Unholy Matrimony

Unholy Matrimony

Chapters: 15
Updated: 19 Dec 2024
Author: Nokuthula
4.1

Synopsis

Bold and ambitious Yasmin happened to be born into a society that frowns upon those who seek free will, self-discovery, and true love. But she will go to the ends of the earth to defy these cultural norms so she can live the life she wants. When Yasmin happens to save a billionaire’s son, Ali Almasi, from a horrific car accident, she is offered an opportunity that will change her life forever...

Billionaire Romance Contemporary BxG Boss Family Drama

Unholy Matrimony Free Chapters

Chapter 1 — THE UNHOLY UNION | Unholy Matrimony

Yasmin was born in the year 1994 in the Middle East/West Asia in the country of Yemen in the city of Sana'a; this would be during the beginning of the Yemeni civil war, which only lasted two months and a few days. The war was fought between the two militaries of the pro-union northern and the collectivist nationalist southern Yemeni states and their very faithful supporters. After the civil war, her parents decided it was time to emigrate to another country for fear of another civil war breaking out. It was in the month of August, exactly one month after the war (which ended in July), that they sold all their property, packed all their belongings, and bid farewell to their relatives, leaving nothing behind except a bleak memory of their short impoverished life together, of dwelling and toiling in the shanties of Sana'a, frozen and entrenched in the minds of their dismayed apologetic relatives and inquisitive neighbours, who loved chatter. They left with the hopes of a fresh start. Given the history of their forbidden union, her parents thought it was necessary to relocate to another country for a new start, a new beginning to give their life a new meaning, to give meaning to their dreary lives, which had held nothing but the incarceration of their happiness. They visualised their offspring spared from the abhorrence and spurn of the people back home in Yemen. Yasmin's father had just fished his university studies in the United States seven months prior to the conflict. At just twenty-three years old, with a two-year-old toddler in his arms, he paced towards the emigration centre, suitcase in hand. His seventeen-year-old wife was behind him, a two-month-old baby grasped in her arms, her face sweating profusely from the scorching Yemeni heat, strands of her wet hair flapping against her face as she took each step. As they went to get their passports stamped immediately before their departure, an apparition stuck in his mind. It was a vision of sanguinity. He imagined his new employer in his country of destination satisfying his promises to him of a wholesome salary and long-term employment, a home, a new home where they could plant their seeds of fortune and make something of themselves in this indeterminate harsh world. That is the place his sweet baby daughter Yasmin would grow up as he had already envisioned her in his mind, fully grown, a beautiful young woman standing outside of their new lovely two-story home to be. He had seen it in pictures, located in an urban area in the city of Beirut, Lebanon. That is the place Yasmine grew up, the place she called home. It was home only for the first ten years of her life, before they moved to a shanty town after her father lost his job due to a disaster that had occurred one momentous night, leaving hundreds of employees injured and a few dead. He had sustained severe injuries, like profound wounds, third-degree burns, and a broken leg. The company thought it would be good to compensate its workers by giving them a small amount of money despite covering their medical costs. An investigation was carried out by the police. As it turned out, a gas explosion had occurred at the premises of the corporation where he worked as an agent and consultant. His office was situated in the exact same building where the fire broke out after the dreadful deadly explosion. Apparently, a new inexperienced cafeteria worker had exposed an open flame into the quite peaceful atmosphere on that fateful morning. A few minutes after a gas leak, 100 kg of gas cylinders, six of them, exploded like a powerful bomb. A set of loud bangs rang throughout the building, shattering the stainless glass windows and shaking the building its self and the furniture in every room. The explosion sent a terrified worker flying out of the window from the thirteenth floor, landing in a puddle in a spot between two parked cars. It had been raining the previous night. The site was so horrific that the guard who was picking up trash off the parking lot fell to his knees and then passed out from shock. After the deadly explosions, a vicious fire broke out, engulfing the building in flames. Hot flames. So hot that the paint melted off the walls in most of the rooms and employees and staff were in a panic, hurrying to escape the building. The site was indeed horrific.

