Forced to love

Forced to Love (Episode 1) The first thing Grace noticed about Mr. Harrison’s estate was the silence. No laughter, no music, just the sound of her worn sandals scraping against the polished marble floor as the gate locked behind her. She was nineteen, but she felt twelve again — small, disposable, standing in a living room that smelled like money and cold air conditioning. Three days ago, she’d been scrubbing plates in her stepmother’s kitchen. Now she was someone’s wife. Three Days Earlier “Stand up straight, you ungrateful girl,” Linda hissed, yanking the dress around Grace’s waist. “Your father and I have suffered too much because of you.” Grace kept her eyes on the cracked tiles. She’d learned at eight years old, the day her mother was buried, that eye contact was rebellion in this house. Her father, Robert, didn’t look up from his newspaper. “Mr. Harrison is a good man. Wealthy. He needs a wife. Your bride price will pay for Emily’s university.” Emily — her stepsister — leaned against the doorframe, filing her nails. “Finally, you’re useful for something, Grace.” She was eighteen, pampered, and had never washed a single dish in her life. “Does he… does he know how old I am?” Grace’s voice was barely a whisper. Linda’s slap came fast. “You think you have a choice? After all the food we’ve wasted on you? The school fees we paid before you dropped out?” Grace dropped out because Linda stopped paying after middle school. But she didn’t say that. Arguing only made it worse. That night, Emily came to her room. Not the guest bedroom, but the small space beside the garage where the generator was kept. “I told Dad I don’t want you here anymore,” Emily said, smiling. “You walk around like you’re better than us. Now you’ll be some old man’s maid with a ring. Good.” Grace didn’t cry. She’d run out of tears at fourteen. The Wedding There was no white dress. No priest. Just Linda, Robert, two men in suits, and a stranger in his fifties with grey in his beard and eyes that didn’t bother to look at her. “Sign here,” her father said, pushing a paper at her. She couldn’t read all the words. She signed. Mr. Harrison — her husband — only spoke once during the whole thing: “Make sure she comes with nothing from this house. I don’t want their poverty in my home.” Linda laughed. “As you wish, sir. We’ve already counted the money.” Two hundred thousand dollars. That was her price. Now “Your room is upstairs, third door on the left,” Mr. Harrison said, not looking at her as he loosened his tie. “My son will be home from London next week. You will cook, clean, and not embarrass me. Do you understand?” Son? No one told her about a son. “Yes, sir,” Grace whispered. “Don’t call me sir. Call me nothing.” He walked away, and the house swallowed him. That night, Grace sat on the edge of a bed bigger than her entire room back home. Her ‘husband’ slept in a different wing. She was a wife in name only — sold to pay for Emily’s business degree, to free up her room for storage, to erase her from a family that never wanted her. She pressed her forehead to her knees. She had been treated like trash all her life. Now she was trash that had been bought. Then she heard it: footsteps in the hall. Slow, deliberate. They stopped outside her door. The knob turned. End of Episode 1