UNBOUND: Freedom's Price

As much as she had decided to leave him, she was unimaginably heartbroken when she heard those words; it pained her that he was not even going to try to plead and make things right.

The expression on her face strengthened his resolve and he knew he was doing the right thing, she tried to conceal her true feelings with a stone cold expression but he did not miss the look of sadness that was a there, if only for a split second. One thing was confirmed; this woman loved him too much to go through one more bout of his crazy battering. He looked away and she simply said “okay, I’ll expect to hear from your lawyers. Thank you for making this easy for me”. Despite his decision not to say anything to her about his resolve, he moved closer to her and said “Efe, I just need you to know that I will always love you, I love you sooo much, it drives me nuts to know that I have put you through so much and I am truly sorry. Please forgive me and… pray for me”. Then he turned immediately and walked out of the door without looking back, if he had, he would have seen that her eyes were tear-filled and she had lifted her hand to try to pull him back.

One week later, Mark still could not get the expression on Ben’s face off his mind as he simply could not shake the feeling that there was something different about him this time. He was further convinced that his guts were right when Efe told him that he had asked for a divorce, Mark was up to something and he sure planned to find out. Ben’s usual style was to beg Efe and respond to his own threats with a man-to-man lookdown; the last time Ben had dismissively told him that the battering would not happen again. He tried to take his mind off Ben so he could be cheerful for Efe who was being discharged.

He walked into her room and saw his mum cradling and rocking Efe like a baby and his heart wept for his beautiful sister. She simply did not deserve an evil man like Ben. Since his mum was already being mushy mushy with her he couldn’t afford to do the same, else he’d just have two weeping women on his hands and he wouldn’t know what to do with them. He just walked up to them with a straight face and said “the Doctor says you can leave now, mum please help put the remaining few items in the bag and lets go.” They both obeyed like they were hypnotized and stood up, his mum put the items in the bag, took her beloved “baby’s” hand and led her out of the room. He looked around to be sure nothing was being left behind, took the bags and left too.

“Okay, great. Thanks a lot Tobi. Bye.” Mark got off the phone and went to give Efe feedback on his conversation with the Lawyer. She had entrusted him with handling the divorce process after making him promise that he wouldn’t make things difficult for Ben. As he walked towards the living room where she was seated, he saw how broken she looked but he could not help admiring his sister. She had gone back to her fitness training business with commendable zeal and she had confessed to him that as much as she was tempted to call Ben, she had made the difficult decision not to do that. For that, he admired her strength.