The Day I Stopped Being Mr Nice Guy

CHAPTER 5

The air in the garden was thick with the aftermath of the slap. The sound still seem to be echoing, like a lingering buzz in the silence. Daisy’s soft, heartbroken sobs was the only sound in the air, as she massaged her swollen cheek.

Mason, realizing Clara might have heard more that he had intended, quickly slipped into the role of a peacemaker and murmured soothingly, “Clara, darling, it is alright. There is no need to make a fuss over a child’s tantrum. These things happen you know?”

But Clara’s furious eyes were fixed on Dante, thick with misplaced loyalty, so his attempt to calm her down only poured gasoline on the fire.

“A fuss?” Clara hissed angrily, then she raised her voice and snapped at her husband with disgust in her eyes. “Look at him! He is not fit to be a father! He had raised her to be exactly like him…rude, stubborn, and always ready to fight! No matter what Mason said to him, is that an excuse for her to treat someone older than her this way? Biting him? This is the behavior you have taught her!”

Dante’s control, which had been stretched thin to its absolute limit, finally snapped, and the facade of an enduring husband vanished, and was instantly replaced by a man whose anger was as cold and sharp as a surgeon’s blade.

“What kind of ‘elder’ is Mason, Clara?” He shot back angrily, as his whole body shook with fury. “Tell me, what wisdom was our ‘elder’ trying to teach us? Our daughter…your daughter was just publicly humiliated, was just informed that her mother’s love is a freebie handed out with the trash. Your little girl was attacked. Her only crime was she trying to defend the last drop of your affection she thinks she has left! And what was her mother’s response? Her mother sides with the outsider who hurt her and went ahead to slap her without asking a single question. Is that how a mother is supposed to act? Enlighten me, please, because I seem to have forgotten!”

Clara was caught off guard. The clear truth in his words made her speechless. Then she became furious once more, looking for something, anything to lash on. “Mason is not an outsider!” She screamed defiantly, and pointed a shaking finger accusingly at Dante. “He is one of us! By allowing Daisy bully him, you have disrespected me! You will apologize to him. Right now!”

Dante scowled at her, then slowly shifted his eyes from Clara’s furious face to Mason’s pale one.

“Fine,” Dante said calmly, with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Ofcourse I will apologize to our esteemed ‘elder’, but only on one condition.” He stepped closer to Mason, who instinctively stepped back. “Mason, why don’t you look at your ‘darling’ Clara, and repeat what you told your son just minutes ago. The exact words you hissed when you thought no one but me could overhear. Tell her what you said about our ‘sickly’ daughter. Do that, and I will fall on my knees and beg for your forgiveness.”

Mason’s face went pale as he stammered, with beads of sweat crowding his eyebrows. “I—I don’t know what you are talking about.” He staggered backwards and shook his head. “Clara, he is twisting my words, trying to provoke me…”

Clara saw that Mason was scared, but she misinterpreted it entirely. All she saw was a good man who was being intimidated by her husband’s aggression, not a liar caught in his own web.

“You see?” She screamed, her voice shaking with rage. “You are threatening him! In front of me!” Overwhelmed by emotions, she scanned the ground wildly and saw a heavy, plastic toy car Jasper had dropped earlier and in blind fury, she snatched it up and flung it at Dante with all her strength.

Even though he saw it coming, he stood his ground, refusing to flinch and the hard corner of the toy hit his head with a loud thud, which made him stagger with a sharp hiss of pain as a huge red mark appeared clearly on his skin.

Seeing all that had transpired between her parents, Daisy panicked and screamed in pain. “Daddy!”

She hurried off the ground and ran to stand in front of him, and spread out her small arms wide as if to shield him with her tiny body, as she sobbed uncontrollably, “I am sorry! I am sorry I was naughty! Please, don’t let Mommy hit you anymore! Please!”

Hearing his daughter desperate plea was like a physical blow, way worse than the toy, and Dante’s heart shattered. He reached out a hand to comfort her, but Clara was far beyond reason.

She ignored her weeping child completely and pointed a trembling finger at Dante. “You have grown so bold!” She cursed at him aggressively, “Threatening people now? What next? Are you going to start hitting me too? Oh, I must have been blind! Blind to have ever married a man like you!”

She stepped forward to shove him abusively, but Mason intervened.

“Clara, no! That is enough!” Mason bellowed and moved to stand between them. He was not protecting Dante, he was protecting his own secret. He was terrified that a physical fight between them would give Dante all the reason he needed to expose him. “There is a child here! Look at her! Calm down!”

Mason sheer hypocrisy was the final straw. Dante bent down and gently carried his sobbing daughter, trying to make her feel safe, she buried her face in his neck and clutched his shirt with her tiny hands. He then looked at Clara, his eyes holding a lifetime of disappointment and said coldly, “You are not worthy to be her mother.”

He turned his back to her and began to walk away, with his daughter clinging to him as her only safe space in her collapsing world.

Behind him, overwhelmed by frustration, humiliation and complete denial, Clara screamed at him in pain and anger, as he made his way back to the hospital building…

“Oh, I am not worthy to be a mother? And you think you are worthy to be a father? Fine! If this marriage is going to work, then we will make it work! And if it is not,” she yelled out, too overwhelmed to care, too furious to stop herself. “then, let us get a divorce!”

But Dante did not stop. He did not turn back. He simply just held his daughter tighter and kept walking as her words echoed, sealing a fate she was too angry to realize she had just chosen for herself.