After that, Yasmin's father never wanted to work again. He moved to another town in the city of Lebanon for another fresh start. That was him, always so emotional, always running away from his problems. He also began to venture into other things like retail, a business he had saved for all his life. He purchased a shop nearby in the shantytown, where he spent his days chewing and smoking shisha. Yasmine was about ten years old at that time, while Safiya was almost twelve. When his things weren't working, he decided to leave for the USA, but Yasmine's mother wouldn't hear of it. It was back then when she still had her vibe, when he wasn't scary, when they could talk man to woman, husband to wife, in a sophisticated manner, without squabbling. Yasmin's mom loved home too much to abandon it just because of poverty. It was the land that made her who she was. Her beautiful home. She could not imagine being anywhere else. Because from the depths of these oil-laden, golden desert sands to the alluring rich ocean waters situated on the edges of these Middle Eastern lands was her land. Yemen. The land that had birthed her, one of a kind.

And that land grounded her heart, soul, and mind—her whole entire being—culturally and mentally. That land bore plentiful cultures and nations laden with wealth, from the earliest Bedouin ancestor that walked the continent, passing through times of warfare, times of Sultans and their fruitful kingdoms and lavish harems, through harsh times of religious conquests and dreaded slavery, up until the time of modern technology, but still the nations sought to retain their rich culture by reinstating religious and cultural laws. That beautiful land where her ancient ancestors had emerged also was where she came from. It was in that hot summer of 1993 when Mustafa came across her, staggering from tiredness. He had just returned from the USA for a short holiday. She was in the intense heat of the desert. Alone. He, fatigued, halted his camel for rest. Maliciously, the sun rays bore down on his reddened face at a hundred degrees. He stood, thirstily gulping cold water from his torn leather flask, steadily gazing at the alluring pattern of golden sand dunes in the distance. That's when his sharp eye caught her, a glimpse of a dark figure. She was slowly approaching far on the horizon. As the figure drew nearer, he could make out the face of a young, beautiful woman about sixteen years old at the time. Her yellow chiffon headscarf gradually flapped in the crisp desert breeze. Her face was glazed, dripping with sweat from the unforgiving heat. She wore a studded and embroidered dress with lily patterns. The dress was lightly drenched with dark patches of sweat here and there, revealed under her slightly torn Abaya. Mustafa, Yasmin's father, stumbled towards her, narrowly catching the bundle slipping from her hands.

She collapsed in his brawny arms. A few minutes later, she lay on a dirty white cloth he had hurriedly spread across the ground to protect her from the scorching sand. He caressed her hair, pet her face. Gawking at her for a moment, He splashed cold water across her face. "Are you alright, Sayed?" he kept calling, gently slapping and shaking her. She blinked her eyes open. Her mother had long straight hair, suntanned skin, a narrow facial shape, and large brown eyes that enticed him from the moment he laid his eyes upon her. That was the day Mustafa and her mother fell in love. He had helped her to her feet and rode off with her on his camel, the tiny bundle that was baby Safiya clutched to his chest. Safiya was her mother's first child from another marriage. Safiya's father had passed on due to old age. After all, the man was in his 90s and his wife hated him. Yasmin's mother chose to blurry these dark memories behind her. Deeply buried in the abyss of hopelessness, sadness, anger was a set of feelings that troubled her when her husband was still alive. They seemed to devour her whole, but in time, the death of her husband saved her, otherwise she would have perished alone. Her world was a world of bleakness that made her sleep all day in a sombre mood, only to be awoken by her cold husband, who would pour hot water on her, causing her to shudder in shock and pain. "You think life is all about sleeping. You're lazy. Get up!" he would shout in an angry tone. He was unforgiving and cruel. She got red blisters, which took too long to heal. A few days after her blisters had healed, she would get new ones, as a punishment for doing something else.

