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CHAPTER 1
publish date:
2025-02-28 15:22:44Elena's POV
How did I get myself into this? I stared at the file in my hand, my fingers trembling as I held the pen about to sign a contract stating that I, Elena Carter agree to a three year marriage with this man, Alexander Sterling. Alexander sat across the table eyeing me with an unreadable expression waiting for me to sign it. Three years of my life. Three years as his wife. How did it come to this? My mind flashed back to the moment everything changed. A week ago… The scent of the bleach enveloped my nose. as I scrubbed the marble floors of the estate I was assigned to clean this morning. All these for a worthless pay and the rich people hardly gave tips to appreciate my effort. Oh well! I had to do it to support my mom's medical bills and my brother. My phone buzzed in my pocket, I quickly cleaned my hand on my apron and picked the call. “Elena..” The weak voice on the other end immediately made me tense and worried. It was my mother. “Mum, Is everything okay?.I asked “Come to the hospital…now” Before she ended the call I heard shouting. I didn't even think twice. I removed my apron and gloves, grabbed my bag and quickly left in a hurry not listening to my supervisor’s call. Another pay lost, but my mum's call was more important On getting to the hospital, St Vincent's Hospital. My mum has been receiving treatment from this hospital for as long as I can remember. Ever since she was diagnosed with Hemolytic Anemia, a rare blood disorder. I signed in and made my way to her room. I heard shouting as I was close to her door. I got to her room, my mother's weak frame lying on the bed as an elderly woman dressed in a long gown with black wavy hair was shouting at my mother. “You can't be shouting at a Patient like that.” I interrupted. “Elena..dear” My mum called to me. “You must be the daughter, You have not paid for the treatment for two months now. We allowed you but no more! Your mother will be discharged until you make payment.” she stated coldly “You can't just throw my mother out, she needs treatment..” The administrator scoffed“This is not a charity place, Mrs Carter so no payment, no treatment” I was about to snap at her when Doctor Owens, my mum's long time doctor who has been prescribing drugs and treatment for her came. “Elena, I understand you but it's strictly the hospital's policies so we can't continue treatment on your mother, I'm sorry” He calmly told me. The nurses and a few select patient guardians were watching us at this point. The Administrator walked off telling the nurses to get back to work. My mum squeezed my hand, and I looked at her “It's okay Elena” My mum said with her sweet voice as she offered me a weak smile. I smiled at her back but deep down It wasn't okay. They treated my mother like a charity case, a financial burden and it hurt so bad. I held my tears back in as I gently helped her get up from the bed to steady her steps as we made our way out of the hospital. We got to our apartment. Our small apartment with its tattered paint which was already peeling off. The door barely stood on its own and we got inside. The inside was comfy, our sagged couch stood in the middle, with a small coffee table I got on sale. On my right was the bedroom where Ryan and my mother slept. I slept in the living room, to create enough space for them and I didn't mind. The kitchen directly faces the sitting room that only fits one person at a time. I helped my mum on the couch, using the sheets to cover her. I needed to talk to someone. Sophie. On my way out. Ryan was just coming from school. He was in a black hoodie and worn out jeans with his bag hanging loosely on his shoulders. He was angry. Weird. “Ryan…How was school?” He ignored my question“They are not treating mum again right? Ryan asked, looking me straight in the eye with a sad look. “Ryan, it's okay. I'm going to fix this and pay for mum's treatment” I tried explaining to him. “With What..?Your good for nothing pays, you keep working everytime and still mum is dying….,” He shouted, His voice breaking on the verge of tears. His words hurt my chest “I'm trying” He scoffed “No you're not, You're just running in circles and everything happening to mum is because of you” Without another word, he stormed inside slamming the door behind him. I stood there for a moment as the words kept repeating in my head “Because of me”. Ryan blamed me for our mother's sickness and it hurt so much. A tear dropped. I can't let what he said get to me. I went over to see Sophie at the cafe she works at which was directly along my cleaning Agency. The fresh scent of nicely brewed coffee hit me as I entered the cafe. I sighted Sophie attending to a customer. I waved to her, her face lit up as she told someone to cover her shift making her way to me. “Lena!” She was so happy to see me as she hugged me. I just smiled and hugged her back. Sophie Adams has been my best friend since college. We met during a party where Sophie caused a scene throwing a blow to a guy who was trying to harass me. It was hilarious and also sweet because she didn't know me but she stood up for me. After that incident, we became best of friends. Since then Sophie has been my support system, helping in any way she can. “Are you good.?” She asked, noticing my face as she released me. “Not really, They stopped treatment on my mum and literally kicked her out then Ryan is acting up again. I finished taking a seat. “How dare they. You know what, we are going to find a better hospital to treat your mum and Ryan is just being ungrateful. Don't listen to his words, you try so hard working two jobs a day just to make ends meet. We will get through this together okay ” Sophie would go all out for me. She always made me feel better. “Thanks Sophie” I felt so much better.
