COERCED MARRIAGE

The bridal chorus echoed through the massive hall as the orchestra intensified the pace of the music with every passing note. I stood at the entrance of the hall, about to walk down the aisle. Instead of the usual feeling of elation and joy during this moment, I was filled with hate towards the man waiting down at the altar for me. A feeling of foreboding washed over me as I proceeded towards the altar to marry my sworn enemy. How did I get here? What could I have done differently to change this outcome? Those thoughts clouded my mind throughout the entire wedding.

Every story has a beginning and mine began two weeks ago.

-

I woke up that late that morning, around 10 am, you could say I woke up at the wrong side of the bed and there was this feeling of foreboding as I got ready for work and it wasn't worry that I'll get fired for showing up late as the company I worked for is owned by my family and is pretty much going bankrupt, a bad review by Forbes had put the company in a pitfall, of all the newspapers to give us a bad review it was Forbes, well long story short I put it away that feeling as nothing.

I got to work, ready to get a mouthful from the CEO a.k.a my dad, for showing up late. To be honest, I graduated a few months ago and haven't gotten the hang of this work-life balance, but I'm confident I'll get the hang of it.

Anyways, I got to work that morning. I didn't get a mouthful, but I saw an unexpected visitor, the patriarch of the Erion's, Aloysius Erion.

Now I wasn't a stranger to Mr Aloysius, his daughter is actually my best friend and he's a long time business partner of ours, but it's unexpected seeing him visiting the company, his last visit was when I was when I was seventeen years old, and that was five years ago, which tells how rare his visits are.

He walked past me, and looked at me with what seemed to be a cheeky grin as we exchanged greetings. I decided not to pry and head straight to my mum's office, I took the lift and went straight to the fourteenth floor where my mum's office was.

As I was about to open the door with the name plate ‘The Office Of Yuri Hughes’ on it, my earlier feeling of foreboding became stronger and I really knew something was wrong when my dad was also present in her office, usually he'd be in his office and if he wanted to have an audience with her she'd go to his office or they'll head to a conference room but there he was sitting down on the nearest seat, patiently waiting supposedly for me.

This felt like one of those times when I did something wrong and my parents wanted to scold me, they'll both carry these serious looks on their faces. I was worried and had to ask, “Have I done something wrong?”

My mum spoke first, “please take a seat” she said, gesturing to an empty seat.

I obeyed sitting down on the seat opposite where my dad was sitting and then he spoke, “You're getting married.”

His statement was followed by an awkward silence. When he said that I only felt two things, shock and confusion. A myriad of questions crowded my mind ‘married? how? why? to who? when?’

I had always feared a day like this would come, growing up most of my friends and indeed most girls were betrothed, and this was a recurring theme in most business dynasties, marriage between two of their offsprings in order to fuse business empires and make them stronger financially, and boost their reputations, it's an unfortunate dark side to the rich and famous, I had thought that my family was an exception, my parents had managed to extinguish any marriage proposals but it looked like ever bleak now as our business now hangs in the balance and now depends on this.