CHAPTER TWELVE
Adamma brushed a lock of hair back from her face, her fingers lifting her cup of tea to her lips while her eyes travelled absently to the pictures on the album that lay open before her on her laps. Her eyes fell on her mother’s picture and the look of disinterest that had blanketed her face fled, to be replaced by a narrow-eyed stare on the page.
Poor woman, she thought to herself as she allowed herself to stroke the smooth surface of the page where her mother was frozen forever. It was at times like this, when she allowed herself to take a look into the past and moan about things which might have been, that she sprawled in total devastation and misery. She wished that her mother was there to share in her fame and fortune, and also be there to proffer advise to her on what to do about her tumultuous marriage to a man who did not care about her. Her mother would have known what to do to bring Obi firmly to heel and make him repent from his treatment of her.
Blinking back tears of pain and sorrow, Adamma allowed her mind to dwell on the events that had preceded the death of her parents. She knew that her parents had been barred from getting married to each other due to certain customs of their people, but they’d told her that they were going to rectify it, that nothing would halt them from getting married to each other. And then they’d set off for their home, to go and do something about the bar that kept them from being legally termed man and wife, but they’d never returned from that trip. At least they’d been happy with each other, she thought. The joy they had known in each other’s company had blazed forth with such transparent honesty that Adamma could almost envy them. But that part of her history was dead to her, and she did not have the key to unlock the answers to the myriad of questions she had.
She sighed deeply to shake off the unwelcome memories that had assailed her senses, and then she laid down her cup of tea and walked into the room she’d designed as her study, intending to attend to more cheerful topics.
Switching on the laptop computer that occupied the tabletop, she reclined in her swivel chair while she let her eyes wander to the picture of her estranged husband that was on top of the table. She was sorry that she was giving him the cold shoulder, blocking whatever access he had to her, but she felt that it was a necessity that could not be ignored; at least not until she cleared her mind and decided on a new course of action to follow.
Damn, how she loathed him for his arrogance! When he’d approached her at the Hilton club and had wanted to devour her with his kisses so that she’d follow him home, she’d erroneously labored under the misapprehension that he would profess his love for her and then she’d forgive all his sins and they’d live happily ever after, but she’d been disappointed because all he wanted was to have her in his bed. And then she made her decision and went on a crusade that totally halted him from ever coming into whatever contact with her again. She’d burned all his notes, she’d never opened any of his emails, and she’d instructed her guards never to let him into her house. He had to become truly repentant and really desire her to come back before she’d ever give him the light of day again.
The computer booted on, and then she logged in to the Internet and entered into her email account with her password. Her eyes scanned the messages in her inbox, and she discovered that she had a new message. Clicking on the message, she waited while the server connected her to the message, and then she frowned as her eyes looked at the one word that popped up on the screen like an obscene monster.
Whore . . .
A lump of cold steel dropped into her bowels as the meaning of the word sank into her mind, and she was almost paralyzed as she stared at it. An unthinkable dread, an icy fear and unparalleled shock engulfed her mind as hot tears misted her vision. Who could have sent her such a horrible message? That was the question she swept around in her mind as she trembled at the memory the word evoked.
It was an inflammatory allegation, an insulting label that somebody was flinging at her, bringing her past life to the fore now that all she wanted was to forget that there was ever such a chapter in her life and focus on the flourishing career she’d carved out for herself in the music industry. Why? Why would somebody choose to conjure up that past life she wanted to desperately forget and pretend as if it had never existed? And who could be responsible for sending such a hateful message to her?
Willing her trembling fingers to comply, she managed to scroll down the offending page, and then, her eyes caught sight of the attachments which had accompanied the message. They were photos, and she had to see them and know what they contained, so she clicked on them in the silence of the room, and as she beheld them, she felt a chill descend into her body, so that even her fingertips seemed to have been invaded a coldness that any surpassed any she’d ever felt before.
Tears spilled down her eyes as she at these photographs which told her life story, depicting her as the stripper and perfect whore she’d been during her youth. It was a perfect reminder of who she’d been, and it all lay right there on the screen before her, taunting her with the message it came with, plunging her into an arctic wilderness of emotional turmoil.
She glanced at the pictures again even as cold fury welled up within her, and she knew that whoever has sent her these pictures had wanted her to react in this way, and she was obliging the unspoken request of her messenger.
But who could have been so malicious to send this message? Who could have gone to such lengths to dredge up her past and then mail her what he’d been able to find?
Even before her mind had been able to formulate the question, she knew the answer. It was Obi who could be callous enough to go to such great lengths in order to get her to give him the attention he wanted. He was the only person who knew that such a message would draw such a violent reaction from her and laugh at her outbursts.
She shook off her mental depression and fear, and she set up the program that would print the obscene contents on the screen. As the printer whirred to life, beginning to work on her command, she leaned back in her chair thoughtfully. She knew that confrontation with the man she’d not seen for some months because she wanted to keep him out of her affairs was inevitable. When the printer was done printing the ten pictures that had come with the message, she shut the monitor down and picked up the pictures on the tray.
