Keywords: Once Upon A Forever, Prologue, Free Web Novel, Nigerian Story, Reincarnation, Doomed Love, Fated Love, Alexis, David, Slice of Life.
Alexis
Alexis swung open the door and stepped into her parents’ home. The living room lights were still on and warm. It was a mansion and grand, but in no way as grand as the Ashimolowos’. Her father sat stiffly on the couch, glasses low on his nose, a newspaper crumpled and unread in his lap. Her mother hovered nearby, wringing her hands, eyes darting to the clock, then back to Alexis like she’d been doing it all night.
“You’re back,” her father said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried scrutiny, disappointment, fear. If she’d been a teenager she would have flinched, but now she was grown—and she had been at her future in-laws’ home.
“Yes, Daddy,” Alexis said lightly, dropping her clutch on the console like she was shaking off dust. “I was with Mrs. Queen Ashimolowo.”
The name alone made her father’s jaw tighten. It was the look she knew too well—the judgement, the pity that stung worse than anger.
“Mrs. Queen Ashimolowo,” he repeated, lowering his glasses. “David’s mother.”
“Mhm mhm,” Alexis hummed, pretending not to see the shift in his expression from concern to disappointment to anger. She unbuckled her heels, stretching her legs with the grace of someone who believed the world watched her every movement. “She invited me. We were picking outfits for their family banquet, tomorrow.”
Her mother’s brows rose, hope and worry tangled together.
Her father’s voice sharpened. “And you stayed there up to now? It’s 12 midnight, Alexis.”
“It wasn’t that late,” she said.
“No decent woman stays out that late unless she’s looking for trouble,” he said flatly.
Alexis smiled thinly. “Then maybe I found it.”
Her father’s eyes darkened. Her mother winced, a soft sound catching in her throat, but she said nothing.
“Don’t test me, Alexis,” he warned.
She finally looked at him, really looked, like he was background noise she was being forced to acknowledge. “We had a lot of dresses to try on.”
Her father exhaled through his nose. “You need to stay away from that woman, and you need to give up on her son. David could not give you a clearer message than he already has. The man doesn’t want you. Getting close to his mother will not make him see you differently. Anybody with eyes can see he doesn’t even like his mother.”
That cut, but she didn’t let it show. “He’s just… complicated.”
“Complicated?” His voice rose, tinged with pity he didn’t want to feel. “He’s dangerous! Have you never wondered why their family is on the top yet nobody comes for them? Everyone knows it, except you. You think you’re special? You are a pawn. Queen is using you to scare other women away.”
Her mother whispered, “Let her be, Emeka. She’s young.”
“She’s foolish,” he snapped. “By the time Queen is done with you, you’ll be old and with no options left.”
Alexis’s smile sharpened. “She gave me something tonight.”
She unclasped the necklace. The diamonds caught the light, glittering cold and sharp.
Her mother gasped. “Oh my goodness… Alexis, that’s—”
“Yes, it’s real diamond,” Alexis said, lifting it so it scattered light across the room. “She put it on me herself. And David saw it. He looked at me, he smiled when he saw it on me. So she said I could keep it.”
Her mother drifted closer, mesmerised. “Real diamonds,” she breathed.
Alexis placed it around her mother’s neck, and the older woman’s eyes fluttered shut as if she were wearing royalty itself.
Her father’s face hardened. “Take that thing off my wife’s neck.”
“It’s fine,” her mother said softly, fingers touching the stones. “It’s so… warm.”
Alexis’s smile tilted, smug and pointed at her father.
He stood slowly, voice low. “Woman, take that off. Your daughter is digging her grave, and you’re handing her the shovel.”
Her mother swallowed, removed the necklace carefully, and handed it back.
Alexis scoffed.
“It’s strange, Dad,” she said. “When I spend time with Mrs. Queen, you get agitated. You pretend to be the dutiful father, but you never refuse the business she sends you. Hypocritical.”
Her father flinched—because it was true.
“You should be grateful she even notices me,” Alexis went on. “You think your import business thrives because you’re brilliant? It thrives because they let it. The Ashimolowos pull the strings in this country and the strings that keep this roof over our heads.”
Her mother looked away.
Her father deflated into the couch, guilt dragging him down.
“You don’t understand, Daddy. Queen likes me. She said I have grace, poise, the kind that belongs in a family like hers.” Alexis’s voice softened. “She’s grooming me to become her daughter-in-law.”
