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I was on my knees in the Ohio dirt, frantically scooping wet coffee grounds back into a torn trash bag while my foster mother screamed that I was a useless waste of space. Then, ten black Escalades rolled into our rotting trailer park like a funeral procession, and a woman in silk fell to the mud, sobbing that she had finally found her "Elara." I was whisked away to a mansion that looked like a castle, but the nightmare didn't end with a warm bed and sterilized air. My brother Harlen looked at me with pure disgust, and when he slapped a chicken leg out of my hand at our first dinner, I instinctively dove under the table to eat it off the rug, begging for mercy through my tears. My billionaire father, Arthur, watched in silent agony as I tried to wash my own rags in a gold-plated sink at dawn, terrified that I would be starved if I didn't "earn my keep." He promised me a thousand silk dresses and ordered the trailer park bulldozed to the ground, but I still felt like a prey animal caught by very large, very sad predators. The trauma wasn't a smudge I could wash off; it was a map of cigarette burns and bruises that I was desperate to hide from the family that had spent millions searching for me. Just as I thought I might be safe, a black helicopter banked over the lawn, carrying a medical team and a cold order from my oldest brother, the "Shark" of New York. "No one is ever taking you away," my father growled, shielding me from the men in white coats. But as the rotors shook the windows, I realized that being found was only the beginning of a different kind of war within the Bridges empire.
Contents
Chapter 1 1
The air tasted like burning rubber and three-day-old garbage.
It was a Tuesday in Ohio, the kind of Tuesday that stuck to the back of your throat. The sun hammered down on the metal roofs of the trailer park, turning the narrow dirt lanes into a convection oven.
Estelle dragged the black plastic bag across the gravel. It was heavy. Heavier than her arms, which were just sticks wrapped in pale skin. The plastic snagged on a sharp rock, tearing open. A coffee grounds slurry leaked out, staining the toe of her sneaker.
"Pick it up, you useless waste of space."
Estelle flinched. She didn't look up. She knew exactly what Mrs. Miller looked like without seeing her: a floral muumuu stained with ketchup, a cigarette hanging from a lip that had curled in a permanent sneer years ago.
"I said pick it up!" Mrs. Miller's voice was a serrated knife. "God, you're slow. No wonder your own parents tossed you out like trash."
Estelle's stomach clamped tight. It was a physical knot, hard and cold, right under her ribs. She dropped to her knees in the dirt, her fingers shaking as she tried to scoop the wet coffee grounds back into the bag. The smell made bile rise in her throat.
Don't cry. Crying costs extra. That was the rule here.
The ground began to vibrate.
It started as a hum in the pebbles under her knees. Then the water in the puddle next to her rippled.
Mrs. Miller stopped shouting. The silence was sudden and terrifying. Estelle looked up, squinting against the glare.
A black shape cut through the heat haze.
It was a car. But not the kind of car that came here. It wasn't a rusted Ford or a police cruiser. It was a monolith of black steel and tinted glass. A Cadillac Escalade.
Then another. And another.
Ten of them.
They moved like a funeral procession for a giant, rolling silently over the potholes that usually swallowed tires whole. The sheer size of them blocked out the sun. The trailer park, usually loud with shouting and barking dogs, went dead silent.
The convoy stopped. The lead car was exactly ten feet from where Estelle knelt in the garbage.
Doors opened in unison. The sound was a heavy, expensive thud.
Men in black suits poured out. They didn't look like social workers. They moved with the terrifying precision of machines. They wore sunglasses that reflected the poverty around them without absorbing it.
"Secure the perimeter," one of them said. His voice was low, clipped.
Mrs. Miller scrambled back onto her porch, her cigarette falling from her mouth and burning a hole in her slipper. She didn't notice.
The door of the middle car-a stretch Lincoln that looked long enough to land a plane on-swung open.
A shoe hit the dirt. Italian leather. Hand-stitched. It cost more than the trailer Estelle slept under.
A man stepped out. Arthur Bridges. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a face carved from granite and grief. He looked like he could buy the sky and shut off the sun.
Then, a woman. Eleanor.
She was shaking. Visibly vibrating. Her hand was over her mouth, her eyes wide, scanning the dirt, the trash, the crowd.
Her gaze landed on Estelle.
Estelle froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She tried to make herself smaller, curling her shoulders in. I didn't steal anything. I didn't break anything.
"Elara," the woman whispered.
It wasn't a name Estelle knew. But the sound of it broke something in the woman.
Eleanor didn't walk. She ran. She stumbled in her heels, sinking into the mud, and she didn't care. She hit the ground on her knees, disregarding the coffee grounds and the filth.
Estelle flinched back, raising her arm to protect her head.
The blow never came.
Instead, arms wrapped around her. Tight. Desperate. It wasn't a hug; it was a collision. The woman buried her face in Estelle's dirty, matted hair. She smelled like vanilla and rain and expensive desperation.
"I found you," Eleanor sobbed, the sound raw and ugly. "Oh God, Elara, Mommy found you."
Estelle couldn't breathe. Her lungs felt compressed by the woman's grief. She stayed rigid, her hands hovering in the air, covered in trash juice.
Arthur was there a second later. He dropped his suit jacket over Estelle's shoulders. It was heavy, warm, and smelled like cedar. He knelt down, enclosing both of them. His eyes were red, rimmed with a wetness that looked out of place on his stony face.
"Is that her?" Mrs. Miller's voice squeaked from the porch. "I mean... I took good care of her! I always said she was special!"
Arthur looked up.
The look he gave Mrs. Miller didn't have heat. It was absolute zero. It was a look that promised extinction.
"Get her inside the car," Arthur said, his voice cracking. "Now."
Estelle felt the woman's grip loosen slightly, just enough to look at her face. Eleanor's thumbs brushed away a smudge of dirt on Estelle's cheek. Her hands were trembling so hard she could barely touch the skin.
"You're safe," Eleanor choked out. "You're safe."
Estelle looked at the woman's wet eyes. She didn't feel safe.
She felt like a prey animal that had just been caught by a very large, very sad predator.
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