After Hakeem left me there on that goddamn site, I carried Aziel on my back through the storm. No car. No guards. Just the rain beating down on us like the world wanted us dead.
His body was burning with fever. Mine wasn’t any better. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I held him up all night, stumbling barefoot through mud and gravel, until we reached the estate.
I collapsed right at the front gate.
Next thing I knew, I was in a hospital bed, shivering, hooked up to an IV. They said I’d been unconscious for three days. Fever was too high and my body nearly gave out.
Aziel was in the next room. Weak, scared, but alive.
Hakeem didn’t visit us. Not once. He was too busy playing house with Margaret.
On the fourth day, they discharged both of us.
When we got home… I saw Margaret. Curled up in Hakeem’s lap like a damn queen. She didn’t even look surprised to see me.
Hakeem didn’t even look up from stroking her hair. “Margaret doesn’t like storms. She’ll be staying in the master bedroom for now. You’ll move to the guest room.”
I didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. I just stood there.
“Fine,” I said, voice flat. “Whatever you want.”
He didn’t know what those three days were like for me. The hell I walked through. The way my tears soaked into a hospital pillow until I had nothing left inside me.
The love I had for him didn’t just fade. It died. I didn’t want his love anymore. Not if this was what it looked like.
---
That night, while I was unpacking in the guest room, he came to the door and leaned against the frame like nothing happened.
“Oh, Harmony,” he said, real casual. “Margaret’s got a therapy pet. You’ll take care of it.”
I froze. “What?”
The front door opened and out came a man in a raincoat, holding a thick plastic container with holes. Inside it was a massive python, coiled and twitching under the light.
I stumbled back, hitting the cabinet so hard my shoulder cracked. Hakeem knew what snakes did to me. He knew. After my dad died, my mom, Aziel, and I lived in this shack behind an old scrap yard. One night a python slid through the cracks in the floorboards. Wrapped around my ankle before I could scream. I still have the scar. Still remember the sound it made hissing in the dark.
But Hakeem just said lazily, “I know you’re scared, but the doctor says it helps her anxiety. That snake’s her medicine. Be a good wife, yeah? Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”