When she returned from the bathroom, she was surprised to find Leo at the door obviously waiting for her."Is there a problem?", she asked in concern as she ushered him into the room."No, no problem. I just wanted to know if there's any news concerning Marks putting a spy on you.""Oh, that. Not really," Mara replied, shaking her head emphatically. "Angela was really worried that Mr. Marks would ask for a report from her today, but luckily he didn't. I don't know... maybe they've abandoned the idea. Perhaps they've finally seen how stupid it is.""Or perhaps they've put someone else on you... someone you don't know," Leo offered.But Mara shook her head in disagreement. "I made sure I was not followed and I made the taxi stop some distance away, then I walked the rest of the way. By the way, I also think it's important that people shouldn't see you coming out of the house."Even before she completed the statement, Leo was already nodding in full agreement. "I'm already taking that pr
“Who is it?”, Marks called out in anger in response to the harsh knock on his door. But instead of a reply, the knock was repeated again and again, louder each time.“I said who the fuck's that? Are you dumb?”, Marks roared, jumping to his feet.“Open the damn door, you barking fool.”“Oh, it's you,” he murmured in a subdued voice. If he had known it was Dalia, he would not have dared to shout. “Sorry, I didn't know it was you,” he apologized as he opened the door, hoping to avoid a hot scolding. But Dalia didn't seem to be interested so much in scolding him. Instead she fixed him with an angry glare and walked further into his room. She glanced around the place and finally chose to sit on one of the chairs.“So, what's the report from the girl today?” She asked as she sat.“Oh,” Marks ejaculated, scratching and hitting his head, “I forgot. I... I forgot to ask her.”“And when I call you an empty fool, you'll claim I'm harsh and merciless.”Marks couldn't say anything else in his defe
After several minutes of sitting motionless and staring straight ahead, Dalia suddenly opened the door of the driver side and stepped out of the car. Immediately, Marks followed her lead and stepped down too. It was lucky that he did because his legs had hardly touched the ground when he saw the door of the passenger side coming back towards him. Swiftly, he jumped down or rather dove out of the car and the door slammed shut. Dalia had locked it with the remote control in her hand. If he had not moved quickly enough, the door would have hit him full on the face!He turned to look at the cruel she-devil who had just almost injured him. As expected, there was not an iota of remorse on her face. In fact, she didn't look the least bit like someone who knew what she had just done, but Marks could swear on his life that she had done it deliberately. This was certainly not the first time she had done something like this either to him or to someone else."Let's go," she ordered and began to l
Mara was busy putting finishing touches to her work in the kitchen. She had done all the washing and cleaning and was now rounding up the stock taking. When it was only Leo and her along with the baby, she never worried about running out of food. She only restocked once a month, on the 15th. But since Mel joined them, food had been running down faster than usual. She now had to take inventory regularly to avoid the distasteful experience of running out of essential food items.She was in a squatting position, counting the number of potatoes left when all of a sudden she felt a shadow darken the doorway. Instantly, she jumped up to her feet and turned to the door. She did not feel any more relaxed when she found that it was Mel. She just stood there staring at him and wondering what he wanted. She could ask him, but she wouldn't. She wanted him to speak first. But to her surprise, he said nothing. Instead, he stood leaning on the door staring back at her.Minutes passed and they remain
Marks and Dalia's visit to the house was the push that Mel so badly needed. His successful claim of being Mara's boyfriend got to his head and gave him the confidence and courage to become a direct adversary to Leo. Of course, he always waited till Mara was out of the house before commencing such actions, and so far, he had met with unprecedented success.He had begun with smaller acts like walking into the living room and changing the channel whenever Leo was watching the news on TV, but getting no response or resistance whatsoever from Leo, he soon became bold enough to graduate to the level of turning off the lights whenever he walked into the living room at night and found Leo there.Leo, as usual, said nothing. He simply responded to such moves by reading the news on his phone and always carrying a torch whenever he went to the living room at night. He knew that the harassment would continue and would certainly get worse, but he did nothing to curb Mel's madness. He had vowed to
"You look... sexy," Mel praised as he saw her approaching the living room, but Mara didn't bother to acknowledge the compliment. Instead she took her stand beside a sofa directly opposite him. She stared at his smiling face for a few seconds before sitting down on the arm of the sofa, so she would have the advantage of looking down at him from a higher point."I want to talk to you about something I've noticed," she said and paused, still staring directly at him."What, babe?" He asked with a wide grin."You seem to be getting very comfortable here. You promised me you would leave when you find your feet. From what I've seen so far, you don't seem very interested in finding them. So, I'd like to know, when do you intend to find your feet and leave?"Suddenly, Mel's face changed. All the smiles vanished and he tightened his jaw in anger. "What the fuck do you mean? Are you chasing me away?""Don't swear at me," Mara shot back, maintaining eye contact without blinking."Is this what tha