Her father’s face went white, then red. He stepped forward, hand lifting. “Grooming…”
“Daddy,” she cut in quickly, “you need to let me make my choice.”
“I’ve set up a blind date for you. Robert’s son,” he said, defeated. “Stop embarrassing yourself over that boy who won’t even look at you. How many times must you be humiliated before you understand? He wants nothing to do with you.”
Her nails dug into her palms, but she kept smiling. “You’re wrong. David just doesn’t trust easily. He’s… careful. When he opens up, it’ll be to someone who already understands him. Like his mother. Like me.”
Her father slumped, tired and helpless. “As long as you go on these blind dates, I’ll get off your case with David.”
“Okay,” Alexis said, gathering her things before heading upstairs.
Her mother watched her leave with a hopeful little smile.
Her father poured himself a drink and added ice, each ice a sign of defeat.
Alexis walked into her room with a sigh. Her father would never understand her or how close she was to getting David until she got him.
Her room was flush with rose-gold vanity, imported silk sheets, perfume bottles arranged on her dress-up table. Above it was a curved large mirror.
She tossed her purse onto the bed and turned towards the vanity mirror, deliberately crafted to hide a shelf behind it. Catching a sight of her reflection, she nodded at her beauty; it was impossible that David would not love her.
She looked down at the necklace dangling in her hand, walked over to the mirror, placed it around her neck, her fingers grazing her neck. The gleam from the diamond was bright. She leaned closer, tracing the curve of the pendant.
“Beautiful.”
She smiled wider. “He’ll see me soon,” she murmured. “Eventually.”
She clasped the necklace behind her neck.
Her fingers moved from her neck to the surface of the mirror, her nails scraping lightly along its ornate frame like a lover’s teasing touch. The mechanism clicked softly, and the panel swung outward on silent hinges, revealing her sacred shrine.
Her eyes feasting on the collage of his images lining the walls behind the mirror.
Her David, captured in moments she had stolen: baby pictures stolen from his family album; his boyish teenage grins caught when he thought no one was looking; David walking into the owner’s seat of his Maybach; David working out at the gym, sweat glistening on his broad chest, his muscles straining under weights.
She ran her finger over a picture of David in his early twenties, sharp-suited and brooding. This was the moment he learned that the hussy he had been dating was dead; his face betrayed no emotion, jaw set like chiselled marble.
Her lips curled in a smug smile. “I had to get rid of that hussy. You understood. That’s why you did not react that day.”
Her hand moved to the shelf beneath the photographs—a collection of small, strange objects she thought of as tokens: a tie pin once worn by him, a napkin she’d kept from a dinner years ago, a cufflink she claimed had fallen during one of Queen’s luncheons, a discarded phone case she’d fished from his trash, a ring he’d lost that she ‘found’ and never returned, even strands of his hair and nail clippings pilfered from his floor before he had become so guarded. Each item had its place.
Below that, the lower shelf held dildos in every sinful shape, sleek vibrators that hummed faintly if she willed them to life, plugs and harnesses that mirrored the power she’d wield over him in her fantasies, each one styled to match a phase of his stolen essence; the sleek one for his youthful vigour, the brutal ridged beast for his current ruthless edge. But her gaze locked on the prize: the biggest black dildo, thick and veined like a promise of possession, its silicone skin gleaming under the shrine’s soft glow. Engraved along its base on a polished wooden paddle pedestal were the words “David.”
She lifted it reverently, her palm wrapping around its girth, feeling the weight that would soon echo David’s real cock buried deep inside her, stretching her walls until she screamed his name in ecstasy. A shiver raced through her core, heat pooling between her thighs, her pussy clenching with aching need as she brought it to her lips, kissing the tip.
“My love,” she murmured to the empty air, her voice a silken sigh. “I see you, I love everything about you, your coldness, your cruelty, your untouched soul that aches for my love. I am your destined queen, the only one who will be there for you at the end of your life.” She stroked the length slowly, her fingers gliding from base to head, imagining it pulsing with his life force, pre-cum beading at the tip just for her.
Her free hand slipped under her skirt, fingers dipping into her slick folds, circling her clit as she ground the dildo against her thigh. “David, I will be your wife.”
She slid the necklace off her throat and laid it in the centre of the upper shelf, its reflection rippling through the photographs. Her pulse slowed to a quiet rhythm in the silence, but the fire in her veins burned hotter. “You’ll see,” she said softly, pressing the dildo’s tip against her lips once more, tongue flicking out to taste the silicone as if it were him.