STUCK 2

Chapter 44

"You look scared of me" the woman smiled, her baleful gaze impossible to be mistaken, "But again, you always were. Let's keep the child outside this. You don't want her to hear what I'm about to tell you."

Tara watched the woman venomously, wondering how could the woman demand so boldly even after all these years. 

The old woman had no name. They never trusted Tara with their names. She didn't know the name of the mission, or her trainers or of the organization. She was to address them as sir and madam, nothing more nothing less. 

"Eugene" the woman called out, looking at Tara with a strange longing that made her uncomfortable. A woman appeared in her early twenties with a cheery smile, a smile that seemed designed to lure children, so fake that no one could mistake it for empathy. 

"Give baby Ina to her. She'll take care of it"

Tara didn't want to know how she knew Inaya's name, she was aware that nothing could be kept from her madam, it never had.

"No"

The woman looked at her, really looked at her, her eyes unsurprised but slightly changing, as if she watched her stubborn child with disappointment.

The old woman palpably noticed a different Tara that was marinated by Italians. From the little girl she had trained for years, raising her from a clueless child to an equipped teenager Tara had surely gained some bravery to stand upright in front of her madam. Tara's hair though tied looked long, her face was bright and she had gained some weight so unlike the petite little girl she had no hopes from. 

There was something about her eyes that the elder woman could not put anywhere, they looked vaguely unfamiliar, Tara had never looked straighter in the woman's eyes and now when she did, the woman perceived her as audacious. Tara's confident gaze forced her to imagine that something had changed, and if her decades of judgement was right, everything had changed.

The old lady remembered her chest being swollen with pride when Tara had made it despite the downfalls, she had absconded France, accomplished her mission and ravished the hard earned independence for three long years. It was a story of another time that it hadn't worked well out for her. It seemed Tara's fate always had cruel plans in the cupboard, she was never meant to be truly free.

The woman found it slightly, and only slightly painful to watch as strong headed woman as Tara stuck back inside the role of housewife with the same man she had tried with her whole heart to destroy, not to mention the annoying hanging child on her waist. "It must have been so difficult" the woman thought pitifully, to escape the hellhole only to fall into it again, drowning deeper than before.

'Not for long' woman smiled gladly with her thoughts, thinking she had come again to rescue Tara from the hell itself. However Tara did not look as much as cheery as the woman, it made her wonder whether Tara was unhappy at all in her current predicament. 

"She has to be...right? Who'd be willing to live joyfully with demons like Frantinos? "

"Trust me" this time the woman spoke with her mouth, shutting her mind, "We have business to discuss"

Her wrinkled smile brightened when Tara hesitantly offered the child to Eugene, her assistant supposedly good with kids. Although the little girl tried to resist, one loving word from her mother and she listened like a dog.

The woman thought in that moment that Tara hadn't changed after all, she still listened to her madam submissively. 

She didn't need to know that Tara only did what was sensible. She was sure this inescapable encounter was not going to be pleasant. If it was in her choice to keep Inaya away from it, she was willing to make it. And make she did, by giving her baby away, whispering "only five minutes" in Inaya's ears, telling her to remain brave and calm.