Book 7

Book 7

The damp, cramped house on the edge of town didn't just feel empty; it felt like it was rotting from the inside out now that the person who held the walls together was gone. It was long past midnight when the front door groaned on its hinges and Emma’s mother stumbled inside, smelling of cheap gin and the stale air of the gambling house.

She was in a foul, drunken state, her eyes bloodshot and her movements erratic. Usually, Emma would be there to catch her, to steer her toward the bed and scrub the vomit off the floor before it could stain the wood.

Tonight, Stella tripped over a pile of discarded mail and went down hard, letting out a jagged scream of frustration that echoed through the thin, peeling walls.

In her drunken stupor, Stella didn’t see her own failure; she only saw Emma’s absence as a personal betrayal. She began to rain down abuses and curses, her voice rising to a shrill, hysterical pitch that made the windows rattle. “Ungrateful, selfish brat!” she shrieked, throwing a half-empty bottle against the wall where it shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.

“Leaving me here to rot after everything I sacrificed! I knew she was bad luck the day she was born. A curse on this house, that’s all she ever was!” Stella crawled toward the kitchen, knocking over chairs and sweeping old, crusty plates off the counter.

She was a woman who had spent eighteen years treating her daughter like a servant, and now that the servant had walked out, she was drowning in her own filth.

Stella’s rage grew as she realized there was no one to bring her water or help her up. “I hope that fancy world eats her alive!” she yelled at the ceiling, her words slurred but full of venom. “I hope she ends up in the gutter where she belongs! She’s a plague, a black mark on my life, and she’ll bring nothing but ruin to whoever is foolish enough to take her in!”

She pounded her fist against the damp floorboards, her curses becoming a rhythmic, nonsensical chant of hatred. She blamed Emma for the money she lost at the tables, for the ache in her bones, and for the very air she breathed. To Stella, Emma wasn't a daughter; she was a utility that had dared to stop working.

Upstairs, Bella stood in the hallway, clutching her robe tightly as she watched the chaos below with a mixture of loathing and mounting panic. She had spent her life being the favorite, the one who watched Emma do the chores, the laundry, and the cooking while she perfected her own reflection. But now, the reality of Emma’s departure was hitting her like a physical blow.

The house was cold, the sink was overflowing with dishes, and the woman screaming curses in the kitchen was now entirely her responsibility. Bella looked at the mess and felt a wave of disgust, not just for her mother, but for herself. She didn't know how to fix a leaking pipe or manage a budget that had been gambled away, and she hated Emma for leaving her to figure it out.

Bella tried to step over a pile of laundry, but the sheer effort of thinking about cleaning it made her skin crawl. She had never been the one to get her hands dirty.

She was the "pretty one," the one destined for big things, yet she was the one currently trapped in a rotting house with a drunken woman who couldn't even stand up. The more Stella screamed about Emma being bad luck, the more Bella’s heart burned with a jealousy so intense it felt like a fever.

She pictured the gold-embossed card and the black Maybach, imagining Emma sitting in a room filled with silk and light while she was trapped in this dump with a woman who couldn't even stand up.

The realization that Emma was actually somewhere behind the iron gates of the Voss estate—likely being looked at by a man like Julian Voss—was more than Bella could handle. She hated that Emma had been the one to escape the mud. She hated that Emma was probably wearing clothes that cost more than this entire house. Every shriek from her mother downstairs was a reminder that Emma had won.

Bella walked back into her room and slammed the door, trying to drown out the sounds of the woman below, but the silence of her own room felt even worse. She stared at her reflection, her mind racing with a lethal envy.

She wasn't going to stay in this house while Emma played queen. If Emma had found a way into that estate, Bella was going to find a way to make sure it didn't last. She sat on the edge of her bed, listening to her mother’s voice finally fade into a low, bitter mumble, and began to plot her own way out of the dirt.