جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 5

Elara didn't sleep.After the bathroom, after the way he'd looked at her like she'd crawled out of a grave, she'd been escorted to a guest room by a silent security guard. The door had locked behind her. She'd checked twice.The room was beautiful. Soft gray walls. A bed big enough for four people. Windows that looked out over a city that glittered like it was mocking her. She sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the locked door until dawn bled through the curtains.No one came.She didn't have her phone. Her bag was still in the service hallway. Her roommate would be wondering where she was. Rent was due in three days now.None of that mattered anymore.She was trapped in a billionaire's penthouse because she had a birthmark that matched his dead wife's.The lock clicked.Elara stood up fast, heart slamming. The door opened and a woman stepped in. She is older and severe. Her hair pulled back so tight it stretched her face. She wore a dress that cost more than Elara's entire

Elara woke to sunlight streaming through windows she didn't recognize.For a disoriented moment, she thought she was back in her cramped apartment, that the silk sheets were a dream, that the ache between her thighs was from a long shift scrubbing floors. Then she shifted, and her body reminded her. Everywhere. The tenderness. The faint soreness deep inside. The memory of his weight pressing her into the mattress.She sat up slowly. The room was beautiful. Cream walls. A chandelier. A dressing table covered in bottles and brushes that smelled like jasmine and money.She was sleeping in a dead woman's bed. Wearing a dead woman's life. And last night, she'd let a man who owned her use her body until she shattered beneath him.I should hate myself.She waited for the shame to arrive. It didn't. Instead, she felt... strange. Full. Like something hungry inside her had been fed for the first time in years. Not just the sex—though that had been unlike anything her body had ever known. It was