C12: The Familiar Sounding Password

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“You can use that for all the house expenses,” Derek cut through her thoughts while she was still in a daze.

Snapping out of her reverie, she looked up at him.

“Ok,” she replied as she unbuckled her seat belt. “How much is the spending limit for a month?”

Derek shrugged his shoulders.

He had no idea. He had asked his secretary to have the card delivered earlier.

All his cards were limitless. He supposed there was enough for anyone three lifetimes.

“Should be enough.”

“Ok,” she replied and reached for the handle of the door.

As soon as she placed her sandaled feet on the ground, the chilly weather bit her skin. She rubbed her arms to keep warm and hugged herself.

Sometime during the hour-long ride from the Bowas’ place, the weather had changed from warm and friendly to cold and biting.

She worriedly looked up at the sky.

Dark clouds were brewing. It seemed it might pour at any time. She heaved a sigh.

A rainy night meant a sleepless night.

The house roofing was in a bad condition. The difference between being stuck in the rain and one inside was non-existent.

They constantly had to change the bed position throughout the night, as well as empty the buckets and containers.

She could only pray that it would not be a heavy downpour; at least then, she could get some shut-eye.

“Here.” Derek shrugged off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders.

The jacket was still warm from his body heat and it smelled of his woody and citrus perfume.

She looked up at him with a complicated look in her eyes.

“I would not want you falling sick on the first day,” he said quickly when he saw her open her mouth to turn him down.

“Ok. Thank you then.”

She pulled it closer and followed him into the supermarket.

The place was bursting with activity.

Derek, who didn’t like crowded places, frowned, regretting his impromptu decision to go grocery shopping.

But when he thought of the person next to him, he didn’t mind so much.

He wanted to spend as much time as he could in her presence.

“Well, let’s do this,” he said and grabbed a trolley.

The two spent the next hour filling the trolley to the brim.

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Meanwhile, while Ysabelle was happily helping Derek with the grocery shopping, on the other side of town, an arrogant-looking woman barged into the office of the president on the tenth floor of Blue Lotus Hotel.

She wore a cutout denim jumpsuit and a pair of nude stilettos. In her hands, she carried a denim clutch.

The curvaceous woman was Jordan Moyo, the mistress of Vernon, Ysabelle’s husband.

“Jordan, what are you doing here?” The displeased voice belonged to Vernon Miti.

Vernon was tall and dark. His handsome face could rival any male model.

Jordan walked over to the window and stared at the night scenery, tapping her foot impatiently.

“You have to choose.”

“What did you just say?”

“I need you to make a choice.”

“Choice about what?”

“It’s either that fishmonger Ysabelle or me.”

“Really, Jordan? That now?” he asked, irritated. “Where is this coming from?”

“What does it matter?” she asked and turned to face him. She was angry, alright.

He should have deduced from the SMS that something was not right when she had asked him to come home, when she was supposed to be at the luncheon with her friends.

It had been like this for a few days. Obviously, something had gone horribly wrong when she met her high society friends a few days back. “Well, what will it be?”

“I’m with you. I chose you. I left Ysabelle for you.”

“Yes, you did,” she said sarcastically, “but it is her that your family still recognizes as your wife.”

He couldn’t argue with her on that. His extended family had refused to visit her family and begin talks of marriage.

As long as Ysabelle was still in his house, they had told him, they would never be in support of him taking a second wife.

Time and again he had approached them with the same response, and each time his uncles would sit Ysabelle down, they asked her the same question right in front of him.

“Ysabelle, what do you have to say to what our son is saying? Do you accept him taking a second wife?”

“No. I don’t,” she would answer demurely, something his mistress did not have in her character and had failed to endear her to his relatives.

The others, his mother and siblings, only put up with her because they knew she was the ticket to a good life.

“There you have your answer. Your wife Ysabelle does not consent to your decision. Her opinion is the only one that matters here.”

Jordan knew that, but in her usual difficult self, she wanted the impossible.

“You know my family will not let us get married.”

“I don’t need your family to make this happen.”

He looked at her, taken aback. She folded her hands on her chest, which rose and fell with each angry breath that she took.

“What are you saying?”

She moved away from the window, grabbed her handbag, pulled out some papers, and handed them to him.

“Sign them. We are taking them back to Civic Centre today.”

Vernon read the bold headings on the papers and then looked up at her in shock.

“You signed them already? Jordan, we can’t get married without involving our families. Didn’t your father turn us away last time?”

“This marriage is happening, or you can go back to that matchstick Ysabelle. Do you think at this point I care about what my family says?” she asked him in disbelief.

Her stepfather had never acknowledged their relationship. Her mother, the one who had married into the Moyos and brought her along, was not too pleased with her decision either.

Because of her, she had become the laughing stock of high society.

“And let me warn you: if you choose that matchstick slut, all this,” she continued and snapped her fingers around the room, “you leave it behind. You are leaving with the rugs you came with.”

Jordan marched out and left him staring after her.

She had known what she was getting into when she had seduced the married man. His uncles had sternly warned him against tabling the issue of a second wife.

With a bitter sigh, Jordan pulled his tie down, letting the collar pop open.

He thought she was being difficult for nothing. They had a good thing going on. He loved her and their kids. Did they have to label everything for her to feel secure?

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