Chapter 1 FROM SCRUBBING FLOORS TO A WEDDING DRESS

NIRELLE

It's my twenty-first birthday, but instead of partying with my friends like a normal girl my age, I am stuck in this bathroom scrubbing it down. I sigh as I wipe off the sweat on my forehead, trying my best to ensure the water from the gloves on my hands does not touch my body. I gag in reflex as the smell hits my nose. The only thing I can think of as I kneel there and scrub is when I can be done with this and go on to the next.

"He is just a pig," I murmur to myself as I look down at the toilet seat that my brother uses. I had washed it just three days ago, but my mom had asked me to wash it again this morning so he does not get any infections. I scrunch up my nose and wipe off the sweat once again.

When she had come to wake me up this morning, I wanted to hope for a minute that she had remembered my birthday and was there to wish me a happy birthday. Instead, she stood by the door and dished out commands of tasks she wanted completed before nightfall. Everyone had acted as if I were invisible. I look at the seat once again and scrub the stain of semen. I scrubbed harder, trying to erase it like I wished I could erase him. I finish up before I go on to the next assignment my mom had spelt out for me.

"The lady wants to see." I hear a voice, and I look up from the basin of clothes I had my head in for the last thirty minutes. The girl looks down on me with compassion and pity. It was almost like she was asking many unanswerable questions. I smile at her and nod. Rinsing my hands off under the tap, I wipe them off on the apron I had on before following her to go see my mom.

As I walked through the mansion halls and saw the staff walk about, I wondered why my parents have domestic staff if they are going to make me do all the work. They should just fire them all and pay me their wages. I step into the study, and the familiar scent of books hits my nose. I walk to my mother briskly, as I know she hates it when I act sluggish.

"You asked to see me?" I ask and she raises her nose at me with some kind of disgust as if I were smelling. "Ma'am," I add, remembering what she had said when she slapped me across the face last night. She had her hair slicked back into a ponytail that shone under the dim light and was wearing a two-piece that screamed wealth.

"Your father has something to say." She nodded toward the man behind the table-the one whose presence alone made my skin crawl. He looked like a random man, but to me, he was the scariest, and no matter how much my mom hit me, he scared me more. I move cautiously to the table and stand at arm's length. He drops the paper in his hand on the table and looks up at me through the rim of his glass. His face was covered with hair that looked all grey from where I was standing; it had been a week or two since I last saw him.

"Why does she still look this way?" His voice thundered through the study walls, bouncing off the spines of all the books, and from the corner of my eyes, I saw my mom's body stiffen a bit.

"I wanted you to give her the news first before I did what I have to do," she responds. I look at her and do a mental comparison between us. She looked prim, like all those women who looked like they came from money, and for her, the term 'looks can be deceiving' was not true because she was indeed rich. Her face was tight, as she had facials done as many times as she liked, her nose was pointed, and a thin line for her lip. I always used to compare her to the evil cartoon characters.

The door creaks open, and my brother stalks in with rough hair as if he had been out all night drinking. "Is my bathroom washed?" Those were the first words he said to me on my birthday. I look at him and swallow all of the malicious words I want to throw at him because all it would get for me would be an intense beating and then me being locked away by my mother.

"Yes," I respond as he throws himself onto the couch and puts his leg up on the coffee table.

"Good, you are finally learning to work." I had stopped resisting them and their maltreatment because I had no place else to go, and quite frankly, there was nothing more I could do about it.

"Honey, why are you just getting in?" Yvette asked her son, but the boy responded with a wave of his hand.

"There was a party and I had to attend," he said. I almost laughed out loud at the irony. I was never allowed outside the walls of the mansion except when there was someone to supervise me, and yet he was allowed to stay out all night? Just because he was a boy?

"Nirelle," Enoch called me, and I stared at him from where I stood. I have no idea what he was about to tell me, but I am sure that it can't be anything crazier than what I was already going through with them.

"Go and get ready; you are getting married today."

My heart rate increased as I felt as if it was about to jump out of my body. "Today..." I trailed off, knowing I was not supposed to speak back, but my tongue had a mind of its own.

He stared at me without a change of expression on his face. "You are getting married today."