The Unwanted Wife: Revenge After Divorce

AMELIA

I was peering at the screen of my computer, surfing the net and writing down prices of some items I wished to purchase when Rose, the manager of my bakery, called me.

“Hello?” I picked up the phone eagerly.

“Ma’am,” she gasped and swallowed audibly. I sat upright immediately. Just that one word and I knew that something was very, very wrong.

Unconsciously, I gripped the phone tightly.

“Rose, what’s wrong?”

She made a sound halfway between a gasp and a sigh. She seemed to be struggling to speak. “I’m sorry… It’s just that I’m still so shaken… though we’ve got it under control, but for a while, I thought- I thought-” She swallowed again.

“Take a deep breath and tell me what happened,” I said more calmly than I felt.

Rose audibly exhaled. “There’s been a fire at the bakery.”

“WHAT?” My hands trembled, and I grabbed the phone tighter.

“It’s under control now,” she hastened to add. “We were able to put out the fire.”

My brain whirled in a hundred different directions. A fire? How did that happen? When?

“Did anyone get hurt?”

“No. Thank goodness, no.”

I exhaled and pressed a hand to my chest as a tiny fraction of the tension left me. At least there were no casualties. A second later, I was on my feet.

“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up.

I nearly forgot my keys on my way out of the house. The drive to the bakery was done primarily based on muscle memory. I wasn’t really paying attention to my driving. It was evening, and thankfully, the traffic was light.

My heart kept thumping sickeningly in my chest. Despite Rose’s reassurances that the fire had only caused minimal damage, I half expected to see a charred, blackened piece of rubble when I turned onto the street where my bakery was located.

The building was intact, more or less. Thank goodness for small mercies! A couple of the front windows were broken-a thin ribbon of smoke issued from them. There were no cars in the parking lot, but the space that would have been taken by vehicles was occupied by people milling around, talking animatedly to themselves and craning their necks as much as they could so they could see into the building.

My harassed-looking security guard was striving to keep the curious crowd out. I sighed in exasperation. I would never understand people’s fascination with fires. I drove a little further and found a place to park my car. Then I doubled back to the bakery, pushed through the crowd and eventually got close enough to the security guard.

“Shove off you!” he growled to a stocky man who seemed more eager than most to get close to the store.

“But I’m a customer!” the man whined. “I want to buy something -”

“The store is closed for today, so buzz off! Ah. Good day, ma’am.”

The guard had caught sight of me. He now proceeded to create a path for me to pass. I nodded my thanks and walked slowly to the bakery.

My eyes roved over the building, trying to register anything I had missed. Rose and most staff members were crammed into the showroom, talking amongst themselves. Worry was etched on every face. I headed straight for Rose, who looked very pale. She closed the distance between us. The others soon broke up.

“I want to know the extent of the damage,” I said. “Show me.”

Rose took me to the back of the building, the part close to the kitchen. The walls outside were entirely blackened, but the fire hadn’t penetrated the kitchen. I shuddered to think what would have happened if it had.

Then Rose took me back inside my office, which had been the worst hit. I had to press a handkerchief to my nose because the smoke was so thick. More than half of everything had been burnt down: my desk, the chairs, the paintings, the shelves, my carefully kept records.

I stepped over a fire extinguisher and was examining the window when my brain eventually caught up with my senses. I had been perceiving something for a while, something even the smoke couldn’t hide.

It was the smell of gasoline! My office reeked of it. I had gotten a whiff of it in the showroom and outside the kitchens. Before I could say anything, Rose began speaking again, “We are now very sure that someone deliberately set the fire.”

“The smell of gasoline,” I gasped.

She nodded, looking grim and more than a little frightened. “Yes. It took us a while to notice because we were all panicked, all trying to extinguish the fires that seemed to have sprung out everywhere. When we doused the fire, and the place got a bit calmer, we all noticed the smell of petrol, and of course, the bottles were lying around.”

“Bottles? What bottles?”

“The bottle contained rags soaked in gasoline, but I think Jack will be better able to explain, ma’am. Can I call him in?”

“Yes. Yes. Go ahead.”

She left the room, and I heard her calling out to Jack. Jack, a tall, muscled young man, entered the room with Rose in tow. His clothes were more filthy than the others, and it was charred in places. There were grass stains, soot stains, and earth stains on his shirt and pants. There were several fresh cuts on his face and hands.

“What happened here, Jack?” I asked him.

“Ma’am, I was in the backyard, lugging out the trash. I guess everyone else was inside when I heard I heard the sound of something breaking. I heard it again and again. Then I heard people screaming from inside. I saw a lot of smoke, thick smoke. I froze, and I was just about to run inside when someone ran past me. I thought it was someone that worked here.” Jack’s face darkened. “That was my mistake. The woman kind of screamed a little when she saw me-”

“A woman? Are you it was a woman?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. She wore a hoodie, but she was a woman, alright. I think she was surprised to see me outside, but she didn’t stop running, and I got really suspicious when I saw she was holding a bottle with a burning rag in it. I chased her. She dropped the bottle close to the kitchen window. There was a loud bang and then fire. I think the bitch meant to throw the bottle through the kitchen window…” Jack paused and coloured up when he realized what he had just said. “I beg your pardon, ma’am.”

“It’s okay. Go on.”

“The fire caught a piece of my shirt, and by the time I put it out, she had gone.”

“With all the shouting and running about, she escaped,” Rose said.

“Now, Jack, I want you to think carefully about what I will ask you. Don’t rush it. I need an accurate answer. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Describe this woman you saw,” I said.

Jack scrunched up his brow. His eyes almost narrowed to slits as he thought hard.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“She was curvy,” he finally said. “The big clothes she had on couldn’t really hide her figure. I saw she had black hair, green eyes and- and-” Jack’s eyes suddenly lit up. He snapped his fingers excitedly. “Oh! And I remember she had a mole right here.” He pointed at a spot on his left cheek.

I pointed to the exact same spot on my face.

“Right there? Are you sure?”

“Dam- Sorry. Very sure, ma’am.”

I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. Black hair, green eyes, curvy figure and most importantly, a mole on the left cheek. Jack had just described Lora! ********************

DAMIAN

As soon as I got into the hotel room, I called Lora. I was enraged, but I managed to talk to her calmly to avoid raising any suspicions.

“Oh. Look who’s calling!” she snapped.

“Hello to you too, Lora. I want to see you.”

“Why?” she said peevishly.

“I’ll tell you when you get here. I’m at the Rue Hotel. Room 507. Meet me here in thirty minutes.”

Intense excitement laced her voice when she said, “A hotel? Okay. I’ll be right there.” She was foolish to believe she would try to hurt Amelia, and I wouldn’t find out.

Thirty-five minutes later, she arrived, dressed in a skimpy dress that left little to the imagination. She had even had time to apply a little makeup.

“Hello, handsome,” she drawled and tipped me a salacious wink. “I knew you’d come back to your senses.” I stepped forward, shut the door behind her and locked it. “Oooh. Getting all frisky, are we? I’m here to-”

“Shut up and listen,” I barked. “I know what you did.” I watched her smile falter, then die as she saw the fury in my eyes. “You tried to set Amelia’s bakery on fire. So you’re an arsonist now, right?.”

“I don’t know- I-I didn’t.”

“SHUT UP!” I bellowed. “Now listen and listen well. If you ever attack Amelia or anything related to her, I’ll make you pay. I swear it!”