Ayesha At Last(94)

To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Subject: lawyers

The damage that this leak has done to my personal and professional reputation is irreparable. My wife is already threatening divorce and my business partners have expressed their reservations. If I go down, you will too.

Especially now that I know your name.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas L.

What the hell is going on? Tarek opened his website and input his administrator password. When he pressed Enter, a message popped up:

You no longer have access to this website. Your website has been infected with a virus made especially for you by Vengeance Productions. Welcome to the new world order, SUCKA!

Tarek tried the password again, but the same message popped up. This had to be some twisted joke. His cell phone pinged with another email:

To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Subject: you’re dead

According to the email I received earlier today, you own unveiledhotties.com.

I’m usually a peaceful man, but when my entire contacts list receives the sort of email your company sent out, it makes me very, very angry. What I do on my own time is my own business and I don’t appreciate being played for a fool. I’ll be visiting your place of business this afternoon to air my grievances in a more thorough manner.

Sincerely,

Javed

Tarek scrolled to the bottom, where he read the email that Thomas and Javed, along with everyone else on their contacts lists, had received that morning:

To: All subscribers of unveiledhotties.com From: Owner and CEO <[email protected]> Subject: Road to Damascus

You have been a valued customer of my specialized services for the past several years. As a purveyor of Muslim adult entertainment, my commitment to expanding audiences and tastes is unparalleled. I have provided pictures and videos of exotic women in various poses and positions, all engaged in the seductive arts.

However, despite the fact that my website has made me a wealthy man, from a spiritual and moral viewpoint, I am bankrupt. I have recently seen the light and learned the error of my ways. In order to make a full and complete repentance, I have decided to give up all haram activities and confess my sins. And since my sins include yours, I am forwarding this email to everyone on your contacts list.

All of your contacts will receive this email, along with a complete list of the services I have provided for you over the years. For a full record of all transactions, please click here.

I sincerely hope and pray that this will help you on the road to your personal redemption.

Sincerely yours,

Tarek Khan

CEO, unveiledhotties.com

101 Star Team Blvd., Ste. #300 / Buzz: 333

Toronto, ON

416-555-2055

Tarek sat rooted to the spot, at the centre of a spiralling tornado of panic and fear. His doorbell buzzed and his cell phone started ringing and pinging simultaneously with incoming messages. I’m a dead man.





Chapter Forty-Three

Hafsa hadn’t left the house since she’d returned almost one week ago, and Samira Aunty was worried. She called Ayesha on Thursday evening, her voice like honey.

“Beti, why haven’t you visited? Hafsa misses you so much. Maybe when you come to see her, you can talk to her about what happened. I think she might be suffering from post-traumatic stress,” her aunt said confidentially.

Ayesha doubted this, but she agreed to a Bollywood night and a return to some kind of normalcy.

“Maybe you can ask her what happened with Tarek. Maybe they are actually married and just having a little tiff,” Samira Aunty continued.

Oh God, anything but that, Ayesha thought. A quickie marriage might assuage the gossip-wildfire burning in the community, but Ayesha knew it would be better in the long run if Hafsa was not married to a lying, manipulative ass.

She kept this thought to herself, just as she had the confrontation with Tarek at the mosque. Mostly because she couldn’t believe that a decade-old revenge plot was the reason behind their current situation. She also couldn’t forget the look on Farzana’s face as the mosque crowd jeered. Khalid’s mother might be a wannabe-despot, but her schemes brought her no joy, and Ayesha pitied her.

Her thoughts on Khalid were not so easily sorted. As satisfying as it had been to watch Khalid punch Tarek, her mind kept drifting to the way his face had crumpled when Tarek revealed his true motivations. She wondered if Khalid felt as confused as she did. Or maybe he was too busy trying to deal with the buried ghosts of his past, suddenly thrust into the harsh glare of his community’s consciousness.

Or perhaps he was wondering if Tarek’s last, taunting words to her were true: When I told you Khalid and his family almost killed Zareena, you believed me . . . He even looks like a villain . . . In your heart, you don’t trust him, and you never will.

Ayesha shook her head. On that point, at least, Tarek was wrong. She knew Khalid could never be a villain. If anything, he was her hero.

Hafsa was waiting for Ayesha with chicken wings, two pizzas and the 1960 classic Bollywood blockbuster Mughal-e-Azam, the doomed Mughal-era love story of dancer Anarkali and her lover, Prince Saleem, fully remastered in colour.

“I like the black-and-white version better,” Ayesha said as she reached for honey-garlic wings.

“You can see the clothes better in colour,” Hafsa said. She was dressed in pink flannel pajamas, bunny slippers on her feet. She looked like a five-foot-three-inch toddler, but Ayesha didn’t comment. The room was littered with Amazon purchases; Sulaiman Mamu clearly hadn’t told his daughter about their financial difficulties.