Niko’s Eye

Chapter 21.

"Blossoming."

Belvia.

Belvia sat in a Boeing 737. She had a window seat, in business class. All courtesy of Alejandro.

She smiled every time she thought of him.

He was perfect for her little birdie.

And she hoped Isis knew it. Or better yet, Alejandro himself.

She was saddened at the thought that she had no more surviving children.Her first male child had been a stillborn, so Mexico, for her, was the centre of the pain that she withheld within her heart.

Pain knocks on the door and walks right in, the visitor that leaves in their own time. All we can do is learn from it, grow in our empathy for others in pain, and do what we can to recover and regain good health.There was so much of Belvia’s life that was a hell for her soul, and she stayed there from strength rather than weakness.Emotional pain leaves invisible scars, yet they can be traced by the most gentle of touch. Sometimes, like a cyst, the "wound" must be opened to be healed; other times a well-meaning person may seek to heal what should be left alone. If it can be ignored and a normal happy life resumed, isn’t it kinder to have faith in the natural healing process? If we hear with our hearts, we can care and not scare, we can heal and bring ointment to invisible wounds in the hope they can be reduced to scars and fade in time.

She was going back to where it all happened. She wanted to take away the power of the painful memory, and prove to herself that she could choose to move on.

She had Aisha and thought that her greatest joy was born.

Little did she know.

Her mind traveled back to her daughter.

What a painful memory. Those painful memories were books with chapters, deep and horrible; and so she left them on the shelf to gather dust. She told herself that she could pick them up again if ever she needed to learn something, or to gain a perspective that helped her to create another good story.

That story was Isis.

Belvia used her pain to re-see situations through the lens of Isis’ needs and traumas rather than hers. And that gave her the grandchild she had always hoped Isis would be.

She smiled and settled into her seat, closing her eyes, and already seeing the costumes lighting up the summer’s day, a riot of colour to rival any gardener’s paradise, music filling the air, festive beats lifting the spirits and making people want to move, jump and sing. She could already taste the air so heavenly with the chefs, alongside the parade, with every delicious thing ready to be shared amongst the people.

Day of The Dead. In Mexico. What bliss.

Alejandro.

Alejandro sat in his office with his head in between his hands. He didn’t know what was happening in his life and he didn’t like it. He was so used to being in control of his emotions and of every situation going on around him. But this time, he seemed to be lost.

People always say ’follow your heart, it’ll lead you’. Nigga, I don’t have a heart. And lead me to where? I’ve been to every place these little t***s can think of. Literally. I’ve walked so far that I’m even lost now. Street names disappeared and s**t.

He snorted at his own thoughts.

Alejandro shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and loosened his tie.

Isis.

He thought about her. Because there was just so much to think about her.

Now he had what he had always wanted, but he just couldn’t bring himself to carry out his plan, and she wasn’t making it any easier for him either.

She’s not like anyone else I’ve ever come across. What is it.. About Isis Kasmira? I mean, she’s under my damn roof! But still, I can’t bring myself to manipulate her emotions for my own benefit. This whole time I’ve been thinking that everything I was doing was staged. And yet, it was all... Real.

He always felt the urge to protect her, to always make sure she was comfortable, to always make sure she was happy, to always make sure she always got whatever she wanted, to always listen to her whine about chemistry practicals and buy dresses to bail her out of heated situations.

Alejandro had cracked the code.

He slowly stood up from his chair and widened his eyes, as the revelation of his thoughts sunk in.

I’m in love with her. Isis has taught me how to love. She never leaves my mind, she’s always; mentally if not physically. It’s just incomprehensible. She’s my one stable force, my one stability in this chaotic world that I have created on my own. I have never known such peace in my life and I had no idea that I desperately needed it. I can’t believe I’ve only just realised it.

He felt that the feeling was so strange; it stretched throughout his whole body. Alejandro felt overwhelmed, yet complete. The feeling had no boundaries, nor length, nor depth. It was just absolute. It felt as though he was in a dangerous fire, yet he felt completely safe at the same time. It felt as though somebody had given him serenity on a golden platter. It felt as though his heart was dancing around his chest, and a hole that he was never aware was there, had been filled.

He wanted to make sure that Isis felt the same before he could discharge himself of all of the facades that he was wearing.

He was certain that Isis would love him just the way he was. He had decided that he would come clean, and tell Isis the truth about who he really was. She deserved that much. For the sake of the pure love that he had for her.

Alejandro felt so light, like he was on top of the world.

He picked up his office telephone and asked for his secretary. She picked up his call, in a sexy tone. "You’re fired."He smilingly set the telephone down, not giving her any slots for further discussion.

