The Billionaire who Ruined my Wedding

Chapter 2: The Mark That Fastened Me.

It was a lashing of rain.

Not gentle. Not to forgive. the type of antibacterial of nothing.

It dissolved – that crash of fleeing water feet long on the work of the door of the Cathedral of St Michael appeared to have set the very heavens to the sluice; it was time to clean up the life of Adaeze Okafor.

Gingerly losing her way out of the church, she began her journey.

The weight of every step overloaded the next.

Clad in a dress that had been white, once so finely chosen for the possibility of a future such as she trusted in, she was scrambling on wet marble and taking in dirt and rain and the indescribable burden of humiliation.

Behind her, the world continued to fall down.

Sirens wailed.

Voices screamed.

All that – all that shattered and despairing and crying in the name of her father – the prayer with the lost trust of her god came in the scream of her mother.

But Adaeze did not take a turn.

She couldn’t.

Thou knowest not I would go.

She would just miss entirely such steps.

There was something in her – something feeble even though unkilled – that could not stand its being dragged on the parade ground.

He was waiting in the shady section of the church.

Damian Cole.

Sensible to the tempest.

Unmoved by chaos.

To no avail, her doom flies.

Nor has the rain touched his black suit: it has not been disfigured, and it has not been tampered with even by nature itself, which has been too much in his reverence to meddle.

'Three minutes, upon his own peril,' he said.

Adaeze shook the rain off her coat and waved her unhappiness with her grief.

Three minutes, what, she shot.

His eyes were not to stray.

But whether by day you will have your father send your brother years in prison or by daylight he will leave prison.

She gasped for breath.

It was not, in his words, cruel.

And it was in the comfort with which they were.

When he spoke of the weather.

The life of her father is not.

Her destroyed world.

'You are,' I thought shrilly.

Damian didn’t answer.

The silence was a silence in itself.

and it brought her some sickness sicker than any confession had brought her sickness.

THE push against the undetermined impacts.

It turned out to be ten minutes later when Adaeze was in a black car, which was not her decision.

Leather seats. Cold air. coloured windows, which changed the tempest to a hazy streak of grey and gold.

Instead, she sat squarely and clasped her hands in her lap, and her wet dress smeared wet on to her like an open sore.

On the other side of her, Damian Cole was typing on his phone.

Not watching her.

Absence of toleration of her existence.

Not a man, but a signed paper.

Whither shall we? She at last questioned.

'His office,' responded he, with head unlifted.

Her throat tightened. “For what?”

So that he may have judgement.

Her turn was to him. The answer to thy cognisance.

He was gazing at her at present.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

And now some gravelled her worst.

“No,” he replied. Delude thyself with thy haste, thy fancy.

The car was once again engulfed in silence, accompanied by silt.

Out there Lagos was faded to a messy memory – lights congealed by rain, mayhem, stuck in a traffic jam where a city, already breathing, had already died.

COLE ENTERPRISES

They had reached a structure that was no longer a traditional building but had transformed into steel.

Cole Enterprises.

An Italian-like tower of glass, piercing the heavens in that it flashed lightning in all his domination even of the storm.

Slowly Adaeze got out of bed, her wet cloth trailing her like a chain of tones that had no familiarity with her till that time when the beast started to happen.

It was an unnatural silence inside.

No reception.

No security questions.

Nothing can be compared to hesitation.

As they told it the making:

He is coming.

And everything obeyed.

On the way up the lift, nothing was heard.

Too silent.

The higher the elevation with which they were elevated, the greater the impression that Adaeze of reality was deserting her.

The elevators descended snugly, one after another.

They began to feel as if they were leaving the world behind along with everything else.

THE CONTRACT ROOM

The doors opened.

Quite the opposite, the higher one was.

Not an office.

No company area.

It took the form of comfort that was disguised as strength.

Dark wood. Soft golden lighting. A city with closed eyes, Bercy glass walls. It was all going to be expensive – and not get away.

One folder was on a long table.

Damian strode quickly towards it.

“Sit,” he said.

'Do not desire me, not thy employee, Adaeze,' I said.

Something, something, something inexplicable, inexplicable, something elusive, changed – changed in him.

Then it disappeared.

“Not yet,” he said.

She could scarce imagine uttering the words of saying so; it would cause her blood to run hot.

She remained standing.

Damian undid the folder and tossed it on her.

“Read.”

She hesitated.

Then I took it.

She looked in a searching direction.

Her breathing slowed.

Then stopped.

It was a matrimonial move.

She was already printed in her name.

And there, already, he is called.

The ruling appeared to have been a long time coming prior to the ruling.

'You have done this already, you said?' she said whisperingly.

“Yes.”

Her head moved round. So I can do nothing.

'One can always choose,' said he. Not all consequential ones.

Her voice sharpened. “This is blackmail.”

I rather misuse barter, he corrected.

