The clouds of fate gathered around Christen, her life a storm of poverty and despair. But just when she thought all was lost, a mysterious stranger offered her a deal: to become his fake wife for a year. Robert, a man cloaked in secrets and shrouded in power, promised her riches and a chance to save her dying mother. Christen, her back against the wall and the abyss of hopelessness yawning at her feet, took the only path she saw before her, a path that would lead her into a world of shadows and desire, of power plays and perilous games.
Chapter 1 Christen Life
"She's getting away! Hurry up, you idiots!" yelled the fat-bellied man, breathing heavily as he stumbled after the blonde woman.
"Stop right there!" he bellowed, his voice rumbling through the air like a thunderclap.
my blonde hair whipping in the wind, I did not slow down. "You'll never catch me alive!" I cried out, fear and defiance mingling in my voice.
"We'll see about that, you little witch," the fat man muttered, his eyes narrowed in determination.
The landscape of my youth was no bucolic idyll but a harsh and unforgiving wasteland where the scars of poverty were etched into every contour of my life. My parents, destitute and disinterested, left me to languish in the corroded shackles of a broken home, casting me into a bleak and hopeless existence. My mother, a frail specter chained to the steely machinations of life support, lingered on the edges of consciousness, a mere shadow of her former self.
The cruel rhythm of fate dealt its hand with a painful precision, for as I stumbled, my pursuers pounced upon me like a pack of ravenous beasts.
A heavy hand struck me across the jaw, the force of it sending reverberations through my skull like the blast of a bomb.
"You bitch! Why the hell did you run like that? Trying to break my back, are you?" snarled the man who delivered the blow, his heavy breathing filling the air like a thick fog.
The words fell from their lips like razor-sharp daggers, piercing through my heart with a ruthless cruelty.
"Please don't kill me," I pleaded, my voice quaking with fear and desperation.
"I'll find a way to pay you back, just give me more time!"
The men laughed, their laughter a bitter and biting wind that whipped against her fragile resolve.
"why would we kill you, who will pay our money is it your junky father's in prison for life, or your mother's on her deathbed," one of them sneered.
" just make sure you pay it all next week " a big bellied man said. they said as they walked away.
Left alone on the ground, I breathed in shallow gasps of air, my body shaking with fear and exhaustion. The men had departed, but their threats lingered in the air like a toxic cloud.
I sat there for what felt like hours, staring blankly into the distance as I tried to process the nightmare I had just endured. Every slap, every word of contempt, every threat of violence and destruction-they all spun around in my mind like a whirling dervish.
I was a Sisyphus of sorrow, rolling the boulder of my burdens up the steep hill of life, only to have it roll back down again and again. Sleep offered me the fleeting comfort of oblivion, but when I awoke, my troubles would be waiting like loyal hounds at the foot of my bed, their maws dripping with the remnants of yesterday fears.
The faint flicker of hope was still alive within the me, despite the crushing weight of my troubles. With the urgency of a soldier running into battle, I hurried to the interview that might just offer me a lifeline out of my current situation.
"Miss Christen Williams?" the secretary's voice rang out, and the woman mustered all my strength to answer the call.
"Yes, that's me," I replied, the words vibrating with a hint of trepidation.
In my mind's eye, I could see the opportunity that lay ahead.
The interview had been going well, my answers hitting their mark like well-aimed arrows. I felt myself soaring on the wings of hope, the possibility of a new life within my grasp.
And then the question came, as sharp and unexpected as a knife in the dark. I froze, my heart plummeting from its soaring heights into a bottomless pit of despair.
" Is It really true your father is a drug addict and serving his terms at a mental hospital prison".
It was a question that struck like lightning, searing through the thin veneer of hope that I had managed to weave around herself.
my heartbeat quickened, the sound of it like a drumbeat of shame echoing in the silent room. my words were slow and hesitant as I answered, a single word, laden with pain: "Yes."
The young woman's question had exposed a wound that I thought I had long ago learned to ignore, a scar that still ached with every passing day.
" You have quite good academic background and good character, you are poor family background, we frown at anything that can brought harm to our company, we are sorry we can't offer you any job here" the lady said .
Sadness took over my mind as I went out of the office and I went to the street
Just then as I stood there on the street, I received a sudden call from the hospital.
my steps echoed in time with the pounding of my heart as I raced to the hospital, my mother's life hanging in the balance like a feather in a tempestuous wind.
With each hurried footfall, the gravity of my situation grew heavier and heavier, the weight of it pressing down on my shoulders like an oppressive hand. my mother, my fragile and gentle mother, was my one remaining lifeline, the anchor that had kept me from drowning in a sea of sorrow.
The news of her worsening condition was a crushing blow, the fear and despair that followed were the icy grip of death.
" Miss Christen I really think time is not by your side, at this period, we might really loose your mother if don't pay the money for the surgery, "
The doctor's words were a hammer blow to Christen's already fragile heart, the pain of them reverberating through her body with a sickening, hollow thud.
"Luck is not my friend today," I murmured, my voice a whisper of resignation. "Not today."
my thoughts raced as I tried to find a way out of the impossible situation I found herself in. The crushing burden of debt, the shame of my family's past, the threat of losing the only person left in my world who mattered... it was all too much.
I am hopeless and helpless, I really have no where to source or get the money. I went to the river side and cried out my eyes, withh tears clouding my vision, I sank to the earth, my body racked with sobs of anguish and despair. The river before me rippled in sympathy, its gentle waters a fleeting, temporary comfort in the face of my crushing grief.
But just as I was ready to give myself over to the all-consuming darkness of hopelessness, a whisper of sound caught my attention. A soft footfall, a rustle of leaves, a presence that seemed to materialize from the shadows.
" Let me offer you a job " said the man
The man's voice was a beacon of light in the darkness, his words like a rope thrown to a drowning woman. My tear-stained eyes lifted to meet his gaze, a mixture of hope and fear swirling in my chest.
He was tall and well-dressed, his presence radiating a sense of power and wealth that I had never before encountered.
"A job?" I murmured, the word catching in throat like a splinter. "What kind of job?"
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