Cost

m I hadn't even heard yet. My head swam, the room tilting around me. My vision blurred. I vaguely heard my publicist making excuses as I stumbled

s, cold and imposing. Constance had always viewed me with suspicion, her disapproval a constant, quiet hum in the background of my life. She was a woman of lineage, old money, and an unshakeable belief in the Blackwell legacy; I was simply a girl from nowhere. She had never li

gic that governed his actions. She had witnessed his early years, the charismatic charm that masked

, shielding me with his own body, taking a brutal blow that left him bleeding, broken, but alive. He lay in a hospital bed, his eyes, usually so full of fire, softened when they met mine. "Elara," he whispered, hi

, buried beneath layers of wealth and entitlement. I told myself that his affairs were a temporary madness, a phase he would eventually outgrow. I was a fool, a desperate, pathetic woman clinging to a ghost of a

I had gone to Constance, expecting her to fulfill her promise of the trust. Instead, I

y with nothing but your life, and the children from your non-profit. We will make Faron believe you are dead." She explained the existen

d taken the latter, believing in the love Faron once professed. And Faron, in his naivety, had been thrilled when Constance laid out the terms. "It's a formality, my love," he had told me then, his eyes shining with a promise of a future that never arrived. "Just a small hurdle for us to overcome.

humiliation was not purely public; there were physical tolls too, exacted behind closed doors, often by Faron himself or by his enforcers, when the publi

eck-up." Dr. Kassie Alvarado, Faron's current favorite, was the physician on duty. Her smirk wa

rticularly tender spot. I gasped, a sharp intake of breath. "Does Faron even remember what yo

in, pushing down the anger. What was

voice dripping with false sweetness. "In fact, he avoids you quite d

and he would flinch, pulling away as if burned. He would leave the room without a word, often to be found hours later in his private study, violently vomiting into a waste bin. My body, scarred by his family's punishments and, in some cases, by his own hand, had become repulsive to hi