Chapter 1

Olivia's pov

“You are marrying Nathan Hayes and that is final.”

My father's voice didn't have anything in it. It came out flat like my destiny had been decided already. Like he was reading me the weather forecast or something. I couldn't believe what I just heard. The words rang a loud bell in my ear. I felt dizzy for a second.

I looked up to him from where I was standing like a soldier in uniform and on duty.

"I'm sorry, what?" I said.

"Don't play dumb with me. I am not going to repeat myself, miss Olivia!" He wasn't even looking at me. He was standing by his window with the Seattle skyline behind him. His office. His view with glass walls and a leather chair that cost more than my entire life spending put together. I had only ever crossed this office only when I was bringing in coffee or coming to clean it. Part of my job was cleaning his office daily. He made sure of that. 

"Jessica's too young. The Hayeses won't wait.” He looked to his side and said calmly, “You'll take her place."

"NO! I WILL NEVER DO SUCH A THING! IS JESSICA REALLY TOO YOUNG OR YOU CHANGED YOU MIND BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT YOUR PRECIOUS DAUGHTER CAUGHT UP IN A LOVELESS MARRIAGE LIKE THIS ONE? HUH?”

He turned around then. The same cold eyes he'd had my whole life. The eyes that watched me fall down the stairs when I was eight and…he just walked away like I wasn't even there. He would watch me cry of hunger and tell me to stop the noise. But my younger sister Jessica, she always got the complete opposite.

"What did you say?"

"YOU HEARD ME! NO!" My voice was shaking but it came out. "I won't do it."

He laughed loudly. His shoulders moved up and down but the sound coming from the laugh had nothing funny in it. 

"What do you think this is exactly? You think you have a CHOICE? You think you have a day in this something? Look young lady. Don't piss me off. The merger is set. The agreement has been signed. YOU.ARE.MARRYING.NATHAN HAYES! Copy that?

“Why do you hate me so much father?” My voice was trembling. “I am equally your daughter. Did I fall from the sky? Right from the very beginning you have always favored Jessica and intentionally make me suffer. Is it my fault that I am a girl? Isn't Jessica also a girl too?”

“You are bold young lady,” he said. “It's not the same thing. Jessica is my golden girl and you… you are just a mistake. An unforeseen mistake that could have been avoided.”

"I'll leave," I said frantically. "I'll pack tonight. You'll never see me again. You don't want me. You don't love me as your daughter. Y’all never loved me. I know you are tired of me, but you don't have to trash me like that. I could just leave your lives forever." I held the chair in front of me for support. I literally was trembling all over.

"Leave with what." He started walking toward me. Slowly. His shoes were loud on the floor. "You've got no money. That car barely starts. No friends. Nobody who'd take you in. So where exactly are you going, Olivia. Huh? His eyes widened and he gave me a questioning look."

I opened my mouth and closed it again. The truth just sat there in my chest like a rock. He was right. He was always right about this stuff. I had nobody. I was twenty-two and I had never been anywhere or done anything or known a single person who actually cared whether I existed or not. Tears ran down my cheeks refusing to stop.

"That's what I thought." He stopped close enough that I could smell his cologne. The same cologne he'd worn my entire life. The smell I caught every time he walked past without looking at me. 

"You're marrying Nathan Hayes and you'll smile the whole time. Because if you don't, I take everything. The house. Your petty job. Every cent. You'll be on the street and nobody in this family is giving you a single help. Not me.” He pointed at his chest. “Not your mother. Not Jessica." He said firmly with a serious face.

My hands had started shaking. I pressed them flat against my legs but they wouldn't stop. They never stopped around him.

"I hate you," I said. Barely a whisper.

He smiled. The first time he'd ever smiled at me but not a kind one.

"Hate me all you want. Just marry him." He shrugged.

He walked out of the office and the door slammed behind him.

I stood there alone in his office with his view and his world and his words still hanging in the air. I felt paralyzed for a few seconds. I could move my legs or my body. It was like my head was too heavy for me to carry.

You have nothing.

No one will help you.

Just marry him.

I walked home that night because my car wouldn't start again. It was raining, and the cold went straight through my thin jacket. By the time I got to the house, I was quivering. My teeth chattered so violently I could barely control it. My fingers had gone numb and water was running off my hair down my face.

Jessica was on the white couch with her feet up and her phone in her hand. She was wearing an expensive pink cashmere sweater. Her hair was perfectly curled. She looked up at me and her nose wrinkled like she'd caught a bad smell.

"You're dripping on the floor," she said.

I stood there with water pooling around my shoes, soaking into the white carpet.

"Did you know," I said calmly.

"Know what?"

"About the wedding. About me taking your place. Why do I have to marry your fiance?”

She put the phone down and sat up straight, eyes going wide and soft. The look she'd been perfecting since we were kids. The same look that got me locked in the basement at twelve because she told everyone I hit her. I never touched her. But nobody believed me anyway.

"Olivia," she said. "I had no idea. I'm so sorry,” she said placatingly.

She wasn't sorry. I could see it sitting right there in her eyes. The little shine to them. The corner of her mouth that kept wanting to pull up.

"You're lying!" I said. I pointed my fingers at her. “Probably, the marriage isn't a good one but it needed to happen for the merger to hold! I am being sacrificed right?” I tilted my head and gave a questioning look.

The soft look dropped off her face like it had never been there. "So what if I am?"

I walked toward her, leaving wet marks on the carpet. The same carpet my mother yelled at me about when I was ten for tracking in mud. The same carpet Jessica spilled red wine all over once and my mother just laughed and said, “accidents happen.”

"You knew this whole time."

She stood up. Shorter than me but somehow she always managed to look down at people anyway.

"Of course I knew. Dad told me weeks ago. Mum said I was too young. Too delicate to marry a man I didn't love." She tilted her head and her hair fell over one shoulder. "So he's giving you to Nathan instead. The spare part finally gets used for something."

I stepped closer, hands curling into fists at my sides without me telling them to.

"I'm leaving tonight. I'm not doing this." I said through my teeth.

She let out a cruel and mocking laugh.

"Leave? With what car? With what money? With what friends?" She came closer until I could smell her perfume, sweet and expensive. "You're going to marry Nathan Hayes and you're going to be miserable and I'm going to watch every second of it. Then, I'm going to find somebody better. Somebody who actually matters."

She reached up and touched my wet hair. Her fingers were warm. Mine were freezing.

"You're a replaceable spare, Olivia. Don't forget that." She said softly as she gave me a mocking look.

She walked off up the stairs to her king size bed and her closet full of bags and the whole life I was apparently being traded to buy for her.

I stood there in the living room with water dripping onto the carpet, shaking, completely alone.

My mother appeared at the doorway holding a glass of wine. She looked at the puddle. At my soaked clothes. At my face.

"Clean that up," she said fiercely. "You're ruining the carpet."

She walked away. Didn't ask why I was wet. Didn't ask if I was okay. She never asked anything.

That night I packed a bag. Jeans, a shirt, the few hundred dollars I'd managed to save from a job where my own father paid me less than everyone else because I was "family." A job where I sat in a corner and nobody knew my name.

I waited until three in the morning. The house was dark, everyone seemed to be asleep, the hallway clock was ticking too loud in the quiet. I could even hear my own heartbeat in my ears.

I opened my bedroom door. I gasped in shock from what I saw. I never expected it.