DEAR EX, IT'S TOO LATE, I HAVE MOVED ON

AUBREEI walked back to my room cautiously, still holding the gauze against my arm where the needle had been.When I got to my room, I sat down too dizzy and was almost losing consciousness.They call this basement my room but I know even this wasn't mine. Nothing in this mansion was mine. Not the bed, not the clothes in the closet, not even the air I breathed.Everything belongs to him including me. I struggled to my feet and went to the calendar, I marked another day off.I staggered back to the bed and fell back as I thought back to three years ago, when all the madness began. [Three Years Earlier]I ran through the hospital halls, my heart pounding so hard I thought it would explode. I had eleven missed calls from my mother and I am too terrified to listen to them. God, please let nothing happen to Lily. I found them in the ICU waiting room. My mother was sobbing into my father's shoulder. Her makeup was ruined, as well as her mascara, which was running down her face. Vivian

DOMINICI stood up from the breakfast table and straightened my suit jacket. Aubree was still picking at her food, eating small bites like she was afraid the plate would disappear."Come to my office in an hour." My voice came out colder than I intended. I softened it a little. "We need to visit my family."She flinched. Why? I have never raised my hand to her.So why? "Yes, sir."That damn word again. I wasn't her boss and she wasn't my employee.I opened my mouth to tell her to stop calling me that. To just use my name. But the words stuck in my throat.What difference did it make? She was here because of a contract. No difference from an employee. I left the dining room without another word.When I got to my office, I barely had time to sit down before Marcus barged in. My secretary. Though calling him that felt wrong since he has been my friend since college.Marcus loved two things in life: expensive watches and my money. In that order.He dropped into the chair across from m

AUBREEI didn't get any sleep. Every time I put my phone down, I picked it up again a few minutes later. The numbers kept staring back at me, daring me to find an explanation that made sense. But there wasn't one.The account balance still sat at two hundred and thirty-seven dollars. It didn't increase and made everything out as a dream.I had checked it so many times during the night that I could have recited the number from memory.When I first opened the account, I hadn't expected to become rich. I wasn't stupid enough to trust my parents, but I had expected there would be something in there after almost three years.Something that's tangible and worth giving to Lily urgently whenever she requests something which she rarely does.All through the night I kept scrolling through pages of transactions and watching my future disappear one withdrawal at a time.By morning, my eyes hurt and my head felt heavy. I tossed my phone onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.The worst part wasn't

AUBREEI hid the food under my bed.Not all of it but some of it went into the small kitchenette attached to the basement bathroom, the one Mrs. Charles pretended didn't exist so she could justify sending me porridge twice a week. The cheese and the leftover rice went into the mini-fridge that had been there when I arrived and had never once been stocked with anything belonging to me.The bread, the apples, and the remaining bacon went under the bed in the bags, which I pushed against the wall behind the spare blanket I never used because the basement was never cold enough to need it and never warm enough to be comfortable.I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my phone and sighed, how was I going to get the five thousand dollars? When I had exactly two hundred and thirty-seven dollars and nobody to ask for help. I couldn't ask Dominic. I would rather sell one of my kidneys than stand in front of that man and ask him for anything after what I had witnessed in his office yesterd