Joy strode into the room with her eyes all heavy, she trusted her head up so that the brook of tears that terrorized her eyes threatening to engulf her face could flow backwards into her socket. She looked around the beautiful spacious room of her father and found it almost crammed with people who had their faces cloaked in tears looking like mourners, 'he is not dead... He is only sick.' So she thought to herself as she hauled her feet also like one who was about to forfeit her source of breath.

"What are you all doing here? Why are you all acting like chief is never going to recuperate from this ailment? Now I don't want to detect anyone in a moody state, if you know you have come here to cry, then you have better leave this premise, no one cries in my father's house." She said, she called her father chief but only in the public. She urged the people in the room not to wear sad looks whereas, but even as she spoke, she had tears streaming out of he eyes like a bleeding calf. She strolled to the place where Mrs Sylvia sat, she glared at her with utmost hatred, she made it egregious that she never like her.

Mrs Sylvia was her stepmother, she had never appreciated her, and though Mrs Sylvia had attempted all she could to make Joy see her as a mother, Joy who speculated that Mrs Sylvia was fake never lent her that chance. And the fact that they were approximately the same age range made it even more complicated. Joy reckons that Mrs Sylvia married her father because of his fortune, but her father Mr Charles thought otherwise. Despite all the efforts put together by Mr Charles to make both ladies live together in agreement, Joy invariably makes sure she disagrees with her father's endeavours.

Mr Charles was an old billionaire in his seventy

s

, he was a successful businessman who had only one daughter and had lingered single for approximately fifteen years after the demise of his wife who died of cancer five years after giving birth to Joy. Joy came to the couple after several years of marriage, there were calls for him to put up with another wife, but Mr Charles whose love for his deceased wife was immeasurable, decided to wait on God, ultimately, God chose to endow them with a child at his old age, but his precious wife only died five years after labour, abandoning just him and the little Joy to tend to, well, thank God for Mrs Chinwe who assisted in taking very good care of her. So, it was barely fifteen years after the demise of his first wife Mrs Charity Obiefuna before he eventually fell in love with his sexy model assistant who he later got married to despite his daughter protesting against it.

"My dear, Sylvia is not trying to replace your mother, no one can ever replace her, but you have to recognize that I have a life too, I desire to be happy, I am an aged man, and I have managed to find a gorgeous young lady that completely and sincerely loves me, you can't expect me to toss such a treasurable opportunity into the clutter, please my dear, attempt to bestow upon her a consideration and I guarantee that you will similarly fall in love with her just as I have. She is a very beautiful soul, trust me, you will love her." So he explained to her, this was during the epoch that he was persuading her to permit him to get married to Sylvia. But despite all that the old billionaire did and say, Joy still took her stand against it, she strongly felt that her father was giving rise to a tragic mistake, "A very huge mistake", so she will always mumble. She believed that Sylvia was taking the advantage of her beauty and the fact that her father was old and desperate for love to dupe him of his achievements. He was actually feeling what she called a mid-life crisis, and according to her, he was very vulnerable, she wondered how her father who she saw as someone extremely smart in intelligent could fall to a cheap skim like that.

"Let go of his hand right now, I said let go of him!" Joy screamed at Mrs Sylvia, and she quickly let loose her grip on her old husband who lay on the bed almost lifeless. Mr Charles was awfully ill, he had been squeamish for quite a while, but this time it was worse, the doctor said that his heart was failing him. The doctor had speculated that he might never make it, but Joy strongly acknowledged that he will make it.