Page 62 of Runaway in the Mafia
AHANA
Shallow breathing and my pulse beating like a tribal drum. That was all I had. The house rested. Quiet. It was five a.m. and I hadn’t slept a wink. My body was as tightly strung as a bowstring. Tension strummed through my veins, pushed beyond capacity, bursting at its seams. One snap and I was likely to burst into tears or hilarious laughter at my predicament.
I’d made a mess of it all.
Half a year ago, I had been happy. Delusional, maybe, but happy. I had thought I was an exception. A girl about to start working and then fall in love, like the romance books I loved to read. Or fall in love and work. The order hadn’t mattered.
Then Maa dropped a bomb and Rajesh strutted in in his tacky designer clothes which screamed brands in bold across his chest but hid his vile secrets behind it. It was as if with a snap of his fingers, he had shattered all my dreams. I hated him for the power he held over me. So effortlessly. A complete stranger waltzing into my life with a gasoline can. Only one intention inhis mind. Burn me, grind me down, and leave me behind in dust and ashes.
Up until six months ago, there wasn’t anything in my life that hadn’t been irrevocably interchangeable. He changed that. I should have listened to those alarm bells going off in my head. Should have ignored Maa and gone to Papa straight away. His father may have been a childhood friend of his, but he would have taken my feelings into account. Right? So what if all our uncles, aunts, and cousins were there when he came armed with his conniving family? So what if he had proclaimed loudly to everyone present that I was meant to be his wife? So what if girls weren’t meant to disagree? Papa would have stood by me.
He’d had this weird walk the first time he’d come to meet me. A bike accident, they’d said. No shit. It sounded better than saying your son was caught trying to rape a young girl, and a bunch of villagers got together and assaulted him so badly he ended up in the hospital. Ended up being impotent from the injuries. I guessed that didn’t make for a great resume. What did was fair, handsome, modern, religious. None of which interested me but mattered to my family. They even added his monthly income, the value of his stocks, the type of car he drove, the current market value of his house. Except they forgot to add in his extracurricular activities. Womaniser. Attempted rapist. Potential wife beater. I guess they thought that wasn’t a priority. Not as much as which religion or caste he was from. They must have thought it wouldn’t matter to me. They saw me and they figured my innocence was what they needed. The pure gullible naivety that appealed to them. The thing about naivety was, though, you could lose it faster than water down the drain. If your husband calling you a whore because your neighbour smiled at you didn’t do it, the six fucking times he threw you around the room like a tool did.
It hadn’t taken me long to figure out why he’d picked me. He wanted someone who would align with his family. But above all else, he wanted someone who’d take it and shut up about it. His father knew mine well. Enough to know of his weak heart. Enough to know of his strong bond with his eldest daughter. They knew I’d never squeal on them. On their perfect, high-achieving, incredibly charming, award-winning son and the monster he held within, who only escaped behind closed doors with his wife. To the outside world, he was charming. Inside the house, he raged.
The thing was, I would have taken it. All of it. He’d fucked me once. Tried with God knew what tactic and a half limp dick and pain soaring for a week from his bruising grip. I would have taken it, though. For Papa. But when he hit me, it just broke me. Something cracked inside me.
The first time, I thought it was a mistake. He’d apologise. He hadn’t meant it. When he gas-lighted me, I did what he expected of me. Blamed myself. I shouldn’t have tried to calm him down during one of his raging fits. Shouldn’t have spoken up. The second time, I thought it was in my imagination. He went about it as if nothing had happened, and I was making it all up. The third time… I couldn’t remember what I thought. Nor the fourth, fifth, or sixth. I had stopped thinking. All it ever did was get me into trouble. My mind had blanked out all the nasty details. I only remembered crawling to the sink and dragging myself up.
Then I made a mistake, that final time. I looked in the mirror. Caught the gaze of a broken girl. That mistake crashed into me like a jackhammer had hit the glass. I didn’t recognise her. I could take the insults. I could take the blows. But I couldn’t take him breaking my soul. Because Papa hadn’t brought me up for this. I wasn’t going to give him the power to do it. Just because I was a girl, didn’t give him the right to torture me. I was worthso much. So much more. For someone. But especially to myself. I was worth it.
So I bided my time. Counted the seconds, minutes, and hours. Waited for the bruises to fade. For him to drop his guard and go back to work. Then I walked out. All the way from London to Sicily, from one bus ride to another, because I wanted to get far away from him.
I hadn’t given it much thought. Didn’t even think about what I’d tell Papa. I’d only had one purpose in my mind. The one that screamed in my ears to get the hell out of there. When I got to France, reality crashed in. I almost turned back. Went back to him. But something gave way, and I buckled. I called Amara, and instead of keeping everything bottled up, I told her everything. I broke down near the ladies’ room in a highway service station, while the lady in front of it counted the coins for the entry. Amara pulled me up from a distance of four thousand miles. Stuffed me full of courage and love. She was the only one I called the entire time who made up all kinds of shit for my parents to swallow. I was travelling. Rajesh was travelling for work and he had taken me along. Her words, her encouragement, were what kept me going. And that Rajesh, or his parents, had called mine.
In all that time, a decision I had to make clung to my skin like a clammy, tropical fever. Dark and cancerous. Biting at me an inch at a time. But yet again, I had made a mistake. Yet again, I had been naïve. Because it was never my decision to make.
When the phone pinged next to me, I already knew it. The dread that had sunk into me for the last few hours was just a warning. My time was done.
He’s been calling every few days now.
Papa’s worried. He was talking about it with Maa last night. He’s thinking about visiting…
My answer was instant. Automatic.
No.
Shall I tell him…
No. I’ll take care of it.
Aana, don’t…
I tapped on the phone icon. It didn’t even ring, and she’d picked up already.
“Aana, you can’t—”
My pulse heated. “Just get me some time.”
“No.” She was angry. What was she angry about? It was my life that was in ruins. “You’re not going back to him.”
“Just give me a few days…”
“No.” She was adamant. Young. Naïve. “I am telling Papa.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You can’t stop me. This has gone on for far too long. You belong home. Not with him.”
