REIGN (A REVERSE HAREM)

1. Arabella

"You have got to be kidding me." I stare at my dad. I hate men. I really do. It's quite honestly the most stupid thing ever that I was born into this world to serve a man, and the second I turn seventeen, i'm being paraded around town to meet another, for my eighteenth birthday I have to marry him, and then serve another man.

Stupid.

"You're seventeen, you knew this would happen." He opens a drawer in his desk.

"Why don't Marco or Nicolas have to marry? Nicolas is my twin-"

"You're a girl, that's why." Dad throws a wad of paper down on the desk in front of me. "I already have a few men calling to ask about you."

"Papa, it is my birthday, can I have one more day of freedom-"

"Arabella, you need to sort your attitude out. I can tolerate you because i'm your father, your husband will not and you know that-"

"So don't get me married off." I state the obvious.

"You know i can't do that." He taps the paper, "Find one you think looks nice-"

I groan, grabbing the paper and storming out of my fathers office. Nicolas laughs as i pass him on the stairs and i stop walking, "It isn't funny."

"Yes it is. A year from now you're gonna be walking the aisle with some-" Before he gets the chance to finish, i push him down the rest of the stairs.

"Ow! Papa she just pushed me down the stairs." He shouts.

I carry on walking up the stairs, into my room. I can't even close my door and slam it because i got in trouble and dad removed it. So i grab my salt lamp and walk into my closet, sitting on the cloth covered bottom.

I turn the switch on, but then leave it to the side as i open the page. Dad would want someone powerful, someone who would bring an alliance between the two families, someone with money and power.

And because i'm being forced to marry. I want someone the same too. Dad has to pay for all my clothes, women aren't allowed jobs whenever you're born or married into a mafia life. So my husband needs to have a lot of money, and he should die preferably soon so i can inherit that money and then never have to marry again.

Actually, i don't want to have sex with a guy twice the age of my father. It's ritual to have sex on the wedding night. It's actually quite weird how this whole process works.

You live your teenage life out with your father, but as soon as you turn eighteen, he doesn't want anything to do with you anymore, because well... men like this deem woman unfit for everything other than childbirth and house chores.

Like today, i'm choosing who looks appealing to me through photos and information about other Italian men who are looking for a wife. Fresh age of seventeen. Some of these men are older than my dad. In cases like this, you get to chose who you like the most. My sister, Gianna, she didn't get to chose. Dad found her a husband in Italy and thankfully, they got along with each other because she had no other choice but to move there.

Then throughout the year of seventeen, you get to know this man. And you can't change it if you don't like it. You have to stick it out. You have to marry a man you're probably going to resent; like my mamma did. And it's weird. These men are usually over the age of 24, and they're talking to a seventeen year old? Like, stop.

And then the night before your eighteenth birthday, you do the deed. Yup, still seventeen. Then eighteenth birthday is the wedding night and boom, you're handed over to another man. Dad will no longer tell me what to do, this man will.