~TWO~

~Arya~

Hours passed since I landed in Hawaii. I’d taken a shower, had a meal and tried to drift off to sleep. But no matter how much I tried, it just didn’t work. The last text I had received kept flashing in my head. I pondered over the message, compared the contact of the sender with the contacts saved on my phone, yet I still couldn’t figure out who had sent it. After a long time of tossing and turning in bed, I finally gave up and padded to the living room where Edgar was working on his laptop. I lowered myself on the sofa beside him silently. He glanced at me for a split second before turning his attention back to the screen before him.

“Can I have a look at the papers I signed earlier?” I asked him. He froze. His fingers hovered above the keyboard as he turned to me.

“Why?”

There was something unsettling about it. I didn’t know if it was as a result of the years of training I had received growing up, but my instincts bugged me. “I never had the chance to read through it.”

“I did that already. It’s nothing you should concern yourself with. It’s just a contract between the firm and a big shot client.”

He was tensing up, a sign that he didn’t like what I was requesting of him. Choosing to satisfy my curiosity rather than coddle him, I pressed on.

“Doesn’t that mean I should go through it? We have to be sure we didn’t miss anything.”

“Are you saying I'm too dumb to handle that without you?”

I hated when he played the insecure card. “You know that’s not what I mean, Edgar."

“You’ve been on edge since you got here.” He closed the lid of his laptop and placed it on the table before us. When he looked at me again, it was with an affectionate glint in his eyes. “I made sure there’s no issue with the contract,” he said in a soft tone. “I know you’re used to handling things like this, but you should remember that I can be good at it too.”

Without waiting for me to say anything else, he pressed a kiss on my cheek and stood up. “I have an appointment in an hour. I’ll be back late, so don’t wait for me.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him who he was meeting up with in a place where he didn’t know anyone, but I decided against it. He disappeared into the bedroom and returned minutes later, clad in a crisp shirt tucked into black pants. He brushed his lips against my forehead and mouthed a quick “I love you” before walking out the door. I stayed glued to the sofa, waiting for a few minutes to make sure he was gone, then I dashed into the room to look for the document.

It wasn’t in the bedside drawer. I rummaged through his belongings, checked his suitcases, but it was nowhere to be found. There were no hiding places in the suite. If I couldn’t find it, then it meant that he had taken it with him.

The sound of a notification from my phone broke into my thoughts. I grabbed it from the bed and clicked on the message that popped up on the screen.

It was a file from an anonymous source. An organ donation form, with me as the donor and a certain Lina Cross as the recipient, filled out and signed.

Right beside my signature was Edgar's, as my guardian.

My eyes narrowed in a squint. No matter how many times I read it, the words ‘VOLUNTARY ORGAN DONATION APPROVAL’ glared at me.

I dialled Edgar's number in a daze, grabbing my car key and making my way to the door as fast as I could. The line rang for seconds that seemed to stretch into hours, but he didn’t pick up. When I tried over and over again and there was no reply, I clicked on the tracking app on my device. Edgar and I had set it up months ago just for the fun of it, and it was finally being useful. The app pinpointed his location. He was in a hotel downtown, half an hour drive from me.

Despite disobeying traffic signs at the risk of getting pulled over and fined, the drive was still longer than I wanted. A million thoughts ran through my head. Was it possible that it wasn’t a mistake? That document had seemed too meticulous for it to be a silly error. I thought back to the texts I had gotten earlier in the day, the file I had signed, the way Edgar tried to avoid talking about it when I asked to see it. Was it all connected? Would my husband really do that to me?

As I pulled up in the parking lot of the hotel and alighted from the car, I dialed his number again. It went straight to voicemail. I proceeded into the hotel lobby and the front desk. Pausing to catch my breath, I checked my phone once more to confirm Edgar's location. 

“Mrs Sinclair?" a receptionist called out, walking towards me. How did she know me?

 It wasn’t the time to ask questions like that.

“My husband is in this hotel. I want to know his room number. His name is Edgar Sin–”

I wasn’t done talking when she placed a keycard in front of me and called out his room number. “I’ll have security hanging around in case you need help.”

What was she talking about? Why would I need help? I was going to see Edgar. I couldn’t think of any reason why he was having his appointment in a hotel room, but it could mean anything. There was no need to jump into conclusions.

Making a mental note to ask her what she meant if I crossed her path later, I grabbed the card from the counter top. “Thank you,” I mouthed and ran into an open elevator. In less than a minute, I was in front of the suite with the same number on the key card. With shaky hands, I opened the door and walked in.

That familiar fruity scent hit my nostrils as soon as I stepped in. I could hear voices coming from the bedroom. My husband’s voice, a soft giggle, the sound of lips smacking against each other. Noiselessly, I made my way to the opened door and peeked in.

The walls closed in on me at the sight I was witnessing. Edgar was sitting on the bed, his eyes rolled back in pleasure as a woman rode him to oblivion.  Rhythmic moans left their lips as she straddled him, donned in a wedding dress that was hiked up her thighs.

My wedding dress.