MELISSA.
"Hey, Melissa... Did you just seduce my brother?" Caleb's voice sliced through the silence like a blade, low and taunting, yet dripping with false innocence.
His eyes dragged slowly over my face, locking on my lips, swollen, split, smeared with a faint trace of blood. The sight told a thousand stories, none of them in my favor.
Heat flooded my cheeks, shame spreading through me like poison.
"I..." My throat tightened. The word scraped painfully out of me, barely a whisper. "I..."
I choked on the sentence, tongue thick and uncooperative.
What could I possibly say?
Explain?
They wouldn't believe me.
Defend myself?
They'd twist it.
I opened my mouth again, desperate to speak, but the sound died as footsteps echoed down the hallway.
Cain strode in, Amelia nestled in his arms as though she belonged nowhere else. Her body rested fully against him, her arms draped possessively around his neck, his hand gliding lazily around her waist as if he couldn't bear to let her go.
Their closeness stole the oxygen from my lungs.
Amelia's eyes widened, taking in the scene, my flushed face, the welt swelling on my cheek, Cypril standing much too close, Caleb leaning casually against the wall as if watching theater.
"What just happened here?" she asked, her voice soft yet edged with sharp curiosity.
Her gaze flicked to Cypril, then to my trembling hands, then back again.
Before I could gather courage enough to speak, Cypril stepped forward, shoulders relaxed, expression cool, as though nothing had happened, as though he hadn't pinned me against a wall moments earlier.
"Why don't you ask this slut?" he drawled.
The word hit like another blow.
My knees wobbled. My vision pinpricked black at the edges.
A sly smile curled at Cypril's lips, a smile that said I dare you to deny me.
"She forced herself on me," he finished, voice ringing with practiced confidence.
The room spun.
I felt every eye on me-Caleb's amused, Cyrus's unreadable, Amelia's gleaming with something disturbingly close to satisfaction, Cain's dark and cold.
My head moved before my voice could form. I shook vigorously, desperate, panicked.
"N-no. I didn't," I gasped, words tumbling out unevenly. "I swear...I didn't..."
My chest squeezed painfully as humiliation choked me. My heart pounded against my ribs hard enough to bruise. Everything inside me screamed to run, to claw out of my own skin, to vanish.
"Are you calling my brother a liar?" Cain's voice thundered.
The disgust in his tone was unmistakable, thick, suffocating, dripping from each syllable like venom. He stared at me with open hatred, as if merely looking at me offended him.
Amelia pressed herself closer against him, a slow smile creeping across her lips, not pity, not concern, triumph.
I lowered my gaze, the weight of their judgment hammering down mercilessly. Tears stung the corners of my eyes, threatening to fall. My lips trembled as I sucked in a shaky breath.
"No," I whispered, voice strangled and breaking apart. "I'm not..."
But the sentence dissolved before it could be completed. My words meant nothing here. The air was thick with decisions already made, sides already chosen, truth already discarded.
In that moment, I realized something terrifying: It didn't matter that I was innocent. They had already decided I was guilty. And no amount of pleading would change that.
"You dare have the nerve to seduce Cypril, Melissa." Cain's voice wasn't shouted, yet it was more terrifying than a roar, low, controlled, strained, like a beast holding himself back from tearing something apart with his bare hands.
His eyes burned into me, murder simmering beneath the surface, his jaw clenched so tight a vein pulsed in his neck.
My stomach twisted. I felt every inch of my skin crawl under that glare.
Caleb let out a short, cruel laugh, pushing himself lazily off the wall before leaning back again as if the whole moment amused him.
"No matter how you throw your body around, Melissa," he drawled, lips curling upward, "we wouldn't want you."
His eyes swept down my body with disdain so sharp I flinched.
"You are nothing but a disgrace," he continued, stretching the word as if savoring it, "and you are totally...utterly....disgusting."
Each syllable fell heavier than the last, hammering my already shattered heart.
"Honestly, you have no shame at all."
Cain spat the words, taking a step toward me. "You know we are engaged to your sister now," he emphasized with venom, "and you dare show off your body to us?"
The accusation struck like a knife.
I hadn't shown anything, not intentionally, not ever.
"Doesn't that make you a whore?" Caleb cut in, voice rising sharply, the insult thrown at me like a slap.
A ripple of gasps echoed around us.
Only then did I realize we weren't alone.
The housemaids had begun to gather, curious, eager, hungry for drama. Their wide eyes and whispering mouths sliced through me in ways the whip hadn't.
Heat flooded my cheeks, shame crawled up my throat and settled in my lungs, making it hard to breathe. I wrapped my arms around myself, wishing desperately for the floor to split open and swallow me whole.
A sob rose in my chest, and I bit hard on my lip, trying, failing, to choke it down.
Tears blurred my vision, spilled hot and unstoppable down my cheeks.I couldn't hold them back anymore.Not when every word they threw at me felt like claws ripping me open.
"Then... reject me!" The words flew out before I could stop them, raw, desperate, torn from the deepest part of my pain.
Silence crashed over the room like a thunderclap. I saw the way Amelia stiffened in Cain's arms, and Caleb's smirk vanished, Cypril froze mid-breath.
And the triplets turned toward me, slowly as though the air itself had shifted.Their faces darkened, shadows creeping into their expressions. Rage burning through them.
The kind that promised I had just spoken the one sentence I should never have dared to voice.
In that heartbeat, I realized rejection, what I had prayed for moments before, might not be mercy.
It might be a fate worse than anything I'd endured yet, but I didn't mind.
"Reject me already! Free me from this bond!" I said loudly.
