Chapter 16
I get back in my car, hands shaking. Drove home like a ghost on autopilot. The city passed me ir a blur. And when I walked into the Morocco estate. I found Loisa pacing the marble floors, stil in her nightgown, mescare smeared down her cheeks.
She stopped the second she saw me. Eyes wild, breath short.
“Lester… tell me this isn’t real. Tell me it’s a prank or some twisted social stunt. She–she was: Rossini, Goodness!” She rubbed at her arms like she could scrub the guilt off.
1 told the boys to treat her like a ghost. I laughed when she brought hand–wrapped gifts. I said she was doing charity on herself. God. What have we done?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. I just walked past her. Straight toward the balcony. My thoughts wer spiraling like sharks in bloody water. We’re doomed. My mother’s father…
Angelo fucking Rossini
The lion of Millan. The one man Dad spent ten years trying to schmooze, manipulate, bribe. And
we mocked his blood.
I mocked his daughter. My own mother.
The deal’s dead. The alliance? Dead.
We’re dead.
I remember it too clearly. She was standing in the living room. Suitcase at her feet. Her face was calm, too calm, like she was made of porcelain and holding in a crack that couldn’t take one more hit.
“One day I will leave,” she said. “And I will never come back–even if you beg with your blood on the marble. Treasure me while I’m still here, Lester.”
I scoffed. “Spare me the drama, Ma. You’re not in a soap opera.”
She reached for the suitcase handle. I was drunk. Not enough to forget. Just enough to be cruel. I grabbed the half–finished beer off the table and threw it. It hit her cheek. Hard.
“Go then! Go play poor little housemaid somewhere else!”
She stumbled. Clutched her cheek. Didn’t cry.
And from the couch? My sons.
*Haha! Grandma got knocked like a bowling pin!” Nash howled.
“She’s gonna cry. Old crybaby maid,” Lyle sneered.
She didn’t cry. She just adjusted her scarf, lifted the suitcase, and walked out the door.
She never came back.
I sat on the balcony with a drink in hand. Whiskey, neat. No ice. Just burn. The twins were inside, laughing at some stupid meme, arguing over who had the better “drip” in their selfies.
They didn’t have a clue. They had no idea what we’d lost. Who we’d spit on.
I whispered it to myself, voice barely making it past the breeze. “She’s gone. She’s really gone. And I think… I think she meant it.”
Chapter 15
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5:20 am D
***
I pushed open my father’s study door. He was on the phone, red–faced, shouting something about stockholders and damage control.
“I told you to contain the press! I don’t give a damn who she says she is, she’s our property! She
“She’s not ours,” I said. “Not anymore.”
He turned. Phone frozen mid–air.
“We killed our alliance,” I said, staring right at him. “And she’ll kill us next.”
Because now? She’s got power.
She’s got name. And worse–she’s got nothing left to lose.
DORIS’S POV
Hospitals always smell the same. Sterile. Bleached. Quiet in that creepy, padded kind of way, like even the walls are afraid of hearing something they shouldn’t. I walked through the corridor slow and steady, heels clacking with purpose. White heels. White dress. White gloves. Regal. Composed. I looked like I belonged in a chapel, not this sad little excuse for a clinic.
But that’s the thing about power–when you have it, you belong everywhere.
Room 407. She was there. Elizabeth. The mistress. The bitch who’d spent years smiling from Edmund’s passenger seat, sipping from my crystal glasses, poisoning my children with her rot.
She collapsed at the gala fast night. Right after Angelo’s announcement. Right after he stood beside me and called me his blood.
God, the way her knees buckled. Funny.
I knock once and open the door without waiting. Let her choke on my presence. Let her see what
survival looks like when it wears diamonds.
She’s awake. Draped in that cheap, scratchy hospital sheet like it’s a throne. An IV line running down her arm. Her hair’s frizzy. Mascara still smeared from the night before. She looks like a washed–up soap star who forgot her script.
She flinches when she sees me. Tries to sit up.
“Why are you here?”
I step in, slow. Graceful. I let my gaze sweep across the room, as if I’m judging the decor.
“To see if you’d survived. I expected you’d try poison before shame.”
Her jaw trembles. She looks furious, panicked, absolutely gutted all at once. The queen stripped of her castle, lying in a paper–thin gown. It’s pitiful. But not enough.
“You… you were just a maid. A maid in Morocco.” Her voice rises with each word. “How–how did you become the Rossini heiress? You low–bred whore. You were Edmund’s wife–wearing rags, begging for love like some pathetic little dog.”
I don’t move. I don’t even blink. I let her spew, let her throw her rotten words at me like they could still hurt. But they can’t. Not anymore. She wasn’t just trying to insult me. She was trying to
erase me.
Chapter 16
213 58.0%
5:20 am DDDD.
“And this maid in rags,” I say softly, “is about to become your nightmare.”
She lets out this ragged sound. Something between a sob and a scream.
“You think you’ve won?” she shrieks. “You think those old men want you? You were a hole he used until I came along! He said it himself! You were boring. Predictable. Weak.”
I tilt my head.
“And yet here you are. In a hospital bed. While I wear your legacy like a tailored dress.”
She throws a cup at me. It bounces off the wall with a pitiful clang. I don’t even flinch.
“You were just the maid!” she howls, spit flying from her lips.
I turn toward the door. My fingers adjust the pearl pin in my hair, smooth as silk.
“And now I’m the one with the keys to your cage.”
I walk out and let the door swing shut behind me, cutting off the sound of her madness like a
blade.
