Ruined By The Wrong Brother

Chapter 11: Come Over

Elena's Point Of View

"Ma'am, we're almost finished," one of them murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.

I stopped in the doorway of the master bedroom, my hand still gripping the frame for support. Sarah and Maria, the two younger maids, stood near the walk-in closet like deer caught in headlights. Sarah clutched three of my heavy winter coats over her arm… the cashmere ones I'd bought during that trip to Milan, while Maria carefully placed my designer heels into plastic storage bins, handling each pair as if they were made of glass.

When they noticed me watching, they both went completely rigid, eyes wide, shoulders hiked up to their ears. Their faces held the same expression I'd seen on servants in period dramas right before the mistress of the house unleashed her fury. They were waiting for me to scream, to throw something, to order them out with the kind of rage that would echo through the entire estate.

I didn't. I just stood there, my jaw still throbbing from where Matilda's rings had connected with my skin, watching them dismantle the life I'd spent half a decade building in this room. Every folded sweater, every packed shoe felt like another piece of my identity being erased.

"Do you want us to take the vanity items now, or should we wait?" Maria asked, her hands trembling slightly against the plastic box. Her voice carried the careful neutrality of someone who had witnessed too many wealthy family dramas.

"Take everything," I said, my voice dead and flat, stripped of any emotion that might crack my composure. "Don't leave a single piece of me in here."

They worked fast after that, keeping their heads down, scurrying back and forth between our room and the small guest suite down the eastern wing of the house like ants following an invisible trail. I didn't help them. I couldn't bring myself to touch my own belongings, to participate in my own exile.

Instead, I stood by the window, watching the Texas sun finally dip below the tree line, leaving the sky a bruised, muddy purple that matched exactly how I felt inside.

When Sarah finally carried the last stack of my jeans out, she paused by the door, looking back at me with pity that made my stomach turn. "We put everything in the closet down there, Miss Elena. If you need help unpacking..."

"I'm fine, Sarah. Thank you." The lie tasted bitter on my tongue.

I walked down the hallway to the guest room, each step feeling like a march toward my own funeral. It was a sterile, cold space… the one we usually kept for Graham's distant business associates when they stayed over from Dallas. The walls were beige, the furniture impersonal and functional. The maids had done exactly what they were told. My trunks were stacked against the wall like abandoned luggage at a train station, and my clothes were packed tightly into a smaller wardrobe that couldn't hold even a quarter of what I owned.

I shut the heavy oak door behind me. The click of the latch sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room, final and irrevocable.

My knees hit the carpet first. Then my forehead pressed into the hard floor, the rough fibers scratching against my skin.

The tears came like a flood, hot and violent, choking me until my chest felt like it was cracking open from the inside out. I shoved both of my palms against my mouth, biting down on my own skin hard enough to leave marks, desperate to keep the sound from leaking through the door. I wouldn't let them hear me.

I wouldn't give Matilda or Lillian or Graham the satisfaction of knowing they'd broken me. I wouldn't let a single sob escape from this wing to reach their triumphant ears.

I sat there on the floor for ten straight minutes, my ribs aching with each suppressed cry, my whole body shaking as five years of a carefully constructed lie washed over me in waves of humiliation and grief.

When the crying stopped, a dull, hollow ache took over, settling into my bones like a permanent resident. I reached into my pocket with fingers that felt numb and disconnected from my body, pulled out my phone with a slippery hand, and scrolled through my contacts until I found the only name that mattered.

I pressed call. It didn't even ring twice.

"Elena?" Lexy's voice came through the speaker, sharp and immediate, already alert to danger the way only a best friend could be.

I tried to say her name, but all that came out was a ragged, wet hiccup that embarrassed me even in my devastation. I buried my face back in my knees, the phone pressed hard against my ear, trying to breathe through the tightness in my throat.

"Elena, talk to me. What did he do?" Lexy's tone changed instantly, turning dangerous, protective, the background noise of her car engine loud over the line.

"He... he brought her here, Lex," I choked out, my voice cracking into a million pieces, each word feeling like shards of glass in my throat. "She's pregnant. His mother is here. They're moving her into my room. My room, Lex. Like I'm already gone."

There was a long, heavy silence on the other end of the line. I could hear Lexy's sharp, rhythmic breathing, the sound of her indicators clicking as she pulled over, probably onto some random shoulder on the highway. When she spoke again, she didn't ask for details. She didn't ask how or why or what I'd done to deserve this.

"Come over," she said, and those two words held more love and loyalty than Graham had shown me in five years.

The line went dead.

I stared at the black screen for a second, then wiped my face with the back of my hand, smearing tears and snot across my skin. The sadness was still there, a heavy stone in my gut that threatened to drag me under, but underneath it, something else was starting to curdle. Something hot. Angry. Powerful.

I got up, my legs shaky but determined, and marched straight into the guest bathroom. I turned the shower on as hot as it would go, watching the steam rise and fog the mirror. I stripped off my dirty sweatpants and the oversized t-shirt that still smelled faintly of Graham's cologne, a scent that now made me nauseous.

I stepped under the spraying water, letting it scald my skin. I cried under the stream, the heat turning my skin bright red, but the water washed away the evidence of my tears, making me feel like I was purging something toxic from my system. By the time I turned the handle off, the tears had stopped completely, replaced by a cold, crystalline clarity.

I looked at myself in the steamed-up mirror, wiping a clear streak across the glass. My left cheek was puffy, a faint red mark from Matilda's rings still showing near my jawline like a brand of ownership I refused to accept.

"Never again," I muttered to the glass, and this time I meant it with every fiber of my being.

I walked out naked into the bedroom, water still dripping from my hair onto the carpet. I wasn't going to go out there looking like a victim. I wasn't going to give them the immense satisfaction of seeing me look small, broken, and rejected in my own home, or what used to be my home.

I sat at the small vanity, my movements deliberate and focused. I carefully applied a thick layer of concealer over the bruise on my jaw until the skin looked flawless, erasing Matilda's violence with each dab. I did my makeup with the precision of a warrior preparing for battle… dark, sharp eyeliner that made my eyes look fierce and untouchable, a heavy contour that made my cheekbones look like weapons, and a deep, blood-red lipstick that I usually only wore to major industry galas.

The kind of red that said "dangerous" and "untouchable" in equal measure. I curled my hair with steady hands, letting the dark waves fall loose around my shoulders, covering the back of my neck in a cascade of deliberate glamour.

Then I went to the wardrobe, my heart pounding with anticipation.

I pushed past the conservative midi dresses Graham always bought for me… the ones that made me look like a senator's wife or a church volunteer, past the linen shirts and the sensible slacks that had slowly replaced my own style over the years, until my fingers hit silk.

It was a backless, floor-length black gown with a slit that traveled all the way up the left thigh, plunging low at the chest in a way that celebrated rather than apologized for the female form. I bought it in New York two years ago during a rare solo trip. The one time I'd tried it on in front of Graham before a charity dinner, he'd made me take it off within five minutes, his face twisted with disapproval. "It reveals too much, Elena," he'd said, his hand tight on my arm, fingers digging in just enough to leave temporary marks. "You're a Sinclair now. You don't need to show yourself off to the public like some cheap hostess."

Well. That version of Elena… the obedient, diminished, apologetic version, died twenty minutes ago on the floor of a guest room.