What if Cinderella didn't want prince charming?
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When Emily Odita was forced to visit her father and his new family in Lagos, she thought things couldn't get any worse until sh...
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TWO YEARS AGO...
Her eyes dashed across the extravagant ball room, then she gave herself a quick once over. She felt out of place, like she didn't fit in. She was dressed the part and she could easily fake her way in the crowd but she didn't have the strength for such. Social gatherings weren't her thing and to worsen it social gatherings filled with snobby rich people.
The only reason she was there was because her father couldn't stop talking about it.
The ball of the year.
Everyone is going to be there.
You're going to have so much fun.
Live a little Emily, life doesn't wait for you.
She had heard it all and for the sake of her sanity she reluctantly agreed to be at the ball. Now she wished she hadn't given in.
She should be snuggled up on the couch in the living room, a bowl of popcorn settled on her laps and a scary movie playing on the television screen but no, she had to put up with a room filled with strangers that she wished she'd never have to see again.
She quickly dropped her now empty glass of champagne on the tray a server was holding as he walked past her and made an effort to snag another glass. This time she sipped her drink, unlike the last two glasses she had gulped down like someone who was starved of water for days.
She sighted her dad on the other side of the hall, he was talking to a man she couldn't recognize, not because he was wearing a mask to cover up half of his face like everyone else in the room, herself included, but because she was positive she hadn't seen him before.
Both men were probably talking about what she only thought could be business with the way her father's hands flailed in the air as he spoke, and how the man in front of him nodded, his shaved head glistening under the lighting of the room.
The man appeared to be in his sixties, older than her father that was just approaching fifty. His round belly showing evidence of constant drinking and what most people in Nigeria would call too much money.
Rich people.
She scoffed and rolled her eyes, now shifting her gaze from her father to search for her latest sisters.
After her parents divorced five years ago she didn't think that any of her parents would end up with anyone else, childish dreams made her believe they would come back together and they would all be one big family again. Getting a call from her father about a year ago, telling her of his new fiancé and her stepsister's-to-be had those dreams shattering into a million pieces.
She finally found both girls in the crowd, together as always on the other side of the room too, a few meters away from her father.
They were the opposite of her, 5'9 tall, skinny, outgoing, sassy and rude while she was a slightly round 5'5 lady who loved to stay in the confinements of her home.
