Olivia Douglas sat at the kitchen table, her fingers curled tightly around a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold. The room was dimly lit, casting shadows on the walls, which seemed to stretch ominously across the floor. Across from her, her father, Marco, sat with a weary expression. The usual confidence in his posture was replaced with the weight of impending doom. The silence between them had stretched far too long, filled with unsaid words and emotions Olivia was struggling to keep in check.
"Come again??", she asked. She was hoping that what she just heard from her father was all a joke.
Marco looked at her, hesistant. "I said….i've agreed for you to enter an arranged marriage with Nicholas King, Olivia". He broke it to her as gently as possible.
"You can't be serious," she finally whispered, her voice tight as she tried to process what he had just told her. "An arranged marriage? Now? In this day and age?"
Marco lowered his eyes, his shoulders slumped as though the very suggestion had drained him of whatever strength he had left. "It's not what I wanted, Olivia. You have to believe that."
"Then why?" Olivia shot back, her voice rising in frustration. She stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the wooden floor with a sharp, grating sound. "Why would you do this to me?"
Marco rubbed his temples, sighing heavily. "I had to do it because there's no other option, believe me."
Olivia paced the length of the kitchen, trying to make sense of it all. Her thoughts raced as her pulse quickened. How had they ended up here, in this mess? Her father's company had been struggling, yes, but an arranged marriage to Nicholas King of all people? She had heard the stories—everyone had. The cold, calculating billionaire who played with people's lives like pieces on a chessboard. A man who built empires, not relationships.
And now, she was supposed to marry him?
"What does he get out of this?" she asked, almost yelling, stopping abruptly to face her father. "Nicholas King doesn't do charity work. What does he want?"
Marco's hands clenched into fists on the table, and he avoided her eyes. "He…he sees it as a business arrangement."
"A business arrangement?" Olivia's voice cracked. "What am I, some kind of commodity?"
"It's more complicated than that," Marco said, his voice barely above a whisper now. "This isn't just about you or me, Olivia. Hundreds of people depend on the company. If we collapse, they all lose their jobs. Their livelihoods." Olivia had always known her father to be selfless but this was something else.
She bit her lip, fighting the wave of emotions threatening to spill over. "So I'm supposed to sacrifice my life to save them?"
Her father's silence alone told her what she didn't want to hear.
She turned away, blinking back the sting of tears. This couldn't be happening. Not to her. Not like this. "I need to understand," she said softly, trying to steady her breath. "Why me? Why this marriage? What is Nicholas getting from all of this?"
Marco hesitated, his fingers twitching as if he were gripping the edges of a secret he didn't want to reveal. Finally, he looked up, his face pale, eyes heavy with guilt. "He wants to settle an old score."
Olivia's heart skipped a beat, dread creeping up her spine. "An old score? With who?"
"With me," Marco whispered. "Years ago, I made a decision that… hurt his father's company. Nicholas hasn't forgiven me."
Olivia's chest tightened. "So, this is revenge and I get to be in the middle of it."
Her father nodded, his face crumpling with the weight of his confession. "I made a mistake, Olivia. One that cost him dearly. I didn't know it would come to this."
Olivia could barely hear him over the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. She felt like she had just been thrown into a game she didn't know the rules to, a game where she was nothing more than a pawn in Nicholas King's power play.
"So, you sold me to fix your mistake, father?" Her voice broke on the last word, the betrayal hitting her harder than she expected.
Marco reached for her, desperation in his eyes. "I didn't want this for you. But he's given us no other choice. It's either this, or we lose everything."
Olivia pulled back, her gaze hardening. "Everything? What about me, Dad? What do I lose or I don't get to have a say?"
The room fell into a suffocating silence, Marco's face ashen as he realized there was nothing he could say to ease her pain. She swallowed hard, fighting the tears that burned her eyes.
"I won't do it," she whispered, shaking her head as she turned her back on him. "I can't."
"Olivia…" Marco's voice cracked, but she refused to face him. She couldn't bear to see the helplessness in his eyes, the look of a man who had already resigned himself to his fate.
"When is this hell of a marriage happening???", she asked, hesitant. "Maybe I get to think about it".
Marco tried to move close to her again but she raised her hand to stop him from stepping any further. "We happened to agree on two weeks from now", he whispered.
"Two weeks," she muttered under her breath, the bitter taste of reality sinking in. "You expect me to marry a man in two weeks? A man who doesn't even want me, but sees me as a way to get back at you?"
Marco's quietness was the only confirmation she needed.
Olivia looked at her father. She really adored him and she wasn't kidding when she said she would do anything for him but this was too extreme. It looked as if her father didn't put her into consideration when agreeing to this whole facade in the first place.
"I'll never forgive you for this," she said, her voice trembling as she stormed out of the kitchen, leaving her father in the dim light, weighed down by the consequences of his actions.
As the door slammed behind her, the sound echoed through the house like a final nail in the coffin.