Chapter 5: I see you’re back.

Antonia’s pov.

I spend the night in another room and I don't know if Malachi notices my absence nor do I care.

I take a visit to the cemetery, just to see my grandmother’s grave for one last final time, and when I come back every bone in my body hurts. It’s the familiar hum of fatigue and tiredness and as it surges through me, it reminds me that I'm pregnant too. 

A light headache whips through my head, but I ignore it and head straight to the room.

I’m not staying here for another minute. 

At the thought of Malachi, something in my heart seems to begin burning, and I can't deal with that. I don’t want to see him. I take one last look at the room that we’ve both shared for the past three years and different images flash past behind my eyes. 

Images of both of us, on that bed. Passion being the one thing that brought us together. Yet even then, I'd just been deluding myself into thinking he loved me. That he had sex with me because he wanted it as much as I did.

I go to the walk-in wardrobe and pick out my traveling bag, wheeling it to the bed. I’m packing my things and moving out immediately. Even now, I haven't received a single call from him. This place isn’t worth my effort and time.

“I see you’re back.”

I stop in my tracks at the sound of that voice but it’s only for a second. My hands move once more, cleanly folding my clothes and putting them in the bag as I respond plainly, “I am, mother-in-law. Happy to see you too.”

Sienna Finn chortles and annoyance threatens to spike inside me because I know exactly what she thinks of me. I’ve known it for almost every day I've lived in this house as a married woman whenever she comes around.

“Did the funeral go okay?” She asks. She chuckles lowly as she goes on, “I didn’t want Malachi to be there because I was afraid you’d use the occasion to take money from him because of his sympathy.

My son has worked hard for that money. I can’t just let you squander it.”

A dark smile spreads on my face, and I give her the response I'd always hesitated from giving her out of respect, “Anyone listening would think I'm being addressed by a blind drunk, Sienna. Your son can keep his money. That was never what I wanted in the first place.”

I move to the wardrobe and pull down clothes from the rack. I glance at Sienna Finn on the way out and the shock on her face is pleasing. She sputters and flares into a rage, “How dare you speak to me like that, you insolent thing?! I am Malachi’s mother!”

I nod, my response sarcastic, “No one would miss it if that’s what you’re worried about.”

It’s true too. 

Malachi shares noticeable features with his mother. The same burnished gold hair, the same angular jaw. She surges towards me but I turn to her, my eyes holding a cold light as I silently dare her to raise her hand on me. 

I voice out the thought in her mind, “Probably asking yourself, “What does this little bitch think she’s doing?”

Lay a finger on me and see.”

There’s no mistaking the subdued violence in my tone and Malachi’s mother looks at me confused. Her expression goes vicious again and she walks over to my bag. I already know what she’s thinking of doing so I'm not surprised when she picks up the necklace on the bed.

She holds it up, a triumphant and condescending look in her eyes as she asks, “Where do you think you’re going with this? My son bought this for you. I don’t care where you’re headed but nothing of my son’s will leave this house.”

I chortle, “Malachi didn’t get that for me. Put it down, lady.”

Sienna flies into a rage, “Lady!?”

I nod, unafraid and undisturbed, ''Would you have preferred ‘aged Madam?’, ‘Elderly citizen?’ ‘Distinguished member of those over the age of 50?’”

I give each response with as much relish as I can and Sienna goes red in the face. This time she actually walks to me in an annoyed and menacing manner but a voice stops her right in her tracks.

“Mother.”

Sienna halts in her tracks and turns to the door, her expression going relieved and then teary as she turns towards Malachi, “Oh, Malachi. Can you imagine what this girl has been saying to me? She tried taking this necklace you got for her and when I said to wait, she began calling me old.”

I snicker. That’s one way to put it. She and Skye will make a great pair.

Malachi walks towards me and grabs me roughly by the hand, anger visible in his eyes,

“What is the meaning of this Antonia?”

I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to shatter further, but somehow it does. 

I want to ignore him until I'm firmly out of here, but since it’s come to this, I face him.

A strange sight greets me. 

Malachi is holding a bouquet of tulips and a few shopping bags in his other hand.

I stare at it in confusion first, but it doesn’t last because he asks again, his voice in a darker tone, “I said what’s the meaning of this Antonia? Did you really call my mum old?”

I quip back in that same distant plain tone I used when he approached me last night, “Did your mum just call me a thief? You heard what she said. Now take a look at that necklace, and tell me, did you get it for me?”

The necklace is made of jade, with a circling diamond in the middle. It’s the kind of thing most of the upper class wouldn’t wear because they’d think it’s fake. 

I ask again in that same cold manner, “Did you ever get me a gift like that Malachi? Or anything that was a gift?”

I see the blood flow to Malachi’s face and it amuses me to see he still has the ability to be embarrassed. I thought he’d lost that too.

Malachi makes a show of turning to his mother and looking at the necklace in her hands. His voice is almost subdued as he tells her, “I didn’t get her that mother.”

I yank my hand away from his grip and walk over to Sienna, taking the necklace back from her grasp and dragging my eyes to the flowers. My allergy acts up immediately and I sneeze, covering my nose as I do so.

I look at both of them and ask derisively, “How would a man who doesn’t know his wife is allergic to tulips get her a necklace she’d actually like enough to take away?

That sounds so pathetic, don’t you think?”