The Cursed Pharaoh's Bride

Chapter XXXVI

Carolina

“I can’t believe Elijah Seka has a spa in his home,” Tori gushes as she slips into her bath robe.

“You don’t have to be dramatic, it’s not a spa. He’s just letting us use the largest guest bathroom for a little pampering,” I protest as I watch her take a seat in the plush chair next to me.

One of the manicurists Elijah hired starts working on my feet. I told Elijah I wanted to have a girls day with Tori. I’ve been cooped up in Elijah’s home for over two weeks, and while it’s a nice place, I’m becoming restless. Elijah, however, didn’t want me to go out anywhere unattended, and I think deep down he’s still struggling to trust Charles to handle his body guarding duties alone. So, he suggested inviting Tori over to have a girls day in instead.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t go out today,” I say while trying to get comfortable in my chair.

“Relax, Carol, this treatment is way better than any spa or salon we could’ve gone to,” Tori insists. Her manicurist is just starting to smooth down the skin of her feet while a masseuse starts rubbing her shoulders. Tori looks like she’s completely enjoying herself, while I’m silently resisting the people who are trying to pamper me.

“I’m honestly glad we got to see each other,” I mumble.

“Is everything okay, Carolina?” Tori asks. “You seem tense. Trouble in paradise?”

I know her question is innocent and comes from a place of concern. But I have to fight the urge to roll my eyes at the word “paradise”. Anyone would think living in all this luxury is paradise.

“I’m just feeling kind of stir crazy,” I say. “This was all nice for the first week, but I miss going to school and being around other people.”

“Don’t you have your mummy or pharaoh or whatever to keep you company?”

My face burns at the mention of Elijah. That’s another matter all together. The time I’ve spent with him during the day has been almost like a fairy tale. He showed me around his building and introduced me to his staff. We’ve had a few date nights in together and I finally got him to watch a movie. He was both somewhat confused but enamored by the idea of film; it was adorable.

But when it was time to go to bed, I always struggle to fall asleep. I’m just so aware that he’s in the room next door. I can feel a sense of restlessness and longing though I can’t tell if those are his feelings or my own. And it doesn’t help that I keep having the same dream over and over again: his hot, rough hands brushing over my curves, his lips trailing kisses down my neck while we lay under the sheets pressed up against each other. I get the feeling Elijah has those kinds of dreams, too. I once visited his room first thing in the morning and I found him dripping wet in nothing but a towel looking...stiff. I can only assume the shower he took that morning was a cold one.

“I did, at first,” I reply after shaking the thought of Elijah’s rock hard abs out of my mind, “Elijah was around more because he was still worried about me. But he’s been back at work now and he comes home pretty late. I’m usually by myself most of the day.”

“What about school?” Tori asks. “Don’t you have class? I haven’t seen you and a lot of people are talking...”

“Elijah made me switch to online school,” I sigh.

Tori raises a brow at me. “He made you?”

“He didn’t make me,” I defend, “We talked about it. And that is the agreement we came up with. I’m just going to finish this semester online. I’ll go back to school in person next spring.” She doesn’t have to know that the alternative to online schooling would be getting dropped off by him every day while being protected by a group of body guards comparable to the secret service during school hours. The last thing I want is to draw attention to myself.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing the semester is ending pretty soon,” Tori says with a shrug.

“You said people at school are talking. What do you mean by that? It’s not like I was popular or anything,” I question.

Tori gives me a wary look. “Well...” she starts reluctantly. She then scrolls through her phone before showing me an article. The headline of the article reads “Mystery Girlfriend or Elijah Seka’s Latest Fling?” There’s a photo of Elijah and I sharing a kiss on the second floor of the restaurant we had gone to for our first date. The angle of the picture looks like it was taken from the lower level. And David was there that night... Did he take the picture and send it to some tabloid to humiliate me?! Also, how dare the tabloids call me one of his flings!!

When I don’t respond after staring at the article for several minutes, Tori takes that as her cue to start explaining. “That picture has been floating around and a lot of people in school have already seen it. You can imagine what they’re probably saying...” she trails off.

My heart drops. I pull out my phone and go online. I immediately search up Elijah. At first, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. The main things that pop up are articles about his company and the new line of products he’s rolling out. I scroll through social media, relieved to see that most of the posts related to him are about his business.

I suddenly stop at a post that has the picture of me and Elijah at dinner that Tori showed me. And that’s when I fall down the rabbit hole. I soon find myself looking at the same picture in a thread from an account run by my school campus. People are talking about how I look familiar, some people are outright identifying me as someone they have class with. And some of the comments are making my face go red with a mixture of anger but mostly embarrassment.

‘She’s not that pretty.’

‘What did she do to land a guy like that?’

‘I had lecture with her once. She’s kind of stuck up. Hope he moves on.’

‘I haven’t seen her around in class lately. She probably dropped out to become his sugar baby.’

I jump out of my spa chair pushing past the people who are trying to pamper me. “Everybody, please leave,” I say shakily as I clutch my phone to my chest.

“Carol-“ Tori tries to say but I cut her off.

“Please leave now,” I say again, raising my voice.

The manicurists and masseuses quickly pack up their things and leave the bathroom. I see Tori slowly start to get up too but I put my hand out, gesturing her to stop. “Not you, Tori,” I whisper. She stays like I ask but neither of us say anything for a while.

“What did you see, Carolina?” She finally asks.

I let out a shaky sigh. “It’s like what you would expect. There are hate comments already…all over one photo that was posted a day ago,” I start.

“Just ignore what those haters are saying,” she tries to reassure. But I shake my head at her.

“It’s not just the picture,” I say, “It’s the fact that I think I know who took the photo.”

“Who?” Tori asks.

“Let’s just say,” I start hesitantly, “I bumped into David at the restaurant the picture was taken in.”

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“I can’t believe you convinced me to do this,” Tori says as she adjusts her pair of sunglasses before gripping onto the steering wheel of one of Elijah’s cars.

“I didn’t think he would respond so quickly to my message. And if I don’t do this now, I’ll never get the opportunity to do this ever again,” I reason. “Elijah is at work and Charles is still under the impression that we’re having the girl’s day in so he’s not around to stop us.”

“I wish he was,” Tori mumbles under her breath. “If Elijah finds out that I took you outside without protection, he’ll kill me. Or exile me from your life. Maybe both.”

“Elijah isn’t going to find out,” I insist. I nervously adjust my own dark sunglasses and tighten the scarf a have wrapped around my head. Is it a cliché disguise? Yes. But it just has to last me long enough for me to make it to our destination. It’s our place. The place where he took me on our first date. The place where we had our first kiss. The place he took me to our last anniversary.

Tori drops me off at a small park in Queens that’s not far from my childhood home. David and I did go to high school together and we came to this park often with our friends. But when we started dating in college, we found a quiet spot by the pond in the center of the park that we always came to for alone time. Our first date was a picnic there and at the time, I thought it was so sweet and romantic. I used to think he was so sweet and romantic. But he was the reason it didn’t last. And it has taken me so long to realize that.

He is standing there right now, in our spot by the pond, under a tree that’s lost a lot of its leaves already.

“I wasn’t sure if you would come,” he says as he turns to me, giving me a small smile that I used to think was so cute.

“What makes you say that?” I ask.

“Well, you’re so famous now,” he mocks, “Being seen with some hot shot CEO, I thought you would be above all us peasants.”

“What do you want, David?”

“You’re the one who reached out to me,” he says slyly.

“Only because you’re the one who took that picture,” I retort.

“You don’t have proof of that,” he says quickly. “Either way, I know why you’re really here, Carol.”