“That's part of the reason, but another one is because there’s this?—”
Harry looked back and forth between us.
An imperceptible grin curved up his devilish dimple. “I see you’ve met my intern, Ms. Mikael.” Disbelief shredded straight down the middle of my body. Harry never called me Ms. Mikael.
Why start now?
Arun carried to the opposite end when Harry pushed his way next to me.
His words replayed in my head. Vulgar and revolting.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he hushed.
When his hand smothered against my lower back, I wanted to say screw this and knee him in the nuts.
Except I didn’t. I leaned into it, giving the impression that I wanted him to touch me. “Tell me what you’ve been thinking about.”
Seduction wasn’t my forte, but I caressed his arm and pulled him away with alarm. Glancing at Arun who looked disgusted.
But not at me.
The doors of the elevator opened.
Just as I was about to follow Arun out, Harry pulled me back against his chest.
It was a different feeling than how Christian pulled me against him. He was all comforting. While Harry’s touchwas unwanted and uncomfortable, he could never compete with Christian.
Not now and not in a hundred years.
No man could.
“I have a proposition for you, Adelaide.” I knew the formalities were wishful thinking. But I opened my ears wide and clear because if he was about to say what I think he was going to say, then we were much closer to ending this situation than I thought we were.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“The board members are quite proud of your accomplishment, marrying Christian and all that. We’d,” Harry’s hand assaulted up and down my arm. Left in its wake were goosebumps. “Well, we’d like to make it up to you.”
“Make it up to me how?”
Just then a woman walked into the elevator and smiled at me. I was never getting used to society’s mercurial behaviours. The last I remembered, people had signs with redXsover my face and now they were buddying up with me because Christian was my fiancé.
He was right all along. People forgot. The scandal died down which was a good thing for Starlight, but terrible for humanity. How could they easilyforget? A girl was violated, and they moved on because they found their interest in something as insignificant as two rich people marrying each other.
Nasty is what it was. People pick and choose what they wanted to believe in, what they thought wasright. They were ignorant to the events that mattered most and persuasive when it didn’t.
They’d scream for women’s abortions rights.
But stayed quiet when their own was sexually defiled.
Real issues only mattered to the world when it came to people that looked like me. But for the minorities, it was nothing but a blip in their life they’d get over. They didn’t have access to the privilege I had. All they kept with them was their sanity, their countries, and their religions.
People raped them of their identities, as if their organs were arranged differently from the rest of us humans. As if they couldn’t speak the same languages or understand the same music.
Our souls must have grown rotten from isolating sincerity.
I was given this much power to have control and if there was something useful, I could do with it other than be a couple of men’s punching bags, then I’d do it. Which is why it was up to me to help the girls—Ayeza—and the hypothetical future that could occur if the group of us didn’t step in.
I was a terrible boss from the start, I could admit that.
