AYAD

Chapter 5

By the next morning, Gracie woke up feeling doubt in her heart about how the pre-marital year would go. She did not like what she was seeing of him, but wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Gracie pushed the busy thoughts out of her head and focused on getting ready for work, since she would have to leave earlier to get there on time. It was around 5:30 AM when she left her bedroom to leave the house.

The house was quiet and still, as everyone was still asleep, or so Gracie thought. She rounded the corner to pass through the kitchen, and was filled with shock to see Dabir standing there. He turned and looked at her, he was wearing a fitted white button up that was neatly tucked into his dark blue dress pants.

"Good Morning! I was surprised to see anyone else up this early!" Gracie smiled widely, putting a hand on her heart. "I'm not going to lie, I was a bit startled."

"Morning." He put his attention back to his laptop.

"Eesh, looks like I'm not the only one starting the work day early." Gracie awkwardly joked, she had heard such bad things about Dabir, in that moment she felt as though she was on thin ice.

"At 5am?" He asked.

"Well, usually no, but I don't know how bad traffic is in this area. I figured it was best to head over early just in case, it's all the way in Greenleaf."

Dabir gave her a disapproving look. "It's morning, yet it's still dark out. I can drive you there."

"Oh! Oh, no, no, that won't be necessary. I can just take an uber or something, seriously it's fine.

"It's fine, let's go." He shut his laptop. "We will arrange for you to have your own driver from tomorrow on.

"Oh, gosh that's a lot, well and thank you. You don't have the drivers take you around?"

"I have my own car and my own hands." He responded plainly, walking past her towards the front door. "Let's go."

Gracie hurried behind him, and was led to a simple, sleek Mercedes that was parked up front. Dabir opened the door for Gracie and waited for her to get her seatbelt on and settled before shutting the door and crossing over to his side..

Gracie noticed how he drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other leaned against the door, she could tell there was a lot on his mind.

Perhaps it was the heart of a therapist in her, but she found herself feeling empathy for Dabir. She knew first hand that Saheed made no contributions to the family business, everything was on Dabir's plate.

"Do you usually start your work day at 5?"

"Why?"

"I'm just curious, everyone else in there was asleep...Saheed always talks about how hard you work."

He glanced over at Gracie then back to the road, "They said you work at a women's clinic, yeah?"

"Yeah, I'm a therapist! Been doing it for a few years."

"That's good." He replied, "People need it."

"Thank you." A small smile spread on Gracie's face, for this was the first person in the entire family to finally acknowledge Gracie's career. Dabir did not say much, but it still meant a lot to Gracie. Perhaps the bar was low, but she still felt affirmed. "Saheed said you work at your dad's company, what do you do there?"

"Everything."

"Such as...? Like, do you help in marketing? PR? Sales?..."

"I'm an accountant by trade." He started, but then paused to listen to the GPS. "I joined the company as the Director of Finance, but as my father got older I was named Managing Director of Operations."