Chapter 8

Once Helen stepped out of Nicholas and Eleanor’s marital home, she stopped when her phone buzzed with a call from her daughter, Emilia.

She answered with a weary sigh. “Yes?”

“Mom! How did it go? Did you talk to her?”

Helen looked up at the clear blue sky, frustration bubbling up inside her. “I did. But it seems like your brother didn’t say anything to her. She seemed just as unrepentant as ever.”

“What? How can he ignore something like this?” Emilia snapped. “I’m telling you, Mom, this is exactly why that bitch had the nerve to treat us that way. She knows Nick is buried in work and won’t bother looking into what actually happened, no matter what she does. She thinks she can disrespect us, kick me out of the house, and get away with it because your precious son is too busy to deal with his own wife. Honestly, she’s gotten way too comfortable in that house.”

Helen rolled her eyes. “And isn’t she right? Your brother did nothing, even after I told him everything myself. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know my own son. He seems to be living on a different planet entirely. But that’s not all. Do you know what Eleanor just told me?”

“What?”

Helen leaned against her car, lowering her voice. “She said she wants a divorce.”

“Divorce?! Are you serious?!”

Helen nodded even though Emilia couldn’t see her. “Yes, she did. She’s probably bluffing, though.”

“Of course, she is bluffing. She’d never leave Nick. She’s not that stupid. Besides, he’s the only reason she can still enjoy this life of luxury and all that. She knows that if she leaves him, her own parents won’t take her back. I mean, come on! She’s a nobody in the Berkshire family. Just an abandoned daughter raised by God knows who! They only brought her home because they needed someone to marry Nick. Otherwise, they couldn’t care less about her. And she knows it well. There’s no way she would ever leave Nick,” Emilia sneered on the other end. “Never.”

Helen nodded in agreement. “You’re right. But still, I didn’t like the way she was talking. There was something in her voice… I don’t know. It felt like she was serious.”

Emilia laughed. “Don’t worry, Mom. She’s not going anywhere. She’s just trying to show off. But you know what? Why don’t we give her a little push? Make her realize that she can’t mess with us.”

Helen smirked. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well… why don’t you invite Nick and Eleanor over for dinner tonight? Leave the rest to me. I’ll make sure she has the worst time of her life.”

Helen chuckled. “I like the way you think, darling. Consider it done.”

After hanging up, Helen got into her car and drove off, a triumphant smile on her face.

She couldn’t wait to see Eleanor squirm that night.

——

Back in the house, Eleanor was trying to relax.

She had gone up to her room after her unpleasant conversation with Helen and was now sitting on her bed, her mind racing with a thousand thoughts.

She couldn’t believe she had told Nicholas’s mother about her decision to get a divorce before even telling him. She had wanted to talk to him first, to make sure he was on board with it.

But when Helen had confronted her, she had just blurted it out without thinking.

It didn’t matter, she told herself. It was bound to come out sooner or later. At least now she wouldn’t have to worry about keeping it a secret.

Still, a part of her couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling. Helen didn’t believe her, and she had every reason not to. Eleanor had never shown any signs of wanting to leave Nicholas. She had always been the dutiful wife, the perfect daughter-in-law, silently enduring Helen’s constant criticism and Emilia’s cruel remarks.

When Helen complained about the way she dressed, she changed her wardrobe without protest. When Emilia dumped impossible tasks on her during family gatherings, Eleanor completed them with a smile. Even when Emilia deliberately spilled wine on her dress at a charity gala and brushed it off as an accident, Eleanor had swallowed her humiliation and said nothing.

There had been countless dinners where Helen openly compared her to other wealthy young women, pointing out all the ways Eleanor fell short, and Eleanor had simply lowered her head and apologized for faults that weren’t even hers.

Despite Nicholas’s emotional distance, she had continued to wake up early to prepare his meals, remember his schedule, and make sure everything in his life ran smoothly. In everyone’s eyes, Eleanor had been the woman who tolerated everything for the sake of her marriage. The woman who loved Nicholas too much to ever walk away.

So how could Helen possibly believe that the same Eleanor who had spent two years sacrificing her pride for the Beaumont family would suddenly decide to leave it all behind?

But now… things were different.

She had changed.

She had finally realized that she couldn’t keep living this way. She deserved more than a marriage built on indifference and obligation. More than waiting for scraps of affection from a man who barely noticed her existence.

She was tired of being the person everyone overlooked, the woman who quietly held everything together while receiving nothing in return.

She lay down on the bed, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.

It was hard to say how long she laid there like that. It could have been ten minutes or an hour. But when her phone buzzed, she reached for it, expecting it to be from Luna.

But it wasn’t.

It was a message from Ethan Mars, Nicholas’s special assistant.

Dinner at Mrs Beaumont’s place tonight. 7 PM. A car would pick you up.

Eleanor stared at the message for a minute too long before tossing the phone away.

“Fine,” she muttered under her breath. “I’ll treat this as my last dinner with the Beaumont family. Then I’m out.”