The Wedded Whore (Completed)

Chapter Thirteen

Smiling mischievously to himself because he intended to play her game with her, he said, 'Don't expect me to go and grovel in front of her; I won't do it.'

'Then don't, you fool,' Hope said acidly. 'You are just like your father; he was a fool who was a useless man; he treated me like an insignificant fish in a sea of many. Death was the only salvation he had, and so shall it be yours.'

'Damn you, mother!' Obi thundered, his fingers jabbing at the air for emphasis. 'Damn you and damn your conspiring soul! My father was a good man who loved you more than anything else in the world.'

Hope's lips twisted into a snare as she stood up and faced her son squarely, her eyes boring into his. 'Loved?' she scoffed. 'Did you just say that he loved me? No. Your father never loved me like you claim he did; he merely used me to acquire the son he needed so much. But then, you were right; he did love me in his own twisted way. I was never the top priority in his life, and when he died, it meant that I was free of him. Do you want Adamma to have such feelings?'

Obi grabbed her cheeks and looked into the cold eyes that were glaring at him as he trembled with indignation at her callous words of condemnation over his father's memory. Could she really be so beastly?

'You are a cruel woman, mother,' he said. 'You might even be worse than that woman I got married to. You're as cruel as she is.'

Hope's hand flew across his face in a slap that was delivered with all the strength her outraged body could muster. 'How dare you say such things to me?' she snapped in a deadly voice that was loaded with venom. 'And how dare you act like a stupid child? You say that I'm cruel and that your wife is cruel too, but you are the despicable one!' She pulled away from his grip and her eyes were loaded with contempt. 'You accuse your wife of being cruel, but she isn't; she loves you too much to be cruel to you. She loves you so much, it hurts.'

Obi stepped back, shocked at the intensity of Hope's words. 'What?' he said, shaking his head in wonder? 'Did you just say that my wife loves me? And why didn't she profess that love to me? Why has she thwarted all my efforts to get her beck into my life?'

Hope waved impatiently in annoyance. 'No woman in her right mind will dare to tell a man who treats her in such an off-handed manner, that she loves him. Go back to your wife, and if you cannot make her come back to you because you're too much of a coward to tell her what you truly feel for her, and then I suggest you let her go her separate way. It means that you do not deserve her. Do something for her that will show her how much you love her, and if you can't, or prove to be too hot-headed and arrogant to do so, then I hope she kills you.' She pointed towards the door. 'Now get out of here.'

The stony look on his mother's face nearly twisted his heart as he left the room, his mind reeling from what she'd told him. Did his wife really love him? If so, why hadn't she told him? And why was his mother choosing this particular moment to tell him of her love?

No . . .

He did not believe it at all. He remembered Adamma's stony face and the look of sheer anger she'd bestowed upon him. Was that love? No, he didn't think so.

ADAMMA WENT TO THE DOROTHY swift house for the Music Awards like so many other musicians. They were all hoping to win something for their contributions to the industry, but she'd not been interested in any of the activities that were going on around her; she'd only gone there because an invitation had been sent to her and it would be an unpardonable breach of etiquette if she had refused to attend. It was true that she'd turned out in a fashionable gown like the other well-scented, sculpted women who were there to be ogled by the men who had turned out in attendance, but she was not interested in what was being done there.