Chapter 3: Surely It Couldn’t Get Any Worse
Aira’s POV
I honked as I got to the gate and waited a bit for the gate to be opened but the gateman was nowhere to be found.
“Where the hell is this guy when I need him?” I asked under my breath as I got out of the car.
I knocked as soon as I got to the gate and finally, I heard footsteps approaching and I knew it was him.
“Come on, Briggs, what took you so long?” I asked in frustration. “I’ve been honking for a while now. Have you been sleeping on duty again?”
He shook his head and greeted, “Good day, ma’am.’
“Please open the gate,” I instructed. “I need to get something inside very quickly.”
I turned around to walk back into my car but Briggs’ voice stopped me in my tracks. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I cannot let you in,” he said, shocking me to my bones.
My face contorted with rage as I turned to face him. “What the hell do you mean by that?” I asked, with my nose flared. “I said open the gate! What do you mean by you can’t open the gate for me in my own house?”
“My… My apologies-” he stuttered with his hands trembling as he stared at me. “It’s the boss. He instructed me to not let you into the house. He also asked me to show you these.”
I followed his hand which he pointed to the right of the gate and there I saw my big, blue box and my little red bag lying on the ground.
In shock, I burst into laughter. It was all a dream. I mean, it had to be. How else could I explain that I was being thrown out of my own house? A house I bought with my own money! It made no sense to me at all.
“You’d let me get into the house,” I demanded, trying to break through but Briggs stood firm. “This house belongs to me and not him. Why would you take instructions from him instead?”
Briggs didn’t say a word but I knew there was more to what was going on. The concerned look on his face was more than enough. He looked like a man whose hands were tied.
I shook my head, disappointed in the man I used to think cared about me. No, not Jace this time, but Briggs. It was the last thing that I expected from him given how close we had become over the years and all the times I showed up for him and his family when no one else could.
When his wife was ill to the point of death and he had no one to reach out to, it was I who helped. I took them to the hospital in my car and covered all the bills.
When he couldn’t pay his daughter’s fees, I was the one he still ran to for help and I took care of those fees.
I made sure he never lacked a thing, always paying more than the agreed salary. Yet, like Jace, he chose the path of betrayal but I knew one thing for sure… That path never led to anything good.
Briggs walked into the house and shut the gate while I looked on, hands on my waist, shaking my head severally.
Furious, I went back to my car and picked up my phone from my handbag. I punched in Jace’s number, pressed the dial button and waited patiently for him to pick up.
“What the hell did you do, Jace? Why would you ask Briggs to lock me out of the house?” I fumed, struggling to breathe properly.
But he laughed. It seemed Ana was listening from the background because I heard her laugh too. “This girl must be crazy,” she said to him but they were the crazy ones. What sane person throws someone else out of their own house just like that?Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.
“Look, Aira, I don’t have time for this nonsense. Your things are already outside. Please take them with you and get the hell out of my house before I get back…”
“Your house? Are you being serious right now?” I asked. “That house belongs to me. I’d lived there for a couple of years before I let you into my life. If you know what’s best for you, you’d call Briggs right now and ask him to let me in.”
“Or what?” He blurted out coldly. “What would you do if I didn’t let you in? Cry?”
They both laughed once again, drawing my ire once more but I wasn’t going to let him walk all over me again. This time, I was prepared to fight and there was no holding back anymore.
“Or I’ll involve the cops,” I threatened. “Perhaps, you’ll be thrilled to explain to them how you locked someone else away from her own house.”
“You wouldn’t do that, Aira. You just don’t have it in you,” he opined but he was wrong about that.
I wasn’t the same person that he managed to fool all these years. Those few hours had turned me into an entirely different person sworn to never let anyone use her again.
“You’ll be surprised to know the things that I can do, Jace but I hope you won’t have to find out,” I warned him further, hoping he’d buy it instead of letting me go the extra mile.
“I won’t. That’s for sure. And that’s because you can’t do anything to me,” he retorted, defiance etched in his voice. “It is true that you lived there for two years before I moved in but you might want to recall that the house didn’t belong to you until I moved in.”
“But it belongs to me now. I paid for it…”
“Does it? Can you say for sure that you own that house?”
I furrowed my brows, befuddled by his questions. We both knew too well that I owned the house. He could never have been able to afford a house like that at the time. Why ask questions that we both knew the answer to?
