Vicariously Yours,

Graphically Abhorring

Marcelo was feeling unusually cold today. Was it the icy weather outside in the wintry New York City or was it the contents of what he was reading from the file of a stacked binder and on the front cover written in small but red bold letters, SECRET.

He wouldn't admit to what he was doing as to be proud of. Had he thought of even the basic courtesy of evading into someone's privacy? The courtesy he now lacked as his eyes moved along the lines of the background check he ran for the one called Isabella Pressly.

Lot of things come to mind when he read page after page of her world that she was so secretive about. A saddened world, indeed she lived in. His thumb rubbed the bottom of his lip and he looked away from the binder file he had in his hand into the window of his office.

He had opened it, leaving a small gap. Letting in that aloof crystal ice cold wind biting into the room. He didn't know why he opened the latch on that window. Maybe it was a sort of a positive punishment for him going through somebody's private life. And that wasn't just somebody. It was Isabella.

The woman who let him grasp her soft breasts. The woman whose nipples were like the pinnacles of mountains. The woman who refused to kiss him.

Marcelo had no idea but after she left, he made a beeline to his house, got on a call with an old buddy of his who had the contacts to run impressive background checks and it took four days but soon in his hands were the rough papers of Isabella's history.

In detail, it mentioned she was a graduate of John Hopkins University where she qualified for her MD degree after MBBS. For a major part of her late twenties and thirties, she dealt with Emergency psychiatry. She had also written a book on the Effective methods in psychiatry. Later on, she got her own private practice and deals with substance abuse and adult psychiatry as well.

An impressive resume for a woman like her but it didn't go unnoticed about her earlier life, when she was a young girl living only with her very rendezvous mother called Kristen Pressly. Isabella's father, the biological one had up and left the family and soon died due to AIDS.

Marcelo again looked away from the file and this time, his eyes closed. He was feeling slightly empathetic for her since she did mention that she never knew her own daddy. He hated his own father but never knowing where he came from would sting a little bit for Marcelo, probably because he couldn't have known where to go so as to kick his father in the nuts.

Marcelo always had a little too little of empathy. Only thought of himself. It's because all his life, he'd seen his father and mother and how they were at each other's throat, the rubbish provoking fights and name calling and loathsome selfishness, the bickering that turned into sexual dirty acts he grew around and in all sincerity, that's probably what he thought of marriage and love and relationship.

That was a crucial lesson for him. Something that hadn't changed.

Then, he snickered to himself. "How ironic."

Look where he was. He was engaged to a woman who he didn't care for. Suddenly, a terror like anger thrilled through him. It had snapped away all his rationality for a few strong long moments. With a skewed agenda in mind, he immediately got up, dropping the closed file into his drawer, locking it.

Striding forward in to the hallway of his house, he looked around for Pamela. Finding her sitting in their bedroom in nothing but sheer lace white nightgown, he stopped short. A blast of sense wracked into him.

Don't do it.

Pamela glanced up from the glossy magazine she was reading. "Hey honey. What's wrong..."