1 Her prison
“You will do this.”
Okafu grimaced at her father’s words. She lay still on her bed showing no sign that she had heard him. She closed her eyes praying to anyone who would listen to make this horror show stop.
This could not be her fate. She was a good girl, who hoped to grow into an amazing woman. She was studying to be a doctor, for f**k’s sakes.
She was planning to help her community. Be a good and responsible human being.
But Noooooo! She couldn’t do that! She couldn’t be what she wanted to be.
She had to be…Okafu gritted her teeth in anger.
Fuck.
Her life was going to turn into a prison. No. She couldn’t let this happen.
“Okafu? Did you hear me?” her father continued.
“Leave her alone. I’m sure she’s still asleep.”
Feet shuffled around her bed, and Okafu imagined her mother dragging her father out her room. “Let’s wait until she wakes up.” She pleaded.
She could tell her mother was close to tears. Her voice wobbled.
“No. This has to happen now.” Her father growled.
Her blankets were ripped from her body and thrown to the ground. “She is a grown woman and understands how the world works.”
No. I’m 20, Okafu screamed internally. She was hardly considered a woman. Yes, in the olden days she would have been married with five children by now. But they didn’t live in those days. And her family didn’t practice those customs. Well at least she thought they didn’t. She wasn’t naïve. She knew how the world worked.
She knew that her father had lost a lot of money in his business dealings a few months ago. Money that belonged to very dangerous people. A dangerous man to be precise. Ren Amatapa. Chills run down Okafu’s spine at the thought of the man.
He wasn’t a man to mess around with. He was filthy rich, arrogant and dangerous. The kind of dangerous that people talked about in hushed tones. The Amatapa clan owned the very town they lived in. They were a close knit high rolling clan that kept to themselves and mingled with their rich friends. They owned numerous banks and oil companies. They attended charity events and were highly respected in the town. But Okafu knew better – rumour has it that the Amatapas were involved in some shady businesses. The make you disappear kind of businesses.
How else would Ren convince a man like her father to marry her. They didn’t know each other. They didn’t even roam the same circles. She was a student and he was a billionaire. And she’d had the misfortune of meeting him that one time.
Okafu stared at her parents and sat up.
She wished she could scream, her lungs out.
She wanted none of this and it seemed no one cared what she wanted.
Okafu got up and walked to the bathroom, ignoring her father’s heated face. He could huff and puff all he wanted she wasn’t marrying that brute.
No. There was no way.
Okafu let the door slam shut behind her. She walked to the basin and stared at herself in the mirror. Her normally radiant face was pinched in a painful frown that pulled her eyes into narrow slits. She hated looking and feeling like this.
Fuck, that Ren Amatapa.
Why couldn’t he go mess up someone else’s life?
Anger and feelings of helplessness filled her. As she remembered the very moment her life became a living hell.
The day she met, Ren Amatapa.
Okafu clutched the basin with both hands as the memory played in her mind, like a very bad horror film. Tears filled her eyes, regretting her decision that day.
