Aliyah's Pov
The day my father died, the sadness wasn't quiet. It was loud and broke everything, it made the world feel strange and wrong.
I was working when Mom called me. Her voice was strange, she was not sad, just confused. Like she wanted to ask me something but forgot what.
"Aliyah, come to the hospital now," she said.
I didn't ask why, i just went. My hands shook on the steering wheel the whole way, the traffic was bad. Every red light felt like a punishment for something I hadn't done yet.
When I got to the hospital room, my dad was already gone.
He was not dead, he was still here, but he wasn't how i knew him. His body lay on the bed, but the person inside had walked away. Mom sat next to him, just holding his hand. She wasn't crying, that scared me most. If she had cried, I could have too but she just sat there, like she forgot how.
"What happened?" I asked her.
"His heart," she said. "The doctor said it just stopped."
I wanted to say it wasn't true. His heart didn't just stop, his heart got tired. It broke when he heard that Uncle Marcus sold Dad's company like it was nothing. Like all the work of forty years was worth less than money.
Three days before, Dad called a family meeting. All of us were in the living room, Mom, little Ethan, and Uncle Marcus, Dad's brother, the one Dad trusted the most.
"The company is sold," Uncle Marcus said, calmly. Like he was talking about weather, not about ruining our lives.
Dad stood up so fast his chair hit the wall.
"What do you mean sold? That's my company! Our family company!"
"It was failing," Uncle Marcus said. He didn't look at Dad, just at his hands. "I made a business choice and it was the right one."
"You sold my life!" Dad shouted. "You sold everything we built! Who bought it? How much? Where's the money?"
Uncle Marcus looked up and smiled. I'll never forget that smile. It wasn't real, it was the smile of someone who already knows the answer and won't change it.
"I sold it to someone who could do more. A buyer from a big family, the Westbrookes. Their son, Hayden Westbrooke, is in charge now. The money paid debts, there's nothing left for us."
Mom made a quiet sound.
Dad's face turned red, then white, then gray. He put a hand to his chest.
"You're lying," he said. "You're lying to me now."
"I'm not," Uncle Marcus said. "It's done. The company is gone, we must move on."
Dad didn't say more. He went to his room and locked the door, I heard him crying that night. I sat outside his door, listening to him fall apart. I couldn't help, i was twenty-six and powerless. There was no way to get back what Uncle Marcus stole, no way to stop what was coming.
Two days later, Dad was gone.
At the hospital, doctors said words like massive and sudden. They said nothing could be done, they said his heart was weak. The stress didn't help, they said he probably had problems nobody knew about but Dad was still dead.
The funeral came. People brought flowers and said things, they said he worked hard and was good. They said he deserved better. I wanted to hit them for saying that, what did they know about what he deserved? We were all just guessing, pretending we understood.
After the funeral, letters, bills, papers, notices came. The house wasn't ours anymore, the bank owned most of it. Dad had borrowed money against the company to keep things running. Now, the company was gone, so was everything keeping us afloat.
I tried to fight. I got a cheap lawyer because that's all we could afford. He went to court and argued, i thought if there was any justice, we'd win. If there was fairness, Uncle Marcus would be punished. If anything was right, we'd get our life back.
We lost.
The judge said the papers were all correct. Uncle Marcus had the right to sell because Dad made him a partner when they started. Business decisions can go wrong, nothing illegal happened. We were just unlucky.
He said we had sixty days to leave the house. Mom packed slowly, like moving underwater. Ethan asked me what was happening. How do you tell your little brother his life is broken because his uncle wanted money more than family?
I worked as a store manager then. I earned not much money, not enough for anything to change. I thought about getting a second job, i thought about many things but thinking doesn't pay rent. We had nowhere to go.
One afternoon, Uncle Marcus came to our house. I answered the door. He looked sorry, and that made me want to scream. Sorry didn't fix anything, it didn't bring Dad back, it didn't give us a home.
"I came to talk to your mother," he said.
I let him in. What else could I do?
He sat at our kitchen table, drinking coffee Mom made because she still had manners, even if her world was breaking. I stood in the doorway and listened.
"The Westbrookes," Uncle Marcus said. "Their son got a bad name when he bought the company. He wants to make things right, he wants to marry into our family. To show this isn't just a cold business deal but something real."
"What does that mean?" Mom asked, her voice empty.
"He wants to marry someone in your family to connect us, to show this is bigger. That this is real."
I felt my stomach drop.
"No," Mom said.
"Just listen," Uncle Marcus said. "He's rich, very rich. He can fix things, hell pay the debts, the house. You and Ethan would be safe. All of you would be."
Mom said, "You talk about my daughter like she's a thing to give away."
"I'm talking about survival," he said. "And yours. What's our plan? Ethan has no school, you have no home. Aliyah, you have no future, this is the choice left."
Mom said, "It's wrong."
But I saw her knowing it might be the only choice.
That night Uncle Marcus came to my room and knocked. I told him to go away but he came in.
"It seems bad," he said.
"It's insane," I said. "I'm not marrying some stranger to fix your mess."
"You're saving your mother, your brother, yourself," he said. "Hayden Westbrooke can give you everything. Just think about it."
He left a folder on my bed. Inside were papers about Hayden Westbrooke, pictures, news clips, a marriage offer like a contract.
I didn't read much.
A week later, Uncle Marcus asked me to come to his office downtown. His fancy office now that the company was gone, i didn't know who paid him or what he did there, but it looked expensive.
He sat behind a huge desk. A window behind him showed the whole city spread out like a map of everything I couldn't have.
"I want you to read this," he said.
He pushed the folder toward me.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A marriage contract. His family made it, it's very good. You should read it."
I opened it. It was full of tiny words, legal and business words I barely understood. Words that broke my life down, like I was just stuff on a shelf.
"I am not signing this," I said.
"Not yet," Uncle Marcus said. "Just read and think, then we'll talk."
I read it anyway. It said things about duties and promises, about what Hayden's family gives us money, a house, school for Ethan, care for Mom. Everything lost, and more.
It also said what I had to do. Stay home, listen to him, be around when he wanted me. Act like I was happy.
I closed the folder.
"No," I said again.
"Aliyah," Uncle Marcus leaned back. "Look at me."
I looked.
"Your father died stressed about money. Your mom is sick with worry, your brother asks if we'll be poor forever and you say no to the only thing that can help?"
"There must be another way," I said.
"There isn't," he said. "I've tried everything. This is what's left, this is the choice."
He opened the folder to the blank page with the line for a signature.
"Sign," he said. "Or watch your family fall."
He slid the folder to me.
I stared. I thought about Mom's tired hands, thought about Ethan's big eyes asking what's next and i thought about Dad's heart breaking from the world's cruelty.
I picked up the pen.
My hand shook as I reached for the paper.