He gathered his things and made a mental note to get Isis some flowers on his way back home. He had decided to give himself to Isis. He was placing his all in her hands.

Alejandro was giving Isis the power to either save him or destroy him. She taught him that with perfect love comes perfect trust and the knowledge that, should his love wish him gone, he would raise no hand in defence.

Isis.

Isis sat sprawled on the floor of Alejandro’s study, clad in her black, suede dungarees and a matching t-shirt. Her massive eyes peeking behind the thick frames, as she concentrated on the documents in front of her.

She looked at the one in her right hand, and then her left, and back to her right again. She sighed heavily, sending the curls that were layed on her forehead, flying back as far as the nape of her neck. She had been gob-smacked at the grandeur of Alejandro’s house.

She knew he had a lot of money but it was different to actually experience the lifestyle yourself, other than just hearing about it or seeing it.

She recalled screaming when he showed her his car collection.

She rolled her eyes at the memory and tried to concentrate on what she was doing. Alejandro had been a bit off lately and she didn’t have much time to instigate on that because she had assumed it was because she didn’t want to give him a piece of her.

I’m sure he can get any girl he wants. Let him go and find a nice odalisque from Harem or Tanzania. I heard those honeys there are fire.

She looked down at her dungarees and plaid socks.

I look like the girl from The Addams Family had a baby with Marilyn Manson. Too dark.

She stepped out of the closet of her childish thoughts and tried to concentrate, yet again.

She fiddled with the zipper of the little pouch that was on the front of her dungarees and felt something.

She dug her fingers into the pouch and took out what seemed to be a card.After examining it for a full second, she saw that it was Alejandro’s business card.

She remembered that she had worn those dungarees on the night of her sweet escape because she had wanted to be in something that would have been easy for her to move in, if ever she was to get caught. Haven’t really read this fancy peace of cardboard.

Let’s see here...

She squinted her eyes.

Who squints when they’ve got glasses on?

She fanned off her thoughts almost immediately when she read something that caught her attention.

Alejandro Xylon Dominic : CEO of the Puebla Viejo Mine and Psychological Researcher.

She swallowed hard and adjusted her glasses.

Wait.

"Confrontation."

Isis.

Isis stared at the piece of cardboard that was inbetween her fingers, a million thoughts running.

Her mind took her back to the night before, when she had mentioned to Alejandro that her father was killed in the Pueblo Viejo mines, he had suddenly gone stale.

And why didn’t he mention right there and then, that he practically owns that mine? Let’s face it, Alex has been acting strange ever since my mother died. So what does he have to do with all of this? If to lie is your default position your brain is being mis-wired daily. Then, when you seek love, and recall that truth is foundational to love, you will feel as if you are on the other side of a sheet of glass even though they try to reach you. The only way through, the only way back to the safety of love, is honesty, the kind that is raw and vulnerable.

She shook her head fiercely.

It must all just be a terrible coincidence.

I can’t draw up any conclusions until I have proof.

Isis’ investigation was proving to be deeper than what it seemed.

She had her mother on the one end, her father’s death, and now Alejandro.

Isis thought it to be wise if she began with the deceased, after all, they wouldn’t be able to bust her if ever she snooped around and found out some information that was not for her knowledge.

This was some dangerous ground she was playing on.

She hoped she wouldn’t have to get sucked into any underground world of shady business.

Isis gazed at the golden clock that was hung up in Alejandro’s study.

18:42.

Mami must have landed already.

She flipped out her cellphone to try and make a call.

Damn. Battery dead.

Isis then got up, and walked around Alejandro’s office area, so she could see if he had a telephone.

He probably had a telephone with a chord that could stretch all the way back to my house.

She chuckled at her own thoughts as she playfully slid over to Alejandro’s desktop, with the help of her plaid socks.

Once she got to his desk, she immediately spotted the telephone.

It looked like something that could only be found in a spaceship.

Thought as much.

Just as she was about to place her hand onto the telephone, the corner of her eye spotted a brown envelope, sitting on Alejandro’s table.

The papers inside of the brown envelope were slightly peering through.

Just enough for her to see the writings on the top.

Pueblo Viejo Mines: Contract.

Aha.

She quickly sprinted to the door and peeked through the hallway, before closing it and returning back to snoop through the documents.

"Okay, let’s see...", she sighed, as she slowly slid the documents into her hands.

It felt like vellum, or parchment.

She did not have time to admire the feel of some darn papers.

She needed to find out the truth.

After a couple of minutes of skimming through the documents, she had made out that...

Alejandro had authorized the bombings and her mother had paid him to do it.

She dropped the papers, and clung to the desk for balance.

No.

Alejandro.