"So, I should call it off, right?" Marks asked tentatively."Call off what?", Dalia asked without looking at him. She was in the 'spa room', sitting on a recliner and having her nails done while she read a magazine. "I said, call off what?", she repeated in a harsher tone.Marks suddenly regretted speaking. When would he learn never to talk business in the presence of domestic staff?? Months of insults should have taught him how to control his mouth by now. But it was too late to go back now; he had to keep talking, especially now that she was interested in listening."The assignment, you know. The one we gave that secretary girl to watch… ahem."He was silenced by a powerful glare her and he quickly looked down to avoid getting roasted any further by her eyes. There was complete silence in the room except the occasional 'swish' sound of Dalia turning the pages of the magazine. Marks sat in his position, only daring to shift once or twice, each time attracting a glare from her.When a
When Mara returned from work later in the evening, she saw the men in the living room. Looking at both of them, and judging from their sitting positions and the looks on their faces, it didn't take much for her to guess that there might have been a recent renewal of hostilities between them. As a result, she decided to keep quiet and do nothing to increase the tension already existing in the room. But as she went past the dining room on her way to her room, she caught sight of the mess on the dining table. Mara came to a halt.This time, there was only one plate on the table and she knew instantly that it must have been used by Mel and no one else. She looked at the food-stained spoon and knife thrown haphazardly on the table and the grains of rice strewn all over one side of the table and even on the floor and the chair. Absolutely disgusting! This was not the first time she had seen such a mess and each of those times, the perpetrator had been one and the same person: Mel. She was s
With her head down, Mara paced up and down in her room, wringing her hands from time to time, showing how helpless she was. She just did not know what to do to get herself a perfect solution for this issue. She had not told Leo anything about what her father had told her. And she had no intention to do so. If she was to tell him about it, she would also have to let him know her decision, and right now, she had not decided anything and neither could she imagine herself even telling Leo that she could never be his wife. It was absolutely impossible! Even she could not imagine a world where she would not be his lovely wedded wife. Since the day she met him, she had been consistently dreaming of this, and now that the opportunity had finally come, would she just sit down and let it fly past her just like that? Without fighting hard for it? The thought of another woman getting married to Leo and raising kids with him nearly made her run mad with anger. Impossible! She would never sit back
"Dad," Mara gasped in disbelief. She had not expected her father to react in such a manner at all.But Caulden ignored her and kept his unwavering gaze on Leo. "A Stanson, right?", he asked."Yes, sir. Leonard Stanson is my name.""A Stanson from the North side."Hearing those words, Leo took a deep breath and drew up his body involuntarily. "If you had any business with my father or grandfather, I can assure you that I have no knowledge of it whatsoever and neither am I involved in it.""Humph," Caulden scoffed as if to say, 'who do you think you're trying to fool'.For a split second there, Mara almost forgot that he was her father and was just about to give him a tongue-lash. But she managed to hold herself in check."I don't know what you want me to say, sir," Leo said in all honesty. "I don't understand what you're trying to imply h...""You know very well what I mean," Caulden shot back. "You are a Stanson from the North side and you're no baby, so you must know the despicable
"So, this individual, how long have you known him, you say?", Caulden asked after a moment of silence.Mara racked her brain, trying to remember when exactly she had first met Leo, but she just couldn't recall the exact date. So she gave up and simply shrugged. "I've known him for about two years or so. I can't remember when we first met, but he's been the most important person in my life and we love each other very much with all our hearts," she said with conviction. She was absolutely sure that her father would love Leo too. They were seated in his car now, heading over to the house for the men to meet each other formally."What did you say is his name again?", Caulden asked. His face seemed not so bright, but then, he was not known for smiling. A stoic man at best."Leonard Stanson. He's a very wonderful person." Mara never missed any opportunity to praise her sweetheart."I'm wondering if it's the South side Stanson or those despicable North side ones," Caulden murmured thoughtful
