Chapter 1

• BLAIR’S POV
• Here I was walking down the aisle, with my father. The very first time we'd be seen side by side with each other, except there were no guests to see this. Only mother and the chief staff member, Mr. Johnson, were present as witnesses to the union.
• It was a very quick ceremony and before I could take it all in, we were pronounced ‘man and wife’ by the clergy. I was now Blair Brycee.
• ‘What kind of name was that?’
• Brycee was a good looking man with thick, brown hair. He had slightly dark skinned, coffee brown eyes and was 5 ‘5 tall, but he was also thirty years old, which made me wonder why my parents did not hesitate to give me away to him.
• ‘Did they really have to get rid of me that badly?’
• Immediately after the ceremony, my parents and the other staff drove off, leaving Brycee and I at the church. We walked a distance away from the church and then took a cab.
• I was so embarrassed to be alighting the vehicle in a slum, in my wedding dress. Everyone stared at us, and I folded in diffidence.
• “Come in,” the first words that Brycee said to me, since we got married, or probably all my life.
• I looked around and couldn't believe that such a slum could exist, not very far from the estate where my parents lived. It was a small apartment that could fit into my father's room.
• “It's nothing like your father's, but you barely have a definition of luxury, so…” Brycee said, leaving me in the three square meter sitting room to the bedroom.
• I took a deep breath, taking in my new reality.
• ‘This might not be so bad,’ I thought. If anything, Brycee was right, I have never lived a luxurious life and I might just be able to make this work, at least I didn't have to clean a thousand square white tiles with my toothbrush.
• ‘Nothing could beat the ill treatment my parents had given me over the last couple of years,’ or so I thought.
• I was still standing in thoughts, when Brycee came out of the room, casually dressed and headed out.
• “Where are you going?” I asked, as he almost pushed me onto the only sofa in the sitting room. There was barely enough space for two people.
• “Work,” he replied sternly, “out here, bills are paid, Cinderella,” he said, walking out and shutting the door a little too hard, behind him.
• I watched him walk away through the window.
• My eyes caught the newest apple phone in his hands, as he walked away.
• ‘How could he even afford that?’ I knew how much all of my father's staff were paid, since part of my job was making sure they were all paid. Father and mother didn't want to relate with the staff.
• It would take Brycee a year and a half salary to be able to afford that.
• ‘Was Brycee a thief?’ The thought crossed my mind. He was poor and lived in the slum, but could afford luxury drinks and expensive gadgets. ‘or perhaps he was a fraudster?’
• Fear ran through my every nerve at the possibility that I was married to a thief, or worse off, that he was stealing from my father. I watched him talk on the phone until he was eventually out of sight.
• ‘What are you up to Brycee?’ I queried.
• I went to the room, searching for any clue I could possibly find, or enough evidence to incriminate him.
• ‘If I blew his cover and exposed his stealing to my father, then I wouldn't have to be married to him and my parents would be grateful to me for saving them, and perhaps now love me,’ I thought.
• The thought of exposing Brycee to fix the relationship between my parents and I fueled the energy with which I turned the whole house around, in search of incriminating evidence, but found nothing.
• ‘Something had to be fishy about Brycee, for a domestic staff member, he was very audacious and bossy,’ my thoughts were running wild. He had been working with my father for three years now, but we knew very little about him, or his family or where he was from.
• I began to hear a vibrating sound and traced it to the table in the living room. I answered the phone and placed it quietly on my ear.
• “Brycee,” I recognized the caller as the chief domestic staff at father's mansion, “Mr. and Mrs. Williams asked that you report to the house immediately,” he said, “you have fifteen minutes to do so, else the consequences are grave,” he added, and immediately ended the call, even before I said a word.
• It looked like my parents beat me to discovering that Brycee had been taking from them and living a flamboyant life, even though on the outside, we could barely afford food.
• A felt a pinch of sadness in my heart, I didn't want Brycee to go to jail. I didn't know what it was, but I know I had a strong emotional connection towards him and still hoped we were able to make sense of our marriage, especially since he stood up for me against my parents.
• ‘I had to warm him,’ I thought, ‘We should run away from them,’
• I hurried to the room to grab my shoes, hoping to run after him.
• I searched for the second pair, but couldn't find it. I placed my hand under the bed and my hand hit a button at the side wood, under the bed.
• My eyes widened in shock as a drawer began to slowly pull out from the bedside. Inside the drawer was a medium sized wooden box.
• The box was lined in gold and looked very expensive.
• “What are you hiding Brycee?” I said, flipping the box lid.
• The box contained papers, important company documents located at Winchester.
• ‘I knew it! A fraudster,’ I thought. I had gotten the incriminating evidence I needed, or so I thought.
• As I took the papers out of the box, an I.D card fell from the paper bunch.
• The I.D carried Brycee’s picture and as I read through, alongside the other documents in the box, my heart skipped a beat.
• “Who are you, Brycee? or should I even call you that?” I questioned under my breath, sitting on the floor, with his mystery box in front of me.