My Slavery Partner

The First Morning

POV: Sola

I woke up at five in the morning before my alarm could make a sound. The room was dark and quiet, but my mind was already wide awake, already running ahead of me, already dreading the day.

I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the school uniform hanging on my door. Nobody from the Harrington house had called to tell me what to wear. Nobody had sent a message explaining where to go or who to meet. All I had was an address written on a folded piece of paper, and the memory of my mother's voice the night she signed that contract.

"It is just one year," she had said, pressing both my hands into hers. "One year, and the debt is cleared. We start fresh. I promise."

I had nodded and told her I understood. I did understand. That was the worst part of it. I understood exactly why she had done it, and I hated that I could not be angry at her for it.

The Harrington family had bought my mother's agreement in exchange for wiping out the money our family owed after my father's business collapsed. Sola Bello, daughter of a failed businessman, would spend one full school year working inside their home. That was the deal. Signed. Sealed. No way out.

I had not slept well. I had lain awake most of the night running through the list of things I needed to be. Polite but not weak. Quiet but not invisible. Useful without making myself too small to matter. It was a narrow line to walk, and I had never had to walk it before.

I pulled on my uniform because it was the only clean thing I had that looked presentable, grabbed my school bag, and left before my mother woke up. I did not want her to see my face. She would know what was on it, and then she would apologize again, and I did not have the strength for that this morning.

The street was still dark when I stepped outside. A car was waiting at the corner, sent by the Harrington house. The driver did not say hello. He opened the back door and then drove without music, without conversation, without once checking the mirror at me. I was glad for it.

The Harrington house was nothing like I expected, even though I had told myself I was expecting anything. It did not look like a house at all from the road. It looked like something from a magazine, all clean glass and sharp angles, sitting behind tall iron gates that slid open without a sound when the driver pressed a small button on the dashboard.

A woman was already waiting at the front door when I stepped out of the car. She was neat and quick-moving, with keys on her belt and a clipboard in her hand.

"You are Sola," she said. It was not a question.

"Yes, ma."

"I am Mrs. Kola. I run the house." She handed me a long printed list before I had even stepped fully inside. "These are your duties for the week. You will not need to be told twice for any of them. And there is one rule above all others in this house." She paused and looked at me with flat, serious eyes. "Mr. Remi does not like waiting."

I took the list and looked down at it. My eyes counted the items without really reading them. Eleven minutes inside this house and already I felt very small.

The entrance hall alone was bigger than the entire ground floor of my mother's flat. The floors were pale stone. The ceilings were high. Everything looked expensive in a way that did not show off, which somehow made it worse.

Mrs. Kola walked quickly and I followed, listening to her explain the schedule with the kind of speed that made it clear she had said these things many times before and had no patience for slow understanding.

I was still trying to take it all in when I saw him through the tall glass panel on the far side of the sitting room. He was standing near a window, his back half-turned toward me, a phone pressed to his ear. Tall. Still. Dressed simply, but the kind of simple that cost more money than my entire wardrobe.

That was Remi Harrington. I had seen his name on the contract my mother signed. I had read articles about his family in old newspapers my father used to keep. But seeing him in person was different. He looked younger than I had imagined, not by much, but enough to surprise me.

He did not look up. He did not notice me standing there. His free hand was in his pocket and his shoulders were relaxed, like the whole house moved around him without ever needing anything from him in return.

I looked away first.

"He will call for you when he needs something," Mrs. Kola said behind me. "Until then, you start at the kitchen."

The kitchen was large and spotless. A younger staff member named Amara showed me where things were kept. She was friendly and talked fast and seemed genuinely sorry for me in a way she was trying not to show.

"First days are the hardest," she said, like that was meant to be comforting.

"How long does it take to get easier?" I asked.

She handed me a cloth and nodded toward the counter. "Depends on how much Mr. Remi decides to notice you."

I did not like the sound of that. I started wiping down the already-clean counter anyway, because it gave my hands something to do while my brain refused to stop spinning. I had promised my mother I would be okay. I was not sure yet if that promise was one I could keep, but I intended to try. I had not come here to fall apart in someone else's kitchen on the very first morning.

I thought about her sitting at home right now, probably awake by this hour, probably holding her cup of tea with both hands the way she did when she was worried. She would not call me. She had promised to give me space. But she would be thinking about me every minute until I came home and told her I was fine.

I had to be fine. For her.

I was still holding that thought when I heard it. Footsteps in the corridor outside, unhurried but deliberate, moving in a straight line toward the kitchen door. Amara went still beside me without being told. She straightened up and fixed her eyes forward.

The footsteps stopped just outside the door. I turned toward it slowly, my cloth still in my hand, my heart doing something embarrassing and unhelpful inside my chest.

The door pushed open. And I knew, without anyone needing to say a single word, that my first real test was standing right in front of me.