THE HOUSE OF HOLLOW GOLD

Morning Ritual The roses mock me with their perfection. Blood-red petals, thorns like tiny daggers, roots drinking from soil that costs more than most people's homes. I walk through the garden at dawn because it's the only time the estate feels mine. The marble fountains gurgle their expensive songs. The manicured lawns stretch toward the coast like green velvet. Everything gleams with Majid money. But gold can't wash the stench of rot. My bare feet sink into dew-soaked grass. The morning air tastes clean here, away from the house where secrets breathe through expensive wallpaper. I touch each rose bush like I'm counting children. Twenty-plus years, I've tended this garden. Twenty-plus years I've watched beauty grow from dirt while my family withered in luxury. The mansion looms behind me forty-seven rooms of polished shame. Every window reflects the sunrise like a golden eye, watching, judging. Inside those walls, my husband sleeps in silk sheets that cost more than a car. My children dream in bedrooms larger than apartments, their nightmares echoing through halls lined with stolen masterpieces. I pluck a dying rose. Its petals fall like drops of blood on white stone. The thorns bite my palm, drawing real blood that mingles with morning tears I refuse to shed. This garden is my church, my confession booth, my graveyard. Here, I bury the woman I used to be the farmer's daughter who believed love could bloom anywhere. The house stirs behind me. Windows glow like amber. My family wakes to another day of beautiful lies. The phone screams through morning silence. I'm still in the garden, still bleeding from Rose Thorns, when Raul's wife shatters my peace. Her voice cuts through the receiver like glass through skin. "Barbara," she sobs, "I caught them." My stomach drops into cold earth. I know without asking. I've known for months, maybe years. The glances too long, the touches too soft, the way my son looks at his sister like she's salvation and damnation wrapped in the same skin. "Caught who?" My voice sounds dead even to me. "Raul and Betty. In our bed. In our bed, Barbara!" The phone slips in my bloody palm. The garden spins around me roses, fountain, mansion, and everything tilting like the world just cracked its spine. Twenty-three years old, my daughter. Twenty-five, my son. Siblings are sharing the same cursed blood, the same twisted hunger their father planted in their souls. I walked in, and they were. Her voice breaks into animal sounds. "How long, Barbara? How long have you known?" Forever. Since Betty started wearing makeup to family dinners. Since Raul's marriage turned cold as Maine winter. Since I found them in the greenhouse last spring, bodies pressed together like prayer and sin. "I'll be right there," I whisper, but she's already gone. The dial tone buzzes like angry bees. I stare at the phone in my shaking hand. The sun climbs higher, painting everything gold the roses, the fountain, my bloody palm. Beautiful and poisonous, like everything else in our hollow paradise. Night falls like a funeral shroud over the estate. I find Majid in his study, surrounded by legal documents and crystal decanters. He sits behind his mahogany desk like a king on his throne, silver hair perfectly styled, his suit immaculate despite the late hour. The man who built an empire on charm and cruelty. "We need to talk." He doesn't look up from his papers. Just pours amber liquid into a glass and drinks like he's swallowing sunshine. The liquid costs more than most people make in a month. "What about?" ,he asks. My throat closes. The words taste like poison, but I force them out. "Raul and Betty." Now he looks up. Those dark eyes that once made me believe in forever. They're empty now, black holes that swallow light and hope and daughters' innocence. "What about them?" "His wife called me. She caught them. Together." Majid shrugs. One shoulder, casual as discussing weather. He takes another sip of liquid gold and smiles that politician's smile that won him senators and judges and foolish farm girls like I used to be. "It's natural," he says. The words hit me like ice water. Natural. He says it like discussing rain or sunrise. Like my children's sin is just another Tuesday in the Majid household. "Natural?" My voice cracks. "They're siblings." "They're adults." He sets down his glass. The crystal chimes against mahogany like a funeral bell. "Beautiful adults with beautiful needs." My skin crawls. My stomach heaves. This is the man who whispered poetry in my ear twenty-eight years ago. Who promised me castles and gave me a gilded prison. I say nothing. Just stare at him until he looks away, back to his papers, back to his empire of hollow gold. I lock the bathroom door behind me with shaking hands. The marble feels cold as a tomb beneath my bare feet. Everything in here costs more than cars,Italian tiles, gold fixtures, and mirrors that reflect lies prettier than truth. I stare at the woman in the glass. Grey streaks in brown hair. Lines around eyes that once sparkled with dreams. Hands callused from gardens, not from work that matters. A farmer's daughter wearing silk nightgowns and diamond earrings, playing dress-up in a life that fits like borrowed clothes. She looks back at me,this stranger wearing my face. Her eyes are hollow. Her mouth trembles with words she's too afraid to speak. She's been silent so long that her voice has turned to dust. "You knew," I whisper to her. She nods. "You've always known." Her reflection wavers like water. Like she's drowning in the mirror's surface. My fist connects with glass before I realize I'm moving. The mirror explodes into silver fragments, each piece reflecting a different version of my shame. Blood drips from my knuckles onto white marble. Red drops like roses, like truth, like the price of looking away. Several years of badluck, Grandmother used to say. But I've already lived twenty-seven years of it. In the largest shard, I see my eye wide, terrified, alive. For the first time in years, I see myself. Not the politician's wife, not the society matron, not the silent ghost haunting her own life. Just Barbara. Bleeding and awake and ready to burn everything down. The shard slips from my fingers and shatters on marble, leaving me staring at an empty wall where my reflection used to live.