CHAPTER SIX: A PRINCESS WITH A BROKEN CROWN.

AVA

Melanie Crown who was so used to living a luxurious life did not know what she had coming now that she had been forced to wear the face of Ava Smith.

Ideally, she should have taken over Ava's life with all its poverty, desire and tribulations but her savior (Simon Newman) just wouldn't let her go.

He had spent days beside her bed watching every single breath she took, days staring at her beautiful olive-colored skin, looking at her face with its stunning features, her beautiful long eyelashes that fluttered every once in a while as if signifying that she might wake up soon from her long bout of unconsciousness.

Simon had watched her all through her unconsciousness, not even wanting to leave her side for a second.

He memorized every feature of her face meticulously and before he could stop it the obsession with Ava Smith was built.

Simon Newman was now so obsessed with the billionaires daughter that he could not imagine a life without her in it.

Luckily for him, he did not have to.

Everybody else thinks that she is dead, to them she bled out on the surgery table. To her husband, Ian, thr love of his life (Ava) had been killed in a ghastly accident.

At this point, the billionaire's daughter was up for grabs and Simon was more than willing to claim her for himself.

He caressed the side of her face, she recoiled with a wary look on her face. Her eyes questioned many things, Ava tried to speak but she felt too weak after the little speaking she had done a little while ago.

"You are mine Ava. Do you hear? Mine,” Simon said as he held her hands in his and stared into her pale blue eyes.

Ava furrowed her brows, she swallowed a bit. She wanted to say something, to slap him across the face even, to yell at him, to tell him to return her to her father or be ready to die but her body did not obey her command.

Ava's body was still very weak from the surgery and recovery, she could hardly move without feeling like she had just climbed to the top of Mount Everest and back.

She hated this, this feeling of being utterly useless.

She hated the fact that she was not able to voice out an order or get herself out of this crazy scenario.

None of what was going on made any sense to Ava.

The last things she remembered is flying back to the states from a long vacation in Santorini.

Ava remembered getting their family's driver to come pick her up from the airport, the driver and chauffeur filling up her luggage into the trunk of the car, the long drive to the Crown's residence in Tribeca, New York.

She remembered the hearty conversation she had with her friends Stacy and Stephanie who she had known since they were all in diapers. All of their parents had attended Harvard University together.

The three of their fathers had been in the same frat house, their mothers had been members of the same Sorority so it made sense that Melanie (Ava), Stacy and Stephanie had been best friends since they were pushed out of their mothers’ wombs which was on the same day (April 21st) because their mothers had planned it that way.

Stacy's mother had been more of a mother to Ava than her own mother. Ava had spent long holidays at Stacy's family's estate, enjoying Stacy's mother's cooking.

Ava had spent all her life not knowing her own mother. It was told to her by her father that her mother Persephone had died when she was five, however, during their vacation in Greece, Ava found out that her whole life was a lie.

She found out that everything she thought true was in fact a lie.

They had had a drunk night, just frolicking through the exquisite island with liquor in their flasks, posing as street hooligans even through the three of them (Stacy, Stephanie and Ava who was Melanie at the time) all came from very wealthy-respectable homes with vain parents who would literally melt in apprehension at the sight of their daughters exhibiting any behavior that was labeled unladylike.

Well for Melanie, her father had worn out all the care he could muster. He had accepted her rebellion as his punishment for a sin he had committed in a past life.

He was used to the whole routine dance: Melanie getting into some public squabble, the Crown's PR team cleaning up the mess and paying off whoever they had to be paid off so her dirty laundry does not end up on the front page of a gossip blog.

Melanie was her father, Frederick Crown's, arch nemesis in more ways than one. It seemed like she was hell-bent on punishing him with how badly and how awfully she acted out.

During the Santorini trip, Melanie did some self-reflection and decided that she would do better by her father, that she would try to be a better daughter to him…that was until the drunken night when she had that caustic argument with Stacy and Stacy spilled the truth of Melanie's mother in hot red anger.

"You are so full of yourself Melanie!” Stacy had yelled in anger after Mel had called her boring for not wanting to participate in a dangerous street event because of she was so scared of how her very strict parents would react.

Amongst the three girls, Stacy had it the hardest (if you can tag being a super rich nepo baby as having a hard life! Like boohoo my life is so hard *eye roll* anyway back to the story).

Both of Stacy's parents were top tier lawyers, both of them represented the white house and had been part of the legal teams of some American states at some point in their lives.

Her father was at the time running for a gubernatorial position and her mother was steady climbing the long hierarchical ladder in the law profession.

She was raised by borderline narcissistic perfectionists who expected nothing but the best from her.

Stacy was never given the leeway that Melanie's father had always given her so she had to work extra hard to reach their expectations (*okay that's actually hard*) and because of this she had been tagged the boring one in the group, a stereotype that she hated.

That particular night, Melanie was being more annoying than usual. She seemed hell-bent on crushing Stacy's spirit by repeatedly calling her boring.

“Please Stacy, lighten up a bit, no wonder you are so boring!” Melanie jeered in response to Stacy's inflamed rebuttal.

“Oh yeah I might be boring but at least my mother did not leave me as a baby in order to chase after a broke man she met once on a vacation!” Stacy yelled in anger.

"What?” Melanie laughed in confusion.

"You know for someone who acts like she knows everything you are so clueless!” Stacy added, Stephanie threw her a look and mouthed for her to stop speaking but she had had it with Mel and so decorum was out the window.

"What do you mean by what you said?” Mel's heart pounded in her chest. There was this feeling of looming doom that she could not shake off.

"Your mother Persephone Crown is not dead Mel!” Stacy said. “She eloped with a raggedy poor man,” Stace announced.

The look on her face was one of satisfaction, like she was excited to see Melanie so broken.

In that moment, Melanie wondered if they were friends…if they had ever been true friends.

Throughout the ride home from the airport, Melanie wondered of she should bring up the issue of her mother.

She was mad at her father for keeping the secret away from her, for making her whole life seem like a lie but she also worried that it would break him completely if he knew that she knew.

Melanie decided to not say anything about her new discovery when she got to their Tribeca Estate, she decided that she would instead enjoy being home…that was until her father announced to her that she would be marrying her long time frienemy Calvin Vink.

It hurt Melanie (Ava) that the last memory she had of her dear father was one of them arguing.

She could not explain it but she had this scary feeling at the pit of her stomach that she would never see her father again.

There was this scary feeling that her life as she knew it was about to change for the worst.