Her anger growing with each passing moment, she turned and walked swiftly but silently out of the house, heading towards where she’d parked her two cars. She could see her kids playing a game of cards with Amanda and her friend looked up, questions in her eyes, but Adamma did not halt or even slow down in her strides. As she slid in behind the wheel of her white Mercedes, she signaled for one of the guards to open the gate, and she started the engine and zoomed off, tears of rage spilling down her cheeks.
She rushed off a quick message to her best friend that she was returning soon; not to worry_ there was nothing to worry about.
The road passed in a blur of movement as she raced towards Obi’s hotel complex where she knew he would invariably be, her mind a chaotic river of thoughts and emotions. The traffic was dense at that time of the day, as per usual here in Lagos, so she had some time to think and gather her thoughts.
She would kill that arrogant bastard who had been trying to contact her for a long time but had failed. Now, he’d gotten her undivided attention, all right, and she was now ready for him just as she knew that he was ready for her. They had a battle to fight against each other, and they had their separate weapons in their arsenals with which to fight that war against each other.
The car surged forward as she pressed her foot down on the gas to hasten her drive to the place of confrontation where she knew that this man she loved, but who didn’t care a hoot about her, waited for her. She was driving now like the mad drivers of Lagos that she often castigated, and there were angry honks of the horn and those that yelled out obscenities at her in the native Yoruba.
Oh, damn him to hell! She almost wished he’d drop dead so she could have an iota of peace in her life, but some tiny part of her rebelled at that thought. If he something happened to him, then there was nothing for her to live for.
And the car continued to move, sometimes slowing down to a crawl as she became immersed in the abominable Lagos traffic which was a horror. But at least it gave her the time to clear her mind and think of what to say to her husband, and she was almost sorry when she finally arrived after spending almost an hour on the road. But her anger got the better of her, and she had to clutch at the reins of it, letting it wash over her so that she would not allow herself to be swayed by thoughts that she knew would be detrimental to her plans.
She parked her car in the well-laid parking lot of the Phoenix Hotels, and then she jumped out of the car, her eyes moving up to the office area so she could glimpse the curtains of the office Obi occupied on the tenth floor. She had often castigated him sometimes jokingly that he was one of the few men that chose to make a hotel the headquarters of their business, but he had seemed to love and enjoy having his main base of operation here at the hotel.
And then she saw him at the window, and their eyes met and held, a current of unspoken words surging through them like a wave. She forced herself to look away, and she headed towards the opulent hotel, aware of Obi’s eyes watching her.
And he was really shocked that he was seeing her here. He’d merely come to the window so he could part them and allow shafts of sunlight drift into the air-conditioned room. He’d sighed with a feeling of contentment, and was about to turn back into the room when he’d caught sight of a white car driving into the complex. He’d paused, knowing instinctively who the car belonged to; Adamma. Frowning severely to mask his incredulity, he watched as she jumped out of the car with the energy and agility of an athlete, and their eyes clashed. But she looked away and headed towards the sprawling complex, and he steeled himself as he awaited her intrusion into his office.
Minutes later, he heard the elevator doors sliding open, and then Adamma’s voice pierced through the stillness with the strength and sharpness of a bullet blast. She was thundering at the secretary in an icy voice to let her into the office, and the woman was rendering excuses. But the singer was not to be deterred from her course; she walked right past the woman and then marched into the office, slamming the door shut with feral force. She walked towards him, her chest heaving with rage, her hand clutching the sheets paper she’d printed out from her computer.
‘How dare you?’ she asked in a harsh voice, waving the papers in his face. ‘How dare you do this to me? Why don’t you just leave me alone?’
Obi stared grimly into the face of his wife. ‘What did I do to you, my dear girl? What could be so bad that you’ve decided to come to me even after I’d made a lot of efforts to contact you?’
‘These!’ she snapped, flinging the papers down on the table with a thump. ‘You enjoy digging dirt up, don’t you? You’re just a filthy blackmailer. Oh my God, Obi, how low you’ve gone. You run around, digging up dirt that is supposed to be buried, just so you can blackmail me. But it will not work!’
Obi stared at the pictures on the tabletop, his lips compressed in a grim line, his eyes narrowing on the pages sharply. Though the fact that Adamma pointed accusing fingers at him unwaveringly, he knew that he was not the person who had done what she was accusing him of. And there was only one person who could have done it: Hope.
Forcing himself to look up at the near-hysterical woman who stood before him, he said succinctly, ‘It was my mother who sent you these pictures, not me.’
Adamma stared at her husband, her eyes wide with disbelief. ‘Hope?’ she asked, her voice trembling. ‘She did this? Oh no, and I had thought that she was a good woman, but she’s just shown herself to be the hypocrite I never suspected she could be. But I’ll get her for this. I swear it!’