She shuddered as she read.

Clause after clause.

Cold. Clinical. Detached.

Twelve-month marriage term

Public appearances required

Confidentiality enforced

No disclosure permitted

Financial compensation guaranteed

He was obliged to sign a court case with Chief Okafor.

Her stomach twisted.

'You have turned marriage into business,' I bitterly said.

It is already, replied Damian.

Still more, she was struck by that answer.

And that in her mind it was what she thought.

THE FACT that she was not to.

'You ruined my wedding,' she said all of a sudden.

Damian stepped closer.

Not aggressively.

But to circulation.

'I did not come and sully your wedding, you know,' said he meekly.

Adaeze’s eyes flashed. “Then who did?”

Do you?, I replied. He replied.

She was as though she had been hit with words.

Her breath shook. “That’s not true.”

He was fixed in the eyes.

Then rescind the agreement.

Silence stretched.

There had been an immense collision of thunder outside that shook the windows.

Adaeze gazed down.

She perhaps had looked at the face of her father.

And not as an honourable man.

But as a prisoner.

Broken.

Watched.

Destroyed.

and her mother left All alone in a falling world.

Her heart sank, aching.

'I am saying, speaking, it is my or your choice,' said she.

Damian said nothing.

No nicer thing than that silence.

THE SIGNATURE

A hand of hers was reaching.

It shook violently.

'Nay, nay, that's naught, that's naught,' she said. This cannot be so.

But time will not permit us to accept reality.

It just takes doing.

Her fingers tightened.

She made a mark on the pencil.

And signed.

Something moved somewhere in the room when ink was in touch with paper.

As a lock goes on.

There is an effect like a door that closes.

She almost finished the pen when she felt herself being burnt by it.

'Well, it has,' said she with the hollowness of despair. Do fulfil thy promise now.

Damian doggedly took the folder.

And this will you see tomorrow of your father.

Two rays of relief sparkled in her--

brief.

fragile.

dangerous.

She said, 'Well then, then?'

His eyes met hers.

Make me thy wife.

Her breath stopped.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

'Splintered laugh,' she said. “You’re insane.”

Damian shut down the folder.

Then added quietly:

You will be at my house tonight.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I said no.”

He approached still closer.

Close at hand, I now found resistance to be less than fear.

It was a contract, which he signed. “Not a suggestion.”

Her heart raced.

I do not belong to you.

His eyes were not moving.

A pause.

Then:

'You do, for 12 months,' said he.

THE desire that had taken her life away.

An hour later, Adaeze was at the wheel of a different car.

It was no home visit she made this time.

No home was left.

She looked through the window as Lagos was reduced to shadows before her – lights eclipsing, roads instantly being swept off to indescribable grey insignificance.

Damian waited along with her.

And never were his eyes looked at.

The tempest he had created within her intensified once he entered her life.

This was silence which was worse than words.

At last she cracked it.

“Why me?”

An instant response was not to be expected.

She swivelled around and looked up at him.

'My dad Naught,' said my dad. “Why punish me?”

Finally Damian gazed at her.

Long.

Measured.

Then said:

As thou too alone art that which had made him quit me in such a place that would receive me.

Her breath froze.

It is not wrong, she said to herself.

“No,” he said.

“That’s a consequence."

The car slowed.

Then followed a great gate, and there was no sound.

There was a mansion beyond it.

Not a home.

A fortress.

Cold glass. Dark structure. Silent dominance.

Adaeze was dropping and had fallen.

Here I am to stay?

Damian nodded.

The car stopped.

The door opened.

Rain poured harder.

And momentarily she wavered.

Then came out in this fashion.

Due to the impossibility of travelling around.

FINAL SCENE

A day of silence reigned in the mansion.

Too clean.

Too controlled.

Too empty.

Kneeling upon her heels, Damian, kneeling, bowed down.

You see, you shall do what you will.

'And what a fine man,' she said to herself.

He pegged her style aside.

One rule, he said.

She turned sharply. Naturally there is.

He stopped.

His eyes met hers.

Cold.

Final.

Said he never questioned my former.

Adaeze frowned. “Why?”

A pause.

And then said Damian Cole, she had more to say:

You know, in case you did know who I was, you might have known why I chose you.

It was very quiet.

The lights in the mansion fluttered.

Shall we go a long way out--

A phone rang.

Damian no longer was the same.

It was then, on the first occasion, that she had seen him...

He looked unsettled.

With no more, he strode out.

Adaeze was the only one in the stately hall.

Spraying the walls of the glasses.

It was one of the contracts that she signed in her life.

Lacking a wedding in her head.

It was a man, a stranger.

And no more was it a byword with her.

Up the stairs, he walked away, and he went...

Adaeze whispered:

What is it that I have joined?

And somewhere in the mansion--

Something moved.

This was something that, in fact, was her nightmare... had begun.