Back home
1198 Words
Millie-Rose POV
The air felt different the moment I stepped off the plane.
Sharper. Colder. Heavy with memories I had once sworn never to face again.
Leo clung to my hand as we walked through the arrivals terminal, his sketchbook tucked under his arm, his small fingers warm and steady. I had expected fear to drown me the second my feet touched American soil, but instead something else rose in my chest…steel. Strength. