Chapter 1

Clinton, as usual, made preparations to go for his daily duty as a commercial delivery agent. His job is to drive to the houses of the customers and wholesale agents that order from the companies he is working for. The pay for each customer is thirty dollars as minimum and seventy or eighty dollars for maximum. It would really be a cool business except that his wife gets most of the money, leaving him with a very small amount, sometimes with nothing.

In a real sense, it would be said that he is working for his wife and not himself, all his sufferings are in vain to him but he couldn't do anything because he is poor and depends on his wife for survival.

As he was preparing to go to the car at the garage, his wife, Mara returned home. She was absent from home at night as usual. This was her third night, and the issue is that whenever she left the house, no one would know about her whereabouts. One day Clinton confronted her, he received many slaps and the worst insults of his life. She even threatened to send him out of her house. Since then he decided to keep his pace although he is always worried about her whereabouts.

He remembers this day till the present day, most especially as she was walking towards him. It did not only stop there, her mother, Kate, came out and warned him not to make that his business, her daughter was free to go anywhere and do whatever she liked, the greatest pain was when she accused him of being a good-for-nothing asshole of a husband.

He wept, but couldn't do anything other than this. It was most surprising that as she was returning, she was not alone but with a tall and muscular man who seems like a wrestler or bodybuilder, someone who visits the gym regularly and has great power.

As the man looked his way, fear gripped him but the fact that he was ready to ask her where she had been and who this man was couldn't be denied.

From the distance, Mara gave him an irritating glance, a stay-clear signal. The man bent and gave her a kiss on her lips, she giggled and laughed, to pain her husband. The man whispered something into her ear, she glanced at Clinton and rolled her eyes on him. On his side, Clinton swallowed the lump on his throat. He loved his wife so much but she didn't love him, no matter what, he would fight for her love.

When Mara approached, he walked towards her from the entrance door of the apartment where he was standing. He stretched out his hands to get her into his arms, a slap landed on his left cheek, the sound re-echoed inside his ear. He held his cheek, so shocked at how his wife could do this to him, her husband. They have been privately married to each other for three years, then she was a common girl and she saw him in good terms but after things changed when she won a lottery of one million dollars and bought a part of a real estate company, things also changed in their lives. She began to see him as trash and gave him no respect. From then he became like a servant to her and her mother whom she brought to be a co-CEO with her.

"Why did you slap me?" He asked in a cracky tone with tears forming and dropping from his eyes.

"You have the audacity to say this, ok get it again!" She wasn't done with her statement when another slap came, harder than the first, his heart dropped as the muscular man walked towards him, he was gonna do away with him. His legs began to shake.

Mara stepped forward coming in between him and the man, blocking him from hurt as Clinton thought in his mind.

"You don't need to mind him, he's a feeble coward. Just one blow and he's gone." She chuckled. Clinton thought that his wife wanted to protect him but now he saw she was only intending to mock him.

When he least expected it, the man struck. He kicked him on the stomach with the combat boots he wore and he fell to the ground, pain seizer around his tummy region. He wanted to cry but it would get him to be laughed at the more, he fought hard to ward off the tears, but inside him, he was moaning in pain. Mara walked towards him, he got curious to know what she was up to, then she stood over him on the floor.

"What gives you the authority to challenge me and whatever I do when you don't even have a life of your own? I feed you in this house, I clothe you. Come on! You don't even have an identity of yours."

"Why are you doing all these to me?" He could no longer cope with holding back the tears forming in his eyes, he had been determined from his teenage years to be a man and act like a man, but seeing the woman his heart was entangled with treating him this way broke his heart.

"Will you shut up!" A feminine voice said behind him. He raised his head only to find that it was his mother-in-law, another person that created lots of trouble for him. She shot him a wicked glare, a pure sign of hatred and disgust. Though he had been used to this treatment from her, he felt so uncomfortable.

"I think I've told you never to talk to my daughter the way you want, she's not your class. You're a man with no identity, you don't even have the right to stand before her, you're just a good-for-nothing." She turned to her daughter. "Look Mara, I've told you countless times to get rid of this man but you wouldn't listen to me."

"Mom, it's…." She wanted to say something but her partner, the man on her side, cut in.

"Come on, we need to go inside. If I keep staring at this man here whom you call your husband, I might just end his life."

"Leave him, Frederick. He's just a coward that can't do anything, you'd be wasting your time fighting him." Mara threw a filthy look at Clinton, he seemed like some irritating substance to her. To be real, he was good-looking and handsome, so handsome but because he had no money and a life of his own, he became trash in their eyes. He sighed in frustration, thinking how he would come to lose his identity. Most painful to him was taking his wife's surname when she should be taking his, then his mind went to the past, does he even have a surname. He asked himself.

He knew that sure he didn't have an identity which qualified Mara and Kate to regard him as a no-man, he didn't even know who his parents were recently.

"Why was I born, why didn't I grow up in my parents' arms?" He cried inside him. All through his life, he had been suffering, he remembered how he was taken off from school when he was five by some strangers who claimed to be sent by his parents, that they were too occupied to come pick him up.

It was when they arrived at an unknown location he knew he had been deceived and was being kidnapped, even though he was a kid. He never set eyes on his parents again after that day but grew up as a slave till he met Mara who agreed to take care of him, physically and emotionally, things went well until she found her way into the wealthy class, semi-wealthy though. As she began to ascend the pillar of success, then things changed greatly gradually to what it is today.

The recount of his life history was gonna continue in his mind until Mara's voice broke him off from his thoughts to consciousness.

"Make sure you deliver to a great number of people. I want you to bring not less than five hundred dollars today. You know you're working for my mom, right? You gotta do what I ask you to lest your free food and accommodation ends." She threw the car key on the ground before him, and walked in with her lover and her mother.

Clinton picked it off from the ground reluctantly, worried how he was gonna make such a huge amount. It was a huge amount to him, compared to what he has been making, he would be glad if it was all his money but it wasn't. He would be given only a little out of the returns he would make. He walked to the garage with a frustrated face and regrets of life in his eyes, he was pained being chosen by fate to bear these.