CHAPTER 62

Najiba flinched after hearing Zahid's voice as she thought that he was going to hit her. She raised her head and looked at him with confusion written all over her face "what did I do wrong? Why are you calling me an adulterous woman Zahid?" 

Zahid walked closer to her as he held her chin painfully and narrowed his eyes at her. "How dare you cheat on me? If someone would have told me that it is you, my last wife who will cheat on me, I wouldn't have believed it, not in a million years because I have been fair to you than I've been to any of my wives. Why did you get pregnant for another man and think that you could pin it on me! Why!" Zahid felt that if he keeps staying here, he wouldn't be able to control himself and might end up doing something that he will regret so he decided to walk away.

As he turned around and was leaving, Najiba ran after him and held his hand "I won't let you leave if you don't tell me what I have done wrong? I expected you to be happy that you will finally have a child of your own but instead of being happy, you are angry and calling me all sorts of names. I won't le..." Zahid pulled his arm away from her grasp as he pushed her to the sofa before she could finish what she was saying.

He stormed out of the building and went straight into his car. His driver who was waiting for him in the car did not bother to wait for his boss to tell him to drive before he began to drive and it was only when they were on the way that he could muster the courage to ask his boss where they were going.

Najiba who hit her waist on the sofa as she fell was just sitting there in tears and pain as she picked up her phone and called her mother to tell her what has happened. Najiba's mother could not believe that Zahid would do that to her daughter, his pregnant wife. "My enemies have finally succeeded in turning your husband's face against you because I don't see the reason why a woman will happily tells her husband that she is pregnant and this will be the outcome of it. I can see that your husband's other wives have gone spiritual so, you need to follow me somewhere today."

Najiba screamed at her mother through the phone "shut up mum! Stop. Stop it already. Don't do this to me at a time like this. I want you to call my husband because you are my mother and he will listen to you. I don't want you to take me anywhere because I am going nowhere with you. Just  call Zahid and ask him what happened and that's all I want to know." 

Najiba's mother held her phone and began to ask herself what she has said wrong that was making her daughter to raise her voice at her. "I am only trying to care for her as her mother but what do I get in return? Instead of getting a thank you from her, I end up getting a scolding like a child. If I don't suggest anything now, she will say that I do not care and now that I have diagnosed the problem and discovered that her husband's other wives have gone spiritual, she is telling me to shut up." 

Najiba's mother told herself that she will not do as her daughter has suggested. She knows that whatever made Zahid this angry will also make him not pick up her calls so she decided to wait for a hew hours or a day before she speaks to him. She refused to tell her husband anything because she knows that whenever she tells him anything like this, he ends up blaming it on her.

Zahid was so angry and pained that his heart began to palpitate. He used his palms to cover his face and shouted "Haaaa! How dare you Najiba? How dare you try to make a fool of me? You little witch, I have provided everything that you ever asked for and even the ones that you did not ask for, so what else will you be looking for outside?" 

Zahid told his chauffeur to turn the car around and take him back to his wife's house. Immediately the car arrived, he did not wait for the chauffeur to park properly before he opened the door and jumped out. He barged into the apartment once again and met her still sitting on the sofa where he pushed her earlier. Najiba thought that her mother has spoken to her husband so she was very happy when she saw him come in as she said "Za..." She could not complete what she was about to say because he grabbed her neck and pulled her to her feet.

"Za..hi.d, you are ch.. cho..king me." Zahid laughed like a maniac as he increased the pressure on her neck which made her to start coughing. She began to struggle with him as she was trying to remove his hands from her neck but he was too strong for her. Zahid kept the pressure on her neck and only released her when he noticed that she was beginning to look pale.

Najiba began to cough and gasp for breath after her husband released her neck. "I thought you were never afraid of anything. So you also fear death but you had the mind to commit a crime that could bring you to an unexpected end? I just want to know who is responsible for your pregnancy and don't you dare tell me that it is me again because I can't have children. I have made sure of that for a few years now and I never told anyone because of people like you. My friends warned me that you will never change because you are used to having different men on your bed. I thought you will hold your marital vows sacred and not go out there to cheat on me with other men but I was mistaken." 

As Zahid was talking, Najiba was moving backwards as she hopes to get to the door and run out before he will kills her. He looks like he has been possessed by a demon as she has never seen him like this before. She has been trying to tell him that she never cheated on him but he does not want to hear that part of the story as he believes that she has been sleeping with other men. Her only hope right now is to find a way to escape from this house because she doesn't want to be amongst the women who appear in the news brutally murdered by their husbands because they were suspected of cheating.

As Najiba was moving backwards strategically, she got close to the door and turned around to run out but her husband pulled her by her dress and threw her to the floor. "I will kill you and kill that bastard in your womb if you do not tell me who the father is right now!" Najiba was crying and shaking her head because she doesn't know what to say to him that will pacify him and not get him angrier. As she was on the floor, she was using her knees to guard her abdomen in case it comes down to violence and Zahid starts to kick her.

