All Chapters of Not The Man She Wanted: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

"This is hard to believe. Are you sure you brought the check to this bank? I don't even know what to believe anymore. None of this ever makes sense to me.” Connard questioned Josh's claims about the missing check. For months, Alvin has been making massive transactions with Ozone Bank, and not once was there a case of a missing check."What the fuck are you talking about? I'm no kid. My boss personally gave me that envelope containing the check. There was no way I was going to misplace the check like a toddler. Before I stepped into this bank, I felt it in my pocket. But now, I just don't know. Gosh! My boss is going to kill me. What am I going to do now?” Josh cried and placed his hands on the desk in frustration.20 minutes had gone by, and they were still glued trying to figure out a better solution when Alvin called Josh on the phone. He stared at Connard and whispered. “Now he's calling. I'm doomed! What am I going to tell him? He should be expecting me to be done cashing the

"Hey, watch your steps. Have you suddenly gone blind?” Fabiola yelled at Jenny for hitting him accidentally after she dashed out of Alvin's office angrily. "Speak of the ruthless devil. Bullshit,” Jenny hissed angrily and motioned for her duty post before Fabiola could counter her words. "What the fuck is wrong with her? Did I do anything to upset her?” Fabiola asked rhetorically and pondered why she acted like that. Judging from her shitty attitude, he could discern that something was eating her up. These two weren't on talking terms. Jenny doesn't even find Fabiola fascinating as a person or as the managing director of Royal Gold Mine, but she hasn't for one moment spoken to him rudely aside now. "Her attitude speaks volumes. But whatever it is, I'm ready to go ask Dad,” Fabiola muttered and walked inside his father's office. "You should respect my privacy. You don't just break into people's offices as you wish. This is a reputable organization. Show some courtesy,” he scol

The ceiling above my bed had a small crack in it. I had never noticed it before. That night I noticed everything. The crack. The faint hum of the refrigerator down the hall. The soft tick of the clock my father bought my mother on their tenth anniversary, the one she still refused to throw away even after the glass face cracked. I lay there in my old t-shirt with my hands folded across my stomach like I was already lying in a coffin. Alvin's words played in my head on a loop, the way a song you hate gets stuck after only one listen. Three years. Just three years. Then she can file for divorce. He had said it so casually, the way a man might order coffee. As if three years of my life were nothing. As if my body, my name, my future were small things he could trade across a desk for a billion-dollar deal. I closed my eyes. I opened them. I closed them again. The crack in the ceiling stayed exactly where it was. I dressed for work the next morning the way a soldier dresses for war. Black

I got into the passenger seat because I did not have the strength to argue. Fabiola slid behind the wheel of my own car as if it had always belonged to him, and the way he adjusted the mirror without asking told me everything I needed to know about the next three years of my life. He pulled out of the garage and into the morning traffic without speaking. The sun had climbed higher now and Atlanta was fully awake. People walked past on the sidewalk carrying coffees and briefcases, talking on their phones, living small ordinary lives. I watched them through the window like a child watches a parade she has not been invited to. Fabiola drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on his thigh, his jaw tight, his eyes flat. The yellow tulip he had picked up from the garage floor lay on the dashboard between us, slowly wilting in the morning heat. Neither of us mentioned it. Neither of us touched it. It just sat there, a small bright accusation, until at the next red light he r

Saturday came the way bad weather comes, slow on the horizon and then all at once on top of you. I woke at five in the morning in my childhood bed with the simple ivory dress hanging on the back of my closet door, white and ghostly in the gray light. I lay there and stared at it for a long time. Outside, a single bird had started its morning song in the dogwood tree my father had planted before I was born. I listened to that bird and I tried to remember every small thing about the room I was lying in, because some part of me knew that even though I would come back to this house someday, I would never come back to this bed as the girl who had grown up in it. The bird sang. The light turned from gray to pale gold. My mother was three states away by now, sleeping safely in my aunt's spare room, and she had no idea that her only daughter was about to put on a white dress and sign her life over to a man who had promised to make it hell.I dressed alone. There was no mother to fasten the