Chapter 5

Has it even been twenty-four hours since my marriage? Someone should help me calculate. Maybe that would give an explanation for why I feel a hundred years old. Dajendro Group of Companies is like one thousand miles from Alfredo's mansion. I wish I even had a bit of money for a cab. But I don't. 

Yay me.

I finally get to his huge office while covered in sweat. The weather is getting dark already. He will probably have this for dinner. Thankfully, I had enough sense to put the food in a thermos-cooler. The food is still piping hot why the time I get in.

I walk to the receptionist. 

"Hi," I greet. "Please, tell Alfredo that his wife is here to see him."

She looks at me up and down. "Oh. Aren't you that girl that came for the interview a few days ago?"

I give her a bitter smile. "Yes, its still the old me. Any problem?"

"Uhm yeah." She scratches her hair. "There was a mix up that day. We sent you the wrong mail. Your interview was supposed to take place the next day. I'm so sorry that you had to go through all that."

"It doesn't matter. Now, I need to see my husband."

"Your husband?" she asks, gawking like an idiot.

I take my phone out and show her a footage from the wedding. She apologizes and sends me in.

I walk in through the elevator. I'm happy I am the only one left in there. I rest my head against the metal box. It feels like my legs might give away anytime soon. 

I'm still putting on my uniform. If my husband thinks I'm going to put on a pretty wife and act like his ideal wife outside while I'm a common maid inside, he must be kidding himself.

I walk into his office. I stop breathing when I catch the sight of him poring through a bunch of documents. I wish he was much nicer. To me at least.

He looks up and gets rid of the documents in a neat pile.

"I should have known you were the only one to walk into an office without knocking," he says and rolls his eyes.

Childish.

"Good evening, Mr. Dajendro," I say with a smile so sweet, it injects poisonous honey. "I brought your lunch."

"Dinner," he corrects. "Took you long enough."

I dump the cooler on his table and cross my hands across my chest. "Maybe if you gave the driver the permission to take me wherever I want, I might have been here two hours earlier."

"Come on, Miss Fernandez," he says, opening the cooler. "You probably walked to school your whole life."

"To keep fit."

"I'll get the changes made."

Then it hits me. He has never called me by my name. And he still called me Miss Fernandez.

He scoffs as soon as the words leave my mouth. He takes a look at my dress. "I knew it was a good idea for you to wear something like this. It suits you so well."

"You should probably keep quiet and eat before you choke on the food."

"Feisty too." I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or if I should just keep quiet. I go with the second option.

He finally unlocks all the locks of the cooler. As soon as he gets a sight of the food, he looks up at me with his eyebrows arched. I cooked something that has the same name as him. 

"I will take my leave now. You can ask the driver to send the cooler back home if you won't be making it back home tonight."

"No. Stay here. You'll be taking the cooler back with you by the time I'm done eating."

I huff. "Can I at least have a seat?"

He doesn't even look up before saying no. 

"You can't seat while your boss has his dinner."

"Fine," I say and continue standing. Even if I'm wearing my most comfortable sneakers, my feet still hurt. I've been on my feet the whole day. During the wedding, I was wearing my heels. While cleaning the house, I switched between my sneakers and flip flops. My feet still hurt either ways. The look red and swollen. I start moving from feet to feet. I would never admit that my feet hurt. It would make him win.

He takes his sweet time to finish eating. It's like he's eating the pasta stand by strand. He's scrolling through his phone at the same time. 

When he finally finishes, he asks me to take the driver home. As I'm about to leave, he calls me back.

"As I told you, I will ask the driver to start taking you around with the car. But I need info on everywhere you are going. And you can wear pretty dresses when you are going out."

"I'm not going to pretend just for the world to see. If I wear a maid's uniform, I'm going to wear it outside."

"Trust me, I love seeing you in the dress," he says with so much sarcasm, my knees buckle. "But you are just making fun of yourself. Because whatever you do, doesn't affect me."

"It doesn't matter. I will go around in this cloth. I'm not going to be a pretender for you or the world." 

"Nobody knew you before me, Miss Fernandez," he says and smirks as he watches me wipe the tears from my eyes. 

I leave the office and head downstairs. The driver takes me home immediately. Don't ask me how he was able to communicate with them before I got downstairs. 

It doesn't matter anyway because my feet can finally rest for a bit. I close my eyes to rest during the rest.

But all the temporary peace I have is destroyed when I see Sandra making her way out of the house. She sees me, flips her hair and walks away.