Whirling round, she started to walk away, but Obi’s hand clamped down on hers with crushing force, halting her movements. When she turned around to look at him, he was glaring at her with a cold fury just as cold as her own.
‘Oh no, you cannot touch my mother,’ he snapped. ‘You dare not go to my mother because the pictures she’d sent to you are the truths about your life you’ve refused to acknowledge. You were a whore, Adamma. You were made one when you found your way into the seedy clubs where you spent your youth.’
Tears spilled down her cheeks as the words sank into her mind. ‘Oh no,’ she cried, and her voice was a broken sound that was barely recognizable. ‘I was driven to it! Do you ever understand anything? I am not a whore!’
‘Oh, aren’t you?’ he taunted, his hands pulling her close to his chest. And then his hands his fingers went to her hips, caressing her rounded butt. She gasped and arched against him in shock and pleasure as if a bolt of electricity had been zapped through her, and he brought his lips down to hers, claiming the luscious lips brutally. It was not a tender kiss, just as he’d intended, and he wanted to humiliate her for what she had done to him and was still doing to him. He kissed her with his lips, holding her close with one hand and stroking her buttocks with the other, and she was moaning softly, her warm body arching against his hand, and she was returning his kisses. Suddenly, he released her abruptly and she nearly fell, but his free hand shot out and steadied her.
‘You see?’ he asked, smiling victoriously. ‘You are easily aroused by a touch, and I can almost swear that it makes you a whore. But then, you belong to me, my dear little girl, and nothing you do will make me give you up. You are my property, and anything that belongs to me, I keep. You may be separated from me, but you’re mine, and not even a divorce will change that fact. If you dare think that you’ll be free of me, then you’d better rethink your stance when I tell you about the race of incestuous pigs you descended from.’
Adamma had been crying softly with shame and a sense of anger at herself for losing control the way she did; she’d responded to her husband when she should have slapped his face. Her head jerked up with wonder and annoyance at the prospect that her husband was blackmailing her once again, and her eyes narrowed with fury as the data he’d just released flooded into her mind.
‘What did you say?’ she asked in a cracked voice. ‘You’re lying! You do not know me or where I’d come from! You are lying!’
Obi laughed, and he knew that this time, he was going to put her firmly to heel. He said smugly, ‘I am not lying to you, my dear girl. My mother, who knew more about your family than you ever did, told me all I wanted to know about you. She told me the story about your parents.’
‘You are truly mad.’ Adamma’s face reflected uncertainty as she drew back to look at her husband. Her look turned into a glare, and she realized that she could come to develop intense hatred for him. ‘Yeah, you’re right about them and the fact that there were ties between them. But the only tie between them was the fact that they were bound together by the ties of marriage between their parents_ and the man was not even the biological father of my father; he was an adopted son. I know that story, my dear, and my parents are dead, so there’s nothing you can do with the story your mother had told you. Your blackmail won’t work.’
Obi’s brows knitted together and his lips parted in a smile. It was true that what he had about his wife would be laughed out by any right-thinking member of the society, but he knew that she wouldn’t want that story to come out. ‘My blackmail will definitely work on you, my dear girl. Think about how the press enjoys twisting stories around so that there are elements of scandal in them.’
‘What do you want from me?’ Adamma asked tightly, her fingers balling into fists. She was glaring at him with a look akin to hatred in her luminous eyes, and he knew that she was brimming with fury against him. But he had to lay his cards down on the table.
‘Very simple, my dear,’ he replied. ‘I want you back into my arms and into my house because you belong to me and your place is at my side. Did I make myself clear?’
Shocked at her husband’s manipulation of her once again, she nodded, but she knew that she was not ready to go back to his house. She said, ‘Yes, I heard you.’ And then she turned around and walked away, her back straight with anger.
Obi watched her go, and then he sank into his seat and his mind was awash with an unstoppable avalanche of thoughts and memories that all centered around Adamma. It was like a snow storm lashing out with fury at the walls of his mind. There was no controlling it, no stopping it. The images came, sharp, vivid, flashing through his mind like a meteor, and then disappearing into the inner store of memories that was locked up in his subconscious mind.
He remembered anew how she radiated energy and her hair swirled around her face with every step she took. And then, there was her soft, swaying walk that brought all her femininity to the fore; there was a confidence in the way she held herself, and there was a mystery that surrounded her like a cloud which was the magnetic force that drew him to her and had him going back for her even after all they’d meted out to each other. She had cruelly tortured him with her body, and now, to crown it all, she’d driven him to the point of exhaustion and obsession so he was incapable of making rational decisions.
She was the first woman who hadn’t been smitten with his good looks and his charm; she was the only woman who had dared to smolder him with her anger and her derision, ridiculing his wealth and his masculinity as if they were nothing. She was the first woman whom he believed fitted perfectly into his body and completed him_ the press had yapped on the fact they were magnificent together. And he knew that he would never let her go.