Alejandro parked his car in his driveway and decided against driving all the way into his garage, as he had plans to take Isis out within the next 10 minutes.

He didn’t stop his engine, and getting out his car, he opened the left backseat door and grabbed the bouquet of flowers he had gotten for Isis, before making his way into the house.

I left the car running. Anyways, it’s all good.

He raced up the stairs and muttered curses under his breath, as he almost tripped.

Alejandro contemplated on calling out Isis’ name through the passages and decided it would be better to surprise her.

She can’t be in the kitchen. I’ve never seen her cook. She probably doesn’t even know how to.

He walked through the passages in his house and cut all the corners he knew, to get to his study.

Alejandro had a feeling that Isis was maybe studying or was still busy with her father’s investigation.

Before he left for work, Isis was curled up in her bed, going through some documents.

He held his breath at the thought.

Alejandro took his left and proceeded down the corridor, to his study.

Opening the door, he found Isis in a stupor.

When she turned to face him, there was no trace of tears in her eyes or any track marks on her reddening face.

Isis’ eyes were narrowed, rigid, cold, hard.

Alejandro had never seen Isis look that way.

Her eyes had a deadness, a stillness. The girl who laughed often, the one who was everyone’s friend, had developed a hardness.

His eyes darted to the brown envelope on his desk, and then to the papers that Isis had gathered in her hands, and then back to her calculating glare.

It was as if Alejandro could read everything Isis blamed him for, in one extended glare and forgiveness wasn’t an option anymore.

In that moment, Alejandro knew that Isis had already gone from him.

Once more, he was the enemy. He was certain that she had concluded her investigation.

Alejandro had this sixth sense. A third nature, besides his killer instinct, and it was always accurate.

The swing from most loved, to most hated, would be the end of him.

Her state had no greyscale, only the polar extremes existed.

He traced his eyes towards the ground and stared at the documents he had constantly reminded himself to put away before he left for work.

He closed his eyes, regretfully.

Alejandro drew in a deep breath, the burning hard stare between himself and Isis, would last only as long as it took him to think of the most brutally cutting thing he could tear her down with.

But his killer instinct failed to rear it’s ugly head.

He had learnt how to control panic as a child. That came at a cost to his health but gave him a survival advantage in a dog-eat-dog world. The cost was caused by raised cortisol levels that could damage his brain and body. He was, for the most part, oblivious to stress and fear. It enabled him to survive better in the short term, but this time, he failed dismally.

Maybe I should kiss anything breakable goodbye. Which right now, might just be my nose.

It was so hard to tell and so pointless to run.

Isis spoke up.

"So, you caused my father’s death?", she asked, in an almost-hushed tone.

Well, not technically, but...

He thought he had prepared himself mentally and emotionally for such a confrontation.

He was wrong.

Alejandro swallowed hard and dropped the flowers onto the polished, marble floor.

Fuck.

Sergio.

Sergio was in a hotel room with another woman, already indifferent to the death of his former lover, when his phone rang.

He ignored it and carried on getting his skin kissed by a red-lipped, harem bawd.

Sergio was on a quest to erase Aisha’s memory from his mind, but she was etched in his memory like a tattoo.

The kisses of the woman that was bent in front of him, were as good as those in The Magician’s Nephew.

But, instead of transporting him to a new fantastical land, they took him back to every single time that he had met Aisha in secret.

1998.

Those drops of rain weren’t just magical, they were divine, only because he had seen Aisha.

Each drop of rain had washed away an unseen pain, a doubt, an angst from his past.

He had recalled that for the time their lips were locked together, the world itself ceased to exist, blurred and indistinct as a wet painting left out in the torrent that fell from the dark cloud above.

Sergio had been in love with Aisha ever since he had first set his eyes on her, on his holiday to Mexico.

They had a love child whom Aisha claimed had died.

She never wanted to specify the nature of the child’s death but he had suspected that she most probably might have aborted it, seeing that she was married at the time, and he was too.

It didn’t bother him because he was a married man and he didn’t really need that kind of drama in his life.

Although he had been in love with Aisha, he had never thought of divorcing his wife because of her.

And yet , she killed her husband, because of you.

That thought was partially the reason why his conscious would not let him be.

It’s like Aisha’s death, haunted his own existence.

His cellphone rang for the hundredth time, snapping him out of the hypnosis placed on him by his thoughts and his new lover’s caresses.

"Gita, stop. Let me answer. I think it’s important."

The woman, who had now succeeded in laying on top of Sergio, casually rolled off on her back and let him answer his phone.

He reached to the bedside and put the phone to his ear.

As soon as he heard the voice on the other end, even his balls froze.

Aisha?