Chapter 4:The message

The door creaked as Rosy pushed it open, her fingers trembling against the wood of her house. Everything  inside  her screamed  don't  go  in, but she knew what will happen if she turned back . She stepped  in anyway , the silence of her aunt's compound weighing  on her chest like a concrete block. It was the kind of silence that didn't  last. The kind that only paused so it could  strike louder. The air smelled of soap and burnt oil, but beneath  that something sharp and bitter. As soon as the door closed behind her, she heard  her response.  “So you have finally remembered you have a home?” Her aunt's  voice sliced through the  silence like a knife,sharp and angry.  Rosy flinched .

She turned slowly. Her aunt was standing in the hallway, arms folded, eyes blazing like the heat from an open flame. Rosy hadn't even dropped  her bag before the yelling  started. 

“Where the hell have you been, Roseline?” She çalled out her full name.it always came out when she was in trouble. When did waitressing become a job that keeps you away for almost two days?”  “I–” Rosy started, her voice  barely a whisper. “You what?!”her aunty  screamed at her . “You have been gone since Tuesday  morning!You think you can just disappear and come crawling back into this house like  nothing happened?”. Rosy opened her mouth but the words couldn't  come.  What could she say?That she'd run away after breaking down in the back room of a cafe because life just became too much? That she'd wandered Lagos with no real destination, too ashamed  to go back, too broke to go anywhere else?. “I  asked you a question  girl!”. Her aunt  took a step forward. “Or is your mouth  glued shut now?”.

There was still silence. Then a slap,the slap came fast. So fast that Rosy didn't  even see it. Her cheek exploded  with heat and  sound. Her head snapped to the side. For a second,she saw stars. “I should  have known,”her aunt spat. “You are sleeping with those men, aren't  you? That's  where you have been prostitute”. Rosy blinked, tears streaming  down her cheeks. Her breath caught in her throat.  “I  said answer me!”. Then another slap. Then she reached for the nearest thing, an old electric cord lying by  the wall.

“Aunty, Please—”. The whip cracked across her hand. The pain shot up her arm like electricity. Rosy screamed and fell backward, clutching her wrists. Red welts were already forming. Her aunt stood  over her, panting.

“This is the thanks i get for you taking you in after your  mother died?Feeding you? Housing you ? You turn around  and disgrace me?” She  hissed.” Let me see your  phone. Let me see the stupid  man that is deceiving  you”.

Rosy shook her head slowly, shielding her phone with her trembling fingers. “GET OUT OF MY FACE!”. Her aunt screamed at the top of her voice.

Rosy scrambled  to her feet, heart thuddering, tears falling freely now.She  rushed to  the tiny room she shared with her cousin but found it empty, dark and suffocating.  She collapsed on the mattress. No sheets. Just foam and  sorrow.  Her hands trembled  as she looked at the swollen  mark on her wrist. It throbbed with every heartbeat,but it wasn't  nearly as painful as the ache in her chest. She buried her face in the thin pillow and screamed  silently  into it.

Why was this her life?

Why did surviving feel like drowning .

How can her step aunt still  be beating her at the big  age of twenty two?  That sounded  weird too her too. It sounds very awkward for a step aunt to be beating her at the age of twenty two but all this were happening  to her because she didnt have her own  money, so it seemed like she was under  the bondage of her aunt. She lay there for hours unti her phone vibrated on the ground beside her.She reached for it slowly. She saw one new message that was from stephen.  Her heart did  a slow, cautious  somersault. She clicked  it open. “ Marry me for one year, and you will never have to  serve coffee again.” She blinked. Her hands were  shaking. What kind of man sends that ? Just like that, no explanation, no buildup. Marriage? Was this a joke? But Stephen  wasn't  a joker. She'd only spent three days around him, but nothing about  that man said casual or unserious.  He was intense and  broken.

“Marry me”. Not let's  talk. Not come  work for me. Not can  I take you to dinner. Just… Marry me. Rosy stared at the screen like it might rearrange  itself into something  more logical.Something safer. Something  normal. But the words stayed  the same. “You  will never have to serve coffee again”. The words made her hand clench  tighter around the  phone.  She was a graduate. A broke  graduate  with nothing to eat but a faded certificate, some unpaid intership experience, and to many nights of  crying herself to  sleep.

Waitressing was all she could  get. And even that barely fed her. She thought about  the last naira note she had in her bag. 

It was one hundred naira she had left. 

She could barely afford water.

 

She looked around the room—peeling walls, broken fan, one window that didn’t open properly. This wasn’t a home. It was a box she’d been locked inside with no key and no way out.

 

Was this it?

 

Was this her future?

 

Being slapped like a child at 22? Living off scraps and getting called a prostitute just for existing?

 

She stared at Stephen’s message.

 

Her eyes burned.

 

Her heart pounded.

 

She didn’t want to be rescued.

 

But she did want out.

 

This wasn’t a proposal. It was a lifeline.

 

But what was the cost?

 

She picked up the phone and typed, “What do you mean”?

 

Then deleted it.

 

Typed again: “Why me?”

 

Deleted that too.

 

Her finger hovered. Then she locked the phone and threw it across the bed like it had burned her.

 

She couldn’t do this.

 

She shouldn’t even be thinking about it.

 

A year.

 

One year of her life in exchange for freedom? Dignity? A better life?

 

She lay back down, breathing hard.

 

Do I even have a choice?

 

She closed her eyes.

 

Minutes passed.

 

The phone buzzed again.

 

She reached for it with trembling fingers.

 

 

“If you say yes, I’ll be outside in ten minutes.”

 

 

Rosy sat up.

 

Outside?

 

She pulled back the curtain and peeked out the tiny window.

 

And there he was.

 

Stephen. In the same black SUV. Engine humming. Dressed in all black. One hand on the steering wheel, the other typing on his phone.

 

Waiting.

 

For her.

 

As if this was already decided.

 

As if he knew she would say yes.

 

Rosy’s legs were trembling as she stood.

 

She looked at the room again.

 

Then down at her bruised hand.

 

Then back at Stephen through the window.

 

Could she really do this?

 

Could she marry a man she barely knew—for money?

 

Was it desperation?

 

Or destiny?

 

She didn’t know.

 

But she stepped toward the door anyway.

 

And as her hand reached for the handle, her phone vibrated once more.

 

A new message.

 

She looked down.

 

 

But there’s one condition.