𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐃 - 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐂𝐋𝐄𝐑𝐂

𝐈

Antoinette

"Are you completely out of your mind?!" I screamed at my father. "You can't do this to me! I have a life to live and you are trying to ruin it!"

"Nettie, calm down, please, let me explain..." he said, tears leaving his eyes.

"There's nothing to explain! Merde, you sold me before I could even talk!"

He was starting to become furious: "I am trying to give you better future. Besides that, there's nothing I can do to change it! I gave him my word!"

I sarcastically laughed. "Well, he's dead! The promise is now under the ground, with him, so there's no need to fulfill it!"

He absolutely lost it. He grabbed the first thing he saw, a valuable Chinese vase, and threw it to the ground. It shattered into thousands and thousands of tiny pieces. "What is wrong with you?! You are going to that dinner if you want to or not, end of discussion!" As soon as he finished, or rather burnt out, he turned around and slammed the door behind him so forcefully that it seemed to me the hinges would fly off.

I collapsed onto the ground. I was supposed to get married. At eighteen. I had my whole life ahead of me, and my father destroyed it within days after I was born.

With tears in my eyes, I looked at the dress on my bed. Father had brought it to me moments before we argued. If they weren't for such an unhappy occasion, like my engagement, they would have been the most beautiful I had ever seen. They were long, trailing to the ground, with an open back.

"Oh, mére, if you were here, you and Louis would never let this happen." I sighted.

My mother died when I was ten. She had pancreatic cancer in advanced stage. There was nothing the doctors could do to save her.

My younger brother, Louis, followed her after four months. He used to race go-karts. We were at a competition in Germany, when his vehicle flipped over. He was dead on the spot.

My father didn't have enough money or sponsors to finance him, so he borrowed a few milions from Hervé Leclerc, his childhood friend. Louis was supposed to pay them off after he made it to Formula One. Unfortunately, he died before he could achieve that. Father had planned to return all the borrowed money, but Hervé refused. Instead, he demanded me. And pére agreed.

After his wife and beloved son were dead, he could't sleep properly, and if he did, he woke up screaming in the middle of the night. He started drinking, often to the extent that he didn't even know himself properly. But he was never violent to me. He was just broken single dad. And I admired him no matter what.

I stood up from the floor and walked over to the bed. I looked at the dress in which I was supposed to get engaged. "Let it be over..."

I put on the dress and sat down at the table. I began to apply makeup and curl my hair. I repeated calming words to myself. "It will be fine, Nettie, your soon-to-be-fiancé doesn't want this as much as you do..."

Charles

"Are you serious? Mom, I can't get engaged to someone I don't even know! I have a girlfriend and many other things!" I shook my head in disbelief.

"I'm sorry, I really am, but there's nothing I can do. If your father was here, he would like Moreau to keep his word."

I sat down on the chair and rested my head on my hands. I just came home from Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and opened the door to the apartment, when my mom told me that I've actually been engaged since I was eight years old and that my fiancée would be coming to dinner with us in less than two hours.