“Welcome home. How was your day? Did everything turn out okay?”, Leo asked as Mara walked into the living room.“Um… yes,” she replied with a weak smile and sat down heavily beside him on the couch.“What happened? What’s wrong?”, he asked in concern, sensing that she was not feeling very great.“Nothing much really, but it seems like a lot,” Mara murmured, placing her head on his shoulder. She still had not told him anything about the fact that she had met the man who was her father. In fact, she had planned to tell him everything after getting the result of the test. Now that the test result was known, she was ready to tell her story from start to finish. “It’s a bit of a long story, but I’ll just make it brief. I found my dad.”As she had expected, Leo was taken aback by the statement.“What? I don’t understand. How?”, he asked in surprise.“It was something my mom s…,” Mara stopped there when she remembered that she had not yet told him anything about the fact that the man whose n
Sitting beside Caulden in the white office in front of the imposing desk that had a computer and several files and papers, Mara didn’t know exactly how to feel. Anytime she was around him, she always felt almost as if she was a child in a principal’s office. There was this aura around him that smelled of nothing but dominance and demanded respect from everyone who met him.“Where on Earth is this doctor now?”, he suddenly grumbled, bringing her back to the present.They had met the doctor in the hallway when they arrived at the hospital, but he had told them to wait for him in his office for only. And here he was.“I’m very sorry, sir and ma’am. Something unexpected came up. But I have your result here with me now,” the doctor, a tall young fellow, said as he sat down on his seat across from them.“It’s okay,” Caulden said impatiently. “Here’s here what it has to say. We don’t have all day.”The doctor nodded and began to open the envelope that contained the test result. As he pulled
When Mara arrived home, the first thing she wanted to do was to squeal in joy and run into Leo’s arms and tell him that she had finally found her father. But she managed to check herself and her emotions. She was still not completely sure yet if that man was her father. It was only after conducting the DNA test they could be sure. Therefore, she decided to keep it a secret from Leo. This was the first time she was hiding something significant from him and it was making her feel weird. She had never even tried to hide her feelings for him. She felt like an idiot now. For someone who had vowed several times in the past to trust him, she was acting like someone who did not deserve to be trusted. How dare she trust him when she herself could not be trusted? No matter how many times she told herself that she won’t be keeping this secret for long, she still could not convince herself enough that she was being idiotic. She shook her head in a desperate attempt to knock the thoughts off her m
It was election season and the campaigns were in full swing. Even though the man she was looking for was no longer the governor of the state, he was still very much involved in the state politics. In fact, he was more like a political godfather nowadays and the de-facto leader of his party in the state. One of the candidates running for the office of governor was his anointed godson, so Mara was quite confident that she would find him at the campaign headquarters of the party on a day when they were holding an ex-co meeting. She made the half-hour journey to the place and alighted from the cab a few dozen metres from the campaign office. She had done a lot of research about political parties, this one in particular, and how things were run at a typical campaign office. But still, she was a bit nervous. She tried not to think of any expectations because she knew that would only scare her even further. The whole mission would depend on how confident she was. Any mistake would ruin ever
When Leo walked into the sitting room, he found Mara in the exact same position they had left her: hunched over her computer, working. But he was quite sure that she was not doing her normal company work. What he could glimpse on her computer screen looked like it had more to do with research than anything else, and her work had little or nothing to do with that.She had begun this new activity only recently and had been keeping at it almost every day. Leo had not asked her what it was about and neither had she volunteered to tell him about it. He was curious, of course, but he would give her all the time in the world. Whenever she was ready to tell him about it, she would. If she never did, then so be it. She was an adult and he would respect her as such.“Why are you guys back in?”, Mara asked, without looking at her Leos.“Something happened. I received something strange from someone we both know.”The tone of his voice and the manner in which he made the statement caught Mara’s ea
Leo was sitting on the balcony in the warm afternoon of a beautiful Saturday, playing with his little namesake. Mara had temporarily expelled them from the house since their play had been too noisy and distracting for her. But they had happily come out to continue from where they stopped.Little Leo had learned to walk by now and his feet were quite strong on the ground; strong enough run after the football he and Leo were playing. To say he was enjoying the game was certainly an understatement. He was running back and forth tirelessly, with a happy grin on his face as he retrieved each and every ball that went past him. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a shadowy figure rushed into the scene.Leo was startled for a split second, but there was no need to be alarmed since the figure had rushed up to him and not the child. He was taken aback though when the individual went down on his knees before. It was a man, there was no doubt about that. But when Leo looked down at the upturned