Jayjay had moved his place again.
This time it was beside Gangen river instead of a sea .
The river bank was filled with hawkers, temporary stores and tourists even though it was almost midnight already .
There was a wall that divided the tourist spot from residential area where the houses stood so close that it was as claustrophobic as a slum area .
With every step I was taking , there were a couple of people who were looking at me .
Fuck .
Why would he live somewhere like this anyway?
And Jasper , he seemed to know everyone around here . I was pretty sure that he had his face plastered all over the internet even now .
But people here , did not bother at all with this.
Maybe they were having a hard time to belive that the heir of Dane family and brother of Autumn Dane was living somewhere here like this .
The whole neighborhood went uphill slowly , so we broke stairs and more stairs until we reached a building that was barely standing .
Jasper had one room at the rooftop and it was one miserable place to say .
" The water only comes in the morning,there is some of the water stored at the buckets , use that to wash up ," the nineteen years old homeowner proudly informed me ,"There is no wifi , if you want to watch TV , just open the window , the grandpa living across us on the roof of next building has one . It is time for evening drama series now ."
" What are we eating ?," I asked , being not too hopeful about it .
" Wait ,I will boil eggs and have cup noodles ready ."
I was trying my hardest to not say anything about it . By the looks of it , he had not spent a single cent of my money except buying that ridiculous bike .
I had to remind myself that he was building this life all by himself with no help from his family. When I was nineteen, I could not even plan what dress I was going to wear in a party . My half-mad mother was the one who had to do it for me.
Ofcourse there was no air conditioner . Thanks to the rainy damp weather , I was still breathing .
" It smells so musty ," I commented as I sat beside my brother on the bench he had placed just outside his one bedroom apartment. Infact in the whole apartment, he was the only one that was living on the rooftop like this .
" It is the smell of freedom ," he smirked , handing over those cheap ice cones that got no flavour except a sickly sweet taste .
I put it in my mouth without much thought. That did not taste as bad as I remembered.
"Mhhm , your freedom is cheap ," I commented, I was low-key proud of him still eating and living like this ," But atleast you got a place to stay and can buy boiled eggs for dinner ."
" And watch TV for free ," he reminded me.
" Yes , watch TV for free ," I agreed .
"So...are we ever going to talk about your kidnapping incident ?,"he asked , he sounded nervous," I know that you , uh , don't like me putting my nose into your business but maybe I should know something."
It was not that I did not like Jayjay meddling into my affairs , more like I did not want him to be involved into my mess.
But he should know something since I did not know when or if Mr. Hunter was going to also target him.
" A man came for me ," I told him ," He calls himself Mr. Rupert Hunter , apparantly he is Liam's dad and he wanted me to reveal our marriage to the public ."
" Wait , wait , wait , slow down, you met WHOM?"
" Liam's dad , my father-in-law, keep up ."
" But isn't he supposed to be in jail ?"
"What ?," it was my turn to be surprised.
"Yeah , our father- he , once told me that he is supposed to be in jail ," he looked as confused as I was.
" And how come I did not know about it ?," when , just when people would think that I should atleast know about the people who were around me ," And how come Liam never mentioned it ?"
" He is probably very bitter about it ," Jasper shook his head , he had already eaten his ice cream and was chewing on the package now ," You know , dad said that his parents had a very messy divorce, apparantly his dad was cheating ."
So the apple doesn't fall far from the tree ..
I quickly chased the thought away ," But why would he be in a jail for this ?"
" I don't know ,but ," my brother shrugged ," You were never really interested in business world , so you probably don't remember it but his father was pretty famous for sponsoring start-up companies all over the world. . Father told me that thirty years back , he had just arrived after sealing a successful deal in West Asia and was planning to settle down here . Mrs. Anderson was running around for sponsors . If not for him , Sunshine corporation would have never existed . I had met him a couple of times when father used to take me with me . I think that it was probably six years back , the couples had a massive fallout . Everyone thought that it was just a rumour but for next few months suddenly international police was asking about him to everyone who had ever talked to him . Then he was just gone . Rumour has it he was into illegal trafficking . I think that he also had another daughter , when I was fourteen , I would hear that that woman who was in her thirties would go around sponsoring young boys in business or studies or anything else but there was a price -"
" Huh ?," I was surprised that I had never heard of it .
" That woman , rumour has it she used to assult young kids ," Jasper's face twisted in disgust ," Mother always told me to be careful of her ."
I had never really cared about the gossips of the upper class families like this . I was too absorbed to debut to even care about anything.
I remembered how Liam , often used to run away from home and came to watch me practicing dance in the studio even at late night .
Now I realised with a family like that , no wonder he looked like he was dead inside .
" That man , he had vedios of me ," I shuddered ," He blackmailed of releasing them if I do not reveal my marriage....that's why I did the livestream so I could calm the public down before they could see anything about it ."
" I know ," my brother neither agreed or disagreed, neither praised or scorned me for my desicion . He was just there for me knowing it might have been very hard for me to do what I did.
" The vedio , did you watch it ?," I asked him , placing my head on his shoulder. I already knew that even though it was deleted now , probably half the population had already watched it .
" No ," he lied for my sake , probably thinking that I would not be able to endure the thought of him watching me getting tortured like an animal.
I pressed my lips , tightly to make sure I would not start crying .
For tonight I wanted to pretend to be fine before my dear family