Zahid does not even know what he was doing anymore because he has lost it. The only thought in his head is to kill his wife for betraying him and making him look like a fool in the eyes of the public. He has lost every sense of rationality and was trying very hard to control himself. He bent down and peered into his wife's face as he said "Najiba, I want you to raise your head and look at me. You know that amongst all my wives, I love you the most right? I promise that I won't hurt you if you tell me the truth about who the father of your baby is. I want you to take a deep breath, think about it properly and tell me who is responsible for your pregnancy." 

Najiba knows that she has not had any affairs with any man since she got married to her husband so it was confusing to her that her husband was asking her all these questions. She said nothing and just stayed there shivering and the crying. She almost jumped out of her skin as she screamed when she heard her husband's voice when he shouted at her. "I said tell me the name of the man that you have been sleeping with!"

 Najiba was already thinking that today is the day that she will die because she has seen it in her husband's eyes that he is not going to let her go until she gives him a name which she doesn't have. She was already saying her last prayers as her life was flashing before her eyes. She just laid on the floor and was expecting whatever will come next to come because she has accepted her fate already.

 She cried out in relief when she saw her mother run into the apartment along with her husband's chauffeur and a few guards. Their arrival distracted Zahid and she used that opportunity to stand and run outside as she did not trust her mother to stop Zahid. 

Hajar walked towards her daughter's husband and slapped him. She started crying the moment she came in and saw the state that her daughter was in when she ran out of the house. She held onto his shirt and began to scream at him "you want to kill somebody right? Go ahead and kill me. So if I have not arrived, you would have ended up killing my innocent daughter who has done nothing wrong but try to put a smile on your face. You stupid womanizer, you go around town sleeping with everything that has a hole in between their legs and still have the guts to raise your hands on my daughter and also accuse her of cheating on you? Is a person like you supposed to ever accuse anyone of cheating? You dog in human form. I regret the day that I allowed my daughter to marry you and I will not rest until I tell the world about this injustice which you have meted out of my daughter today." 

Zahid's bodyguards were trying to separate his mother-in-law from him but she refused to let him go as she kept slapping him and shouting. Hajar was horrified at the scene that she saw when she came in and her heart almost jumped out of her chest. Even now, she is still imagining different possibilities and asking herself what would have happened to her daughter if she had come any later than she did.

She was contemplating whether to come and see her daughter after or not after that call when one of the maids called her to quickly rush over as she told her that she should rush down to the house because Zahid came back and she could hear voices inside the house. She also told her that she could hear Najiba crying and screaming.

Najiba ran out of the house and headed straight to her car as she entered and drove out of the house recklessly. She didn't care about anything that could happen as the only thing on her mind was to get away from her husband before he kills her. She ran because she does not trust her husband to listen to her mother and leave her alone even if her mother asked him to.

Shulamite was so engrossed in the kiss that she was sharing with the young man that she was on a date with to the point that she has forgotten that they were in public. She came back to her senses when someone walked by and said, "get a room, two of you." She quickly disengaged from him and looked down feeling embarrassed. She sucked in air through her teeth before raising her head and said, "Max, I just hope that you will not make me trend on social media for something that is not profitable very soon." 

 Max smiled to himself as he said in his heart "you pretentious Shulamite, I can't believe that you still care about your reputation after everything that happened when you were still in model. You fought dirty and exposed your body without any shame and right now you are worried about someone seeing us kissing?" He didn't say those words out because he knows that Shulamite might dump him and never accept him again for saying that.

She noticed that Max was looking at her mysteriously so she asked him "why are you looking at me like that? I know that you are saying something terrible about me in your heart so can you spill?" Max denied saying anything about her as he said "I am only smiling at you because I can't believe that I am with my first love again. I love you Shu, and I will never stop saying that to you. We already have a daughter together so why don't you just accept my marriage proposal so that we can give this girl a happy home? I promise that I am not after you because of Rachel, rather I want you for you. I want you because I love you and I have discovered that there is no other woman out there for me except you. Shulamite, all these years traveling to different parts of the world, I have met different ladies both the Good, Bad and the Ugly. None of these women ever appealed to me and everytime I watch your interviews where you say that you are single, it breaks my heart into a thousand pieces. Please, all I am asking you for is a chance to show you how much I love you and our daughter and to also show you how good of a husband and father, that I can be." 

It is true that for a few days now Shulamite have been having some feelings for Max but she is afraid of falling in love. She has seen what love has done to some people and how it turned them into psychopaths just like Ima who loved Doja but he ended up giving his heart to Chris and she does not want to experience such. She could remember that a few months ago, she promised herself that she will not get involved in any romantic relationships as she only looks forward to taking her life further and achieving her dreams while being a good mother to her daughter.