I had no idea what to expect when I pulled up to the Velencia estate. I certainly didn’t expect a scene that looked like a construction site.
Hammers rang, painters moved ladders, and furniture was being dragged through the halls. The whole place reeked of fresh paint and sawdust. Boxes were stacked by the foyer — my boxes. My things tossed out like refuse.
“What’s this?” I asked, my voice steady because I had nothing left to give in the way of surprise.
Luther was at the top of the staircase, sleeves rolled up as if he’d been doing manual labor all morning, looking every bit the domestic patriarch he’d pretended to become. Calm, casual—dangerous.
“We’re turning your room into a nursery,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Jaxon needs the space. He and Brielle will be staying here — for now.”
My chest tightened. “You can’t be serious.”
He came down the stairs slowly, the kind of slow that meant this was settled and final. “Frankly, this mess is on you. You scared Jaxon. So you’ll make room for him. Be grateful Brielle didn’t press charges after what happened.”
A hundred things wanted to burst from me — fury, pleading, raw shame — but I swallowed them and forced a quieter response. I’d learned by then that he fed on spectacle. I wouldn’t give him that.
“I need you to sign this,” I said, producing a folder I’d brought with me. It was the only armor I had in front of witnesses.
He raised a brow. “Now? I don’t do business at home.”
“It’s for tomorrow’s investor meeting,” I said, keeping my voice level. “It’s urgent.”
He flipped through the pages without reading them, shoved his signature down with a careless pen stroke, and then leveled me with a threat. “Make sure this works. Or I’ll cut off your father’s treatment.”
I kept my face blank. He had no idea my father was already being moved — discreetly, under Nikolai’s arrangements — to a hospital where Luther’s leverage wouldn’t reach.
At that moment, Brielle appeared from the kitchen carrying grocery bags, chirpy and domestic. “Babe—Luther—I grabbed everything. Jaxon’s favorites and yours too!”
Luther glanced at me. “Cook. For us. For Jaxon.”
“But the reports—” I started.
“I don’t care,” he snapped. “You owe him. You’ll be Jaxon’s nanny. That’s your job here now.”
This house stopped being a home at that sentence. It became a cell, all the more humiliating because they decorated it with my humiliation.
I shuffled to the kitchen, numbed, and began chopping vegetables without thought. That’s when a grainy sting ripped across my face — like salt thrown directly into my eyes. I staggered back, tears and salt stinging.
“Get out! You don’t belong here, you bitch!” Jaxon screamed from behind me.
Shock made my reply sharp. “Jaxon—”
Then I heard Brielle’s laugh, dripping with triumph as she leaned against the counter. “See? Even our child can’t stand you. When are you finally leaving?”
I didn’t give her the moment she wanted. I wiped my face and murmured instead, “Soon. You’ll never have to see me again.”
“Oh, good,” she said cheerfully. “By the way, I donated the rest of your stuff. I couldn’t stand it in my house. Most of it’s already gone — burned.”
There it was. No pretense. No feigned sympathy. She said it plainly, as if admitting to vandalism was an ordinary household chore.
My mind stuttered back to nights when I sobbed into the phone about Luther’s coldness and she’d been my comfort. How foolish I’d been to call her while she was taking what I wanted most.
I demanded, voice raw, “My things?”
She nodded, impassive. “Check if you want. Might still be warm.”
I ran out the back door to the yard where a metal bin billowed smoke. I choked as I drew close.
My clothes, diaries, framed photos — everything I’d left behind — curled and blackened in the flames. At the center of the pile, half-melted and ruined, lay the heirloom necklace my mother had given me: its clasp warped, the sapphire splintered to glittering dust.
I fell to my knees. That pendant had been the last tangible piece of her. The last thing that smelled like my mother, that felt like her hand.
Brielle had destroyed it without a second thought.
When I rose, my breath ragged, I walked back into the house. Brielle and Luther were laughing mid-conversation. She turned, all perfect, patronizing smile fixed.
But before she could lace her next barb with honey—
I slapped her.
