tess. Her visage was quite stifling; all the same, something seemed a hair off."Your father and sister are here to see you," she said quite formally.Blinking, my heart now thudding into my chest, but for an entirely different reason. Father and Lena really here? After everything that went on, after the humiliation I'd caused them, they really came?Madam Tess moved out of the way, gesturing to the room on the right. "They're waiting at the sitting room."I didn't speak a word for a moment, although my mind was running a mile a minute, wondering what they would say or think about me. Though it made it impossible to sidetrack my mind, I did press down a deep breath to square up my shoulder and walk out of the room behind her.I walked down the corridor, and in my mind, fear
MARRIAGE PACT Chapter 19
KAI'S POVThe tension that washed over me was sledgehammer-like as I pushed the door open. The room didn't have any noise except the low hum of conversation flowing from the sitting room. A frown creased my brows as I moved forward through the corridor, pulled by the voice's inflection, Zara's voice. She wasn't alone this time. Her father, Mr Klein and her sister, Lena, were there with her. There I faltered in my stride; at the door sat Zara on a couch, her head tipped just a little forward, her eyes shifting around in quiet defiance. Beside her was her father, Mr. Klein—stiff in posture and steel in his voice while he spoke. Next came Lena, sitting beside her, trying to comfort her from the tension obviously etched into the atmosphere."Zara, you know better than this," he started, his voice low, though laced with disappointment. "You brought shame upon the lot of us. Do you even realize the kind of trouble you brought on yourself?"Zara just kept her eyes on the floor. Those fire-
MARRIAGE PACT Chapter 20
"Good morning, Zara," I said as I opened the door for her to the dining room, and then I sat and stared at her breakfast. Her hands were wrapped around a cup of tea, but her eyes wouldn't flinch away from mine. "Morning," she muttered back, barely above a whisper.I sprawled in the chair across from her, watching the tension in her form, her shoulders making this painful bowing, like she could make herself small enough to go away. I hated it. Didn't that just explain she refused to look my way? After what she'd seen me do yesterday, I knew she was still so angry at me. It was her right to be, but still, I had to try. I had to make things right."C'mon, you need to eat something," I coaxed, softly. "You've hardly taken a bite out of that."Finally, she looked up; those eyes were cold—ice-like, just like the stare she had been giving me since she stormed into the study yesterday. "I'm not hungry."Well, that would have been an uphill task. That wasn't going to stop me, though. I had s
MARRIAGE PACT Chapter 21
KAI'S POVI knocked lightly on the door in front of Zara's door, and my heart was pounding a bit faster than usual—damn it. This had to work; she had to believe that I was really trying hard."Come in," her soft voice echoed from inside.I knocked softly, turned the handle, and went in. Zara had been gazing out the window at the sunset, whose light spilled on her as something soft. It gave her a surreal look. But there, in the eyes, was the sadness that anchored her to reality."Hey," I said, as casual as possible with tense silence in the room. "I brought you something.".….She eyed me warily. "What is it?"Moving a step closer, I handed her the package. "Open it and see."She took it from my hands, and with ostentatious slowness, as if she were working up her nerves to the contents, she commenced unwrapping it. The wrapping was cautiously taken off. In the neat little paper-packet was an exquisitely embossed book. Surprise beamed from the windows of her soul as she read its title.
MARRIAGE PACT Chapter 22
KAI'S POV The next morning, we were there again, breakfast at the café, just Zara and me. I smiled as we were shown to a table, and though it was a small step, it felt monumental. We chatted; we laughed, even that felt like some sort of coup. But I was determined to build on that. The moment I crossed the threshold, I knew what I had to do. "I should probably get heading to work," I told her casually as we arrived home, walking up the stairs. "But I'll catch up with you later?" She nodded. Her smile is small but real. "Sure, I'll be around." Perfect. I reined in the urge to scan for more and merely smiled back at her. "Great. Have a good day." I went up with that, swooping into my room to get my phone right away. Without a doubt, the person I would call would definitely be very instrumental in making this night arguably unforgettable. "Madam Tess," I opened when her voice answered, trying to modulate my tone. "I need your help for something special." "Sure, Mr. Kai," she
MARRIAGE PACT Chapter 23
ZARA'S POVThe sunset beams were reaching through a window and filling a sofa in my lying body, turning the pages of a book but not really reading. My thoughts have been kinda spread through and replayed some scenes with Kai during this day like some sort of recording. Something in him was different lately, something that made me not feel so much on guard and more open to the fact that maybe, just maybe, things could really change between us.But what really went through my mind when, above all things, the door was softly tapped, and I was brought back to earth? I started up. At least, I had not in the least expected someone."Come in," said I, laying the book by the side. Madam Tess entered the room, holding a package. Her warm smile added with a gleam in her eyes kind of swayed my curiosity as in what she had before my eyes."Good evening, Miss Zara," she greeted me as she stood before me. "I have a delivery for you.""A delivery?" I parroted, finally catching the cue and sat up. "
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