Brianna
I had spent four years of my life completing fashion school, and moving in with my brother in Port Harcourt felt like a huge step especially as a brand-new graduate with no clear next move. Over those years, I’d collected more clothes than I could count and a mountain of shoes. Design was my passion, and chasing it had cost me a lot, but it had given me even more.
My elder brother, Bryce, kindly paid for a moving company to haul my belongings across the city. Rolling my luggage out of the pickup station, I expected to see him waiting. Instead, a man I’d never met stood there holding a sign with Brianna Fletcher written boldly across it.
When I walked up to him, I could immediately tell he was an Ogume man, like my family. He looked like someone who enjoyed his pasta and his solid, bulldog-like stance made him hard to miss.
“Umm…hello?” I greeted, unsure how to approach this stranger. His eyes snapped to me and he gave a curt nod.
“Miss Fletcher?” he asked. I nodded.
“My name is David. Your brother is unavailable today, so he sent me to pick you up,” he explained.
“That’s lovely. Did he mention where you’re taking me? Last I heard, we couldn’t move into his new apartment for another month,” I said, watching him expectantly.
David, dressed in a full suit, tucked the sign under his arm, grabbed my luggage, and started toward a sleek car. Bryce and I had always been close, but life had separated us for years. We came from a troubled home a narcissistic, abusive father and a weak, compliant mother who always put him before us. Bryce couldn’t stand it. At twenty, fresh out of high school, he enlisted in the army. I was eleven then, and the years that followed were pure hell. He spent three years in training and another six in special forces. For eight long years, I barely saw my brother.
I left home at seventeen in a desperate escape that left scars. I worked for a seamstress who taught me everything about sewing and clothing design. Growing up, my father demanded perfection in appearance to uphold his public image, and I found freedom in fashion. My parents refused to support my dream. My father wanted a lawyer he could brag about so I fought for a scholarship and, by the grace of the goddess, earned one to study in Asaba for three years.
Fashion school became both my escape from my parents and from the man I once lived with during those desperate early days. Freedom wasn’t easy. I struggled with money and everything else. Now, at twenty-eight, I still feel like I barely know Bryce. He’s no longer the troubled teen who left home; he’s a seasoned army veteran and a successful businessman, thanks in part to his best friend Callan Harold, the man who’s haunted my dreams with every kind of forbidden fantasy.
I met Callan years ago when he and Bryce first joined the military. He came from a powerful family, and it shows. I haven’t seen him in a year, but he visits my dreams nightly. Back then, he was the hottest man I’d ever laid eyes on so who knows what he looks like now. He’s practically a ghost in real life: no social media, no public trail. Bryce doesn’t have any either. Maybe they both think it’s juvenile.
“Yes, Miss Fletcher. I was instructed to take you to Mr. Harold’s house for the time being,” David said, pulling me back to reality.
What? Callan’s house? Oh no. This is not good.
“And where exactly is that?” I asked as I settled into the back seat of the expensive car.
“Rumuola Villa, on the east side of Port Harcourt,” he replied.
As we drove closer, the skyline sharpened, revealing a striking tower of reflective blue glass cut into daring angles. Each new building we passed was more breathtaking than the last.
“They’ve got high-end shopping, art galleries, and beautiful parks over here,” David added casually.
“Does Mr. Harold live in one of these high-rises?” I leaned forward between the front seats, pointing toward the glittering skyline.
He lifted a stubby finger toward a singular building. “That’s Rumuola Villa. Impressive, isn’t it?”
The shape was surreal curtain-glass walls rising from a rectangular base, curving gracefully until the structure resembled a four-leaf clover. It seemed to pierce the clouds themselves.
“What kind of business does he run?” I asked, fishing for details about the ever-mysterious Callan Harold. David’s dark eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, then back to the road.
“He owns a lot of different businesses,” he said vaguely, before changing the subject. “The building has a fifty-five-foot pool, no kidding. I read it in a magazine.”
“Are you Mr. Harold’s driver?” I tried again.
“I’m more like a personal assistant,” he said with a shrug.
“How about my brother?” I pressed.
“I work for him too,” he replied simply.
At a traffic light, David fished a pamphlet from the console and handed it back to me.
“Here, take a look.”
Since we were stuck in traffic, I skimmed through it. The first bold headline read Penthouse in the Sky. The article described the Villa’s luxury in dizzying detail.
“That sounds like a lot,” I murmured absently.
“You’ll find that Mr. Harold is…a lot,” David said cryptically. Before I could ask what he meant, he gestured toward a private entrance reserved for penthouse residents.
The garage looked ordinary until I noticed the cars inside. Exotic, gleaming, impossibly expensive. My jaw dropped. I’d just spent three years sharing a cramped room with messy strangers, and now I was stepping into a different universe. Overwhelmed, I felt a familiar sense of inferiority creep in. I had spent too many years of my life feeling small.