𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐁𝐄𝐃™

Aa

Prologue
•••

  Today was my day, the big day, the day where i'd get gifts from everyone, and they better have had brought gifts. I was looking for a burnkin' bag in particular, but i'm not here to judge anyone who brings anything less.

The venue was filled with people, all ranging from his side of the family and very few of mine. At most, there were 300 heads sitting, sneaking words to one another, and waiting for the ceremony to continue.

We both stood at the alter, exchanging looks. His more so happy, while mine, was completely fake.

I carried a plastic smile to fool these fuckin' idiots that sat across from us, expecting a beautiful wedding.

I didn't care much for this nigga, his money though? Very much. I never had a fortunate family anyway, and I knew my dad went through lengths to "get us out the mud."

Or whatever that's supposed to mean.

I rolled my eyes at the thought of how I even ended up in this position, having a wedding for the fifth time in the past three years since I was 18. I was exhausted.

The moment I was legal, my dad got straight into it. Not saying that he pimped me out or anything, because this wasn't that.

Technically.

If asked, we work together. Father, daughter duo. Sometimes my mother budded in and helped too.  I do what was needed to be done, we all got money, and he tried to pay whatever debts he owed so we could get out the gutter.

I never felt that doing shit like this was weird or odd, at the end of the day; money is money. And that's what was keeping me in school, a roof over my head, and making me eat crab legs and steak every single night.

"You marry a man with money, and you never have to worry about where you lay," My mother would say, and even reminded me before pulling the waist trainer attached to my twenty-thousand dollar wedding dress this morning.

Now those words were evidently funny. Especially since they came from a woman who's husband is broke.

I learned to keep that comment to myself since it described my dad to the tea.

I had an older sister, but she was different. It's simple to say she was the better one. She was probably out living her life as I stood here letting a man, who already had a wife, take my hand in marriage.

Yasmin, my sister, was in fact the "better one," because she got off her ass and left. Completely voluntarily at that.

I try not to be angry at the thought, but we planned to leave together. The right wording would be "run away," but I wasn't a little kid anymore. It felt so juvenile to think that I was ever planning to do that.

Every time Yasmine and I were ready to 'up and leave' I kept holding us back in fear. Fear of what our parents would do, fear of what the streets would do to us. Roughly, by this point, every nigga was onto our fathers neck, waiting for each of us to show our faces.

Every time I held us back, she'd get distant. Or our parents would have planned something for her to do. 

"He fuckin' has you brainwashed Isis," She would snapped at me. "You don't see what they doing to us? This ain't normal sis!"

"No," I would snap back at her. As far as I knew, they loved us unconditionally. They did everything they could to provide for us but they had to resort to nothing when our father started owing money.

By this point, I was 9 while she had just turned 14. And the last time we spoke about leaving, I was actually ready. I had my little bit of everything packed, avoided my parents all day, and cut off contact with anyone I knew.