After a few seconds of not saying a word to him, he exhaled and asked. “Can you remember how you paid for the house?”
It was a simple question but it struck my heart so hard that I let my mind drift back to how it all happened.
That day, I left the house for a weeklong meeting in the neighbouring Pack but before I could get there, I heard my phone ring and lo, it was Jace.
I picked it up and placed it on my ear to know why he was calling, given that we had already spoken at length before I left the house.
“Aira, I just got the news that there’s a house for sale. It’s not new but it’s a very good house and I think that we should act on it as quickly as possible,” he suggested and I wondered what house he was talking about.
“What…”
“It’s this house. I saw the landlady trying to paste something on the wall and when I asked her, just to be sure, she confirmed that she wanted to sell the house,” he explained. “That is why I called. I wouldn’t want us to have to move from this house because someone else bought it and it’s not even that expensive.”
I felt like the entire thing was being hurried and I wasn’t too comfortable. I needed more time to think it through just so I wouldn’t be making a mistake but he was relentless.
“She insisted that she’s selling it off today and already has offers to choose from,” he added, just to add some urgency and after a few minutes, I finally obliged.
I sent him the money and he thanked me, especially since he had fallen in love with the house. Then about an hour later, he sent me a text that he had completed the payment and I was glad it had been sorted out.
“Could you guess in whose name I made that payment?” He chuckled.
I was about to say it was in mine when my eyes suddenly went wide open. “Damn it!” I cussed, realising what just happened.
I had just been conned by Jace in the name of love. Because I trusted him, I didn’t bother to check the documents. When he told him that he had carefully put them into the drawer, I didn’t question him. I just assumed that the payment was made in my name. How could I have let him do that to me?
“You’ve always been a fool, Aira. This is not an insult but a fact,” he derided me. “You trust people blindly without proper checks like every foolish person does and this, my dear, is going to be your undoing.”
Before I could say another word, he hung up and sent me a text that read: “Be gone before I return or else, I’ll be charging you for trespassing.”
I sat on the ground right outside the gate and cried my eyes out. It didn’t bother me that people passed by, stopping briefly to stare at me. I just had to let out the pain clogged up in my chest just so it wouldn’t kill me.
When I cried enough, I stood and dusted my gown. Then I picked up the bags, one after the other, and placed them in my boot before getting into my car.
I was homeless. Who could have believed that? I had nowhere to sleep that night and I didn’t want to lodge in a hotel just to avoid seeing many people who must have heard the news earlier.
All that I could think of was to head over to the next street where my friends stayed. Joan, Ray and Samantha all stayed together in a four-bedroom apartment. Some nights when we wanted to have an all-girls hangout, I used to go there to relax before and after our outing so I hoped to stay there for just about a week.
When I got to their house, I noticed that their brown door wasn’t locked so I walked into the house full of confidence.
“Hey,” I greeted them with a smile as I met them in the sitting room sitting on the sofas with drinks in their hands.
“What are you doing here?” Sam asked, staring at me in shock. “We weren’t quite expecting you.”
“Yeah. I know. It happened so suddenly,” I explained. “I was thrown out of my house by my boyfriend so I thought I could stay here for a week or two so that I can sort this out. Is that okay?”
“No,” Ray blurted out to my surprise.
“What?”
“You heard her,” Joan concurred. “We can’t let you stay here. We heard everything that happened earlier today at your ex-boyfriend’s wedding and we don’t want any of that. ”
“We can’t have you bring us shame and tarnish our image in the public eyes, Aira,” Sam commented. “Please, stay the hell away from us. Leave now.”
I shook my head as I gazed upon the people I called my friends and for a few seconds, I didn’t know what to do.
I realised that those weren’t my friends. They didn’t love me at all. They, like Jace, were all about my money and the benefits of being in my circle.
I stormed out of their house in anger and got back into my car. Exhausted, I leaned back on the chair and shut my eyes just to have a moment of rest.
When I woke from my slumber, the place was already dark and I felt very strange. My head was a bit hazy and I had a strong urge to throw up.
I started my car and drove to the hospital in a hurry. I couldn’t afford to let anything happen to me before I got there as there was no one to help.
“Welcome, ma’am,” one of the nurses greeted but before I could respond, my head spun around and I fell to the ground.
“Quick! Take her to the emergency room,” I heard one of the nurses say as I slowly slipped unconscious. “I believe she’s pregnant.”