The wall ran into Marieke Venter. Hard.
At twenty-two, Marieke knew there were many perfectly innocent sayings that had lost meaning, thanks to society’s perversion. ‘We’re just friends’, for instance. She and Ryan from the garage were ‘just friends’, although very little of what they did together could be qualified as friendship, much less innocent.
‘Walking into a wall’ was another example. Lots of people, through their own clumsiness, walked into walls. Accidents happened. She was making a conscious choice that she wasn’t having her ass kicked by her own brother, but rather that one of the four walls of the house they shared had chosen to forcefully run into her. By tomorrow, she would have come up with a better excuse for her swollen face.
Ashwin rammed into her from behind, using the full weight of his body to shove hers into the cold cement. Marieke choked on a scream, her jaw crunching into the wall. She tried to wriggle and felt something hard, probably his knee, digging into the small of her back.
‘Ashwin, please …’ she moaned, gulping down the bloody saliva pooling near a loose tooth. ‘Please, I didn’t tell her anything!’
He laughed in her ear. There was no alcohol on his breath, and Marieke’s heart sank. Ashwin sober was a lot more dangerous.
‘Lying bitch,’ he growled, striking her head with the flat of his hand.
Ten minutes earlier, he had walked in on her having supper. The look on his face had made her mouth go dry. He knows about Ryan, her first thought had been. The rule was never mess with other employees, although she suspected Ashwin meant for her never to get involved with any man at all.
When he’d asked what she’d done over lunch that afternoon, she’d known that he knew. Pieter must’ve told him. She’d forgotten to cover her tracks by telling Pieter to forget Miss Johnson completely.
She had opened her mouth to lie and he had slapped her so hard the chair had almost toppled. She had grabbed the table to steady herself. Ashwin had made a grab for her, too. At first she’d thought he was reaching out to help, that his anger had immediately dissolved and he’d come to his senses.
But he’d gripped her by the shirt and dragged her to her feet, shaking her and shouting. What the fuck did she say to the journalist? How dare she talk to the press about their private family business? Marieke had started to cry, blubbering that she hadn’t said anything and Voinjama Johnson wasn’t from the press, she worked for a fashion magazine. Ashwin had shaken her harder and she’d spilled: they’d met for lunch, she was trying to help him, to make sure it was absolutely clear he hadn’t done anything wrong to Jacqui.
His irises had turned to chips of dirty ice at the mention of that name. ‘You made it worse!’ he’d bellowed, and slapped her again. Marieke had screamed as she had gone down, her chin connecting with the edge of the couch, cutting her cries short. She had rolled onto the floor, dizzy and panting as the warm taste of iron had rushed onto her tongue.
Someone had banged on the front door, one of the neighbours. A woman’s voice had shouted a frightened question and Ashwin had scuttled to the door and locked it. He had stridden back and yanked Marieke up, demanding to know what else her stupid mouth had said. Marieke had known he only wanted to know one thing. But never in a thousand hells would she admit to sharing his private shame, to confessing to another soul about the rape in police custody that was still eating him up inside.
‘You lying bitch.’ Ashwin’s voice clogged with tears. His body shook with sobs and he put his cheek against the back of her head, disappointed at what she had made him do. ‘You women are all the same, all lying bitches.’
Ashwin crushed the back of her neck with his forearm. Marieke gurgled and writhed against the wall as her head started to balloon, her vision blossoming red. The last thing she heard before she slumped out of consciousness was Ashwin’s voice telling her over and over again that she was the bitch. Women were the bitches, not him – never, ever him.