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CONTRACT OF FATE Chapter 36
— ALEXANDER —I woke up at five.Not from any external disturbance. The house was quiet in the specific way of very early in the morning, that particular stillness that existed before the day had committed to itself, before the machinery of ordinary life had started its engine. I lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and I thought about the corridor.About her face in the doorway.About *I need to think.*I had expected to feel something after saying the true thing, relief, perhaps, or the specific deflation that followed the release of pressure that had been building for a long time. What I felt instead was something more complicated. A heightened alertness. The specific, uncomfortable sensation of a man who had put something irreversible into the world and was now living in the space between having done it and knowing what it would produce.She had not said no.She had said she needed time.I was trying to understand the difference and finding it smaller than I wanted it to be a
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— ELEANOR —I had always been a patient woman.Patience was not a virtue I had developed through practice or discipline the way lesser people developed things. It was constitutive, built into the structure of who I was the way good bone structure was built in, inherited from a mother who had understood that the most dangerous women in any room were never the loudest ones. They were the ones who waited. Who watched. Who understood that the correct moment was never the first available one but the one that produced the result you had determined in advance.I had been waiting for Elena Carter to make a mistake for six months.She had not made one.This had surprised me initially and then, after the initial surprise passed, it had interested me in the way that competent opponents interested me — not with admiration, which was a sentiment I reserved for people who had earned it within my particular taxonomy of earning, but with the focused attention of a woman recalibrating her approach.El
CONTRACT OF FATE CHAPTER 34
— ALEXANDER —The call was from the board.Specifically it was from Hargrove, the senior partner, the one whose opinion moved the other three like tides moving water, the one whose presence at Friday's dinner was the reason the dinner mattered at all. He was calling to confirm the agenda. To discuss, briefly and precisely, the parameters of what would and would not be on the table. It was a twelve minute call. I handled it with the efficiency it required and ended it and stood in the entrance hall with the phone in my hand and the silence of the house settling around me.Twelve minutes.I looked at the stairs.The light under her door was on. I could see it from where I was standing, the thin line of warm light at the base of the door at the top of the stairs, the specific evidence of a person who was present and awake and on the other side of something I had just allowed to close between us for the third time.I stood in the entrance hall for a moment.Then I went upstairs.---I sto
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~ELENA~He was in the entrance hall when I got back.I did not expect him. Alexander at six PM on a Thursday was supposed to be in a boardroom or a conference call or one of the hundred other places his schedule consumed him, the places that made this mansion feel, on most evenings, like something I occupied alone with Maria and the particular silence of a very large house that was not mine.He was standing at the foot of the stairs with his jacket still on and his phone in his hand and he looked up when I came through the door and something in his face did the thing it had been doing lately. The thing I had no name for. The adjustment.I was not composed yet.That was the problem. I had been composed in the cab. I had been composed on the pavement outside the hospital. I had been composed for the entirety of the forty minute journey back across the city with my mother's rosary in my closed fist and the weight of everything she had said sitting in my chest like something I had not yet
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(Elena's POV)“Ryan, we need to talk.” I told him.Ryan was sitting on the staircase when I got back.At first I thought he didn't notice me. He looked deep in thoughts. His posture was slouched, elbows resting on his knees, head tilted downward. But the moment I stepped closer, his eyes snapped up
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Alexander’s POVThe sun filtered in through the curtains, pulling me out of my dream.Then reality came crashing back.I blinked slowly, adjusting to the light. The weight against my chest moved. Her hand. Small, warm. Her leg still tangled with mine under the blanket.Elena.The memories from the
Last Updated : 2026-04-02CONTRACT OF FATE Chapter 23
Elena’s POVMonths have passed and still I feel lonely. I enjoy the luxury of getting anything I want, eating anything I want, being able to afford my brother, mum and Sophie's needs but still it's an endless cycle of loneliness. Alexander doesn't even know I still exist. I haven't seen him for a
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