At nights, she struggled with insomnia, but it was mostly because her old husband would have sex with her like a slave all night. And in the morning, he expected her to work all day long on chores and farm work. When Safiya was born, he was the angriest man ever. "How dare you have a female child!?" he demanded, and he took the baby and threw it outside. "That thing won't sleep in my house at all." The man was really mean. Yasmin's mother took ages to recover from this emotional pain, months after her old husband's passing. Mustafa was her emotional support. That was way before the fire explosion accident. He became crueller than ever. He was unrecognizable, and Yasmin's mother seemed to miss her old life with her husband. At least her deceased husband left her alone most of the time. Mustafa bothered her all the time for one thing or another, mostly he loved to be sexually intimate with her. His sexual behaviour was starting to get disgusting. One time he dunked his head in the toilet multiple times because he complained that her tea was horrible. She learned to love him and live with him for just who he was.

Chapter 2 — NEW BEGINNINGS | Unholy Matrimony

The last thing Yasmin reminisced was waking up in hospital phasing in and out of consciousness every now and then. Despite the fact that she had no idea how she ended up there, she remembered being struck by this horrendous feeling of terror, and a sharp pain across her chest every time she regained consciousness. Her blurry vision would spot the doctors and nurses rushing around in sheer panic then relief after resuscitating her. One time she overhead the doctor confiding in one of the nurses, telling her her case was hopeless and how she was not going to make it. Yasmin’s heart sank when she heard those dreadful words that she bitterly wept when everyone left. On the days that followed, the young woman started drowning in sadness and she was slowly sinking to the bottom of an ocean of desolation that she started to believe she was going to perish along with her forgotten dreams, but deep within her was a flame, a flicker of hope that sought to triumph over her despair, a flame ignited by the blurry memories of a young man in his early twenties whom she would wake up and find sitting next to her bed holding her hand in his with a smile on his face. Sometimes she would wake up to flowers, and a get well soon card, sometimes he would leave a few novels for her to read when she woke up and a box of expensive chocolates. Despite the fact that she did not know who this man was, his visits gave her great comfort that she became hopeful she was going to recover and indeed one day she woke up for good with a nurse attending to some cuts and bruises that were clearly visible all over her arms and legs. Her bulging eyes were sunken with dark circles around them. Her frame was thin. Her body was weak. She struggled to sit up feeling very tired and shaky and then all of a sudden a wave of memories flashed back in her mind, unwanted memories of a frightful accident were she had saved a man from meeting a fate most gruesome to all yet embraced by some, a fate dreaded by most….death. She remembered the night's events like it had happened just yesterday. Yasmin had been living in the city for almost two years. She travelled all the way from her home town to find work. The night had been cold with a little drizzle. It had been raining the whole day but at least the sun had been out. Now the night was chilly, and Yasmin was stranded, hungry, and homeless with no money. The young woman was about two weeks shy away from her twenty- second birthday. She'd been in the streets for almost two weeks and had spent all her money almost down to her last cent on food and hotels and now she only had enough left to catch the bus back home, which arrived at 5 a.m. She had been sitting at a bus stop for most of the night clutching her backpack and suitcase with both hands shaking, from the cold, her blue coat drenched form the rain. It was almost 4.30 a.m. A dog could be head barking in a residential building nearby and also two voices of a quarrelling couple. Slowly the lights in the building started to turn out. Out of boredom she decided to go for a little stroll. She had gotten used to walking in the night that fear didn't bother her much at all.

She struggled to remember some details but the most haunting ones flooded her mind… like the moment she had come across some pieces of broken concrete and shattered glass, pieces of fabric that seemed to be leather in white smeared in blood, a few broken green bottles of alcohol and a dented expensive car door casually laying on the ground near a broken ledge on the bridge that had been violently crashed. How she had plunged sixteen feet into the cold dirty waters of the river with hopes of saving whoever was in the sinking rubble that was once an expensive blue Lamborghini. The last thing she had felt was a gut-wrenching feeling of fear of suffocating underwater, as her blurry vision spotted the man swimming towards the bank leaving her to die.

A sudden scream then pierced the silence and then it dawned on her that it was just a memory, when she felt the nurse's strong grip holding her down the gurney while she tried to calm her in a quiet voice. Yasmine's head hurt terribly.

"Finally, you're awake!"

The nurse whispered with a smile on her face.

"How long have I been here?" Jasmine murmured in a hoarse voice. She seemed to have a terrible fever and her temperature was very high.

"You have been in a comma for three and a half weeks; you need to take some rest because you have a very high fever." The nurse replied irritably waving her hand telling her to lie back on the gurney.

"Almost a month? Is the man doing ok?"

"What man?" The nurse replied with a puzzled look on her face.

"The man I saved from drowning after the accident. Wasn't he brought in here with me?"

She asked irritated at the nurses reply. She was eager to know if the man had survived because he had been bleeding terribly.

"No there was no man dear, you were brought here by some stranger who said he saw you jump over the bridge trying to commit suicide." The nurse retorted with a disappointed disapproving look on her face.

Yasmin could not believe her ears! She would have never tried to commit suicide; the thought of death alone was appalling enough to nauseate her and to make her lose her consciousness. Had it all been just a dream? An illusion? Had there really been an accident that night? Did she really see that car floating in the water?

" You must have imagined it, after all you hadn't eaten for days."

"What do you mean I must have imagined it I know what I saw!" She retorted, this time annoyed thinking the nurse was trying to play a trick on her. Or maybe the man had passed and she did not want to disclose the heart-breaking news to her. That all her effort had been for nothing and the man couldn't make it? Looking at her terrible state the nurse felt sorry for her.

“Just have some rest ok?" The nurse said, this time with a serious oak on her face.

"But I remember clearly I saved a man from an accident."

"Listen, madam, you really need to rest. Like I told you, there was no man or accident. You should be happy and grateful that some kind stranger risked his life to save yours. He's also paid all your hospital bills for the rest of your stay here as well."

The nurse replied really trying not to lose her temper. She had seemed like a quiet person with a cool temperament.

"Not another word from you or I'll ask the doctor to put you on sedatives. "

That was enough to make Yasmin quiet, but she just couldn't shake off that awful feeling that something bad had happened to the man and that the nurse was trying to hide something from her.

Finally, Yasmin was discharged from the hospital after a few more days and the doctor handed her a note from her rescuer written in blue ink in Arabic.

'It was a pleasure for me saving your life beautiful stranger,' it read.

'Please visit me on this address for any help you might need,’ then an address and name followed printed in capital letters but in black ink.

"He's quite a nice man you know," the doctor, a short man in his mid-fifties, said wearing a faint-looking smile while staring at her in pity. He was balding, with a few strands of white hair and a long beard.

"It's not everyday anybody decides to do this much just for a stranger. Especially for him! Do you know who saved your life miss?" He asked with a looked of exhilaration on his face.

"He's the twenty-year-old son of the wealthiest man in the city, a billionaire who runs one of the largest oil companies in the gulf. The young man kind of took a liking to you when he brought you here everybody thought you were his spouse because of the way he was treating you. The man halted his visits after a few days because he knew you were bound to wake-up soon."

He then turned and left, waving at the puzzled young woman. It perceptibly had to be a mistake because that man had been too injured to walk.

There was cluster of dollar bills stacked between the note. Never had she ever seen so much money in her life. She counted the dollar bills and got about two-thousand-five-hundred U.S dollars. This was more than the amount they spent on their monthly house hold supply including rent back home. Why had he given her so much? She thought of visiting the address just to thank him. Yasmin was relieved because she had worried so much about the after stay at the hospital, she would d be on the streets again and she wouldn't be able to contact her family. The past year had been really hard on her, travelling from place to place looking for work only being employed for a few monthly jobs earning a little bit of income which she would spend on food and stay and even maybe save a few bills to send back home. He sister would also her money from abroad well. Two years had passed, and city life never really fit her. Of course, due to her lack of experience and education, it was hard for her to find a decent, average- or high-paying job. She had gotten over worrying about what's she would eat or whether she’d make enough money to make ends meet, so all she'd done was stay in her small two roomed apartment staring out the window watching the rain during her spare time. Those were best moments of her life because she got to reflect on a lot of things including her loveless lonely life. But that was it. She had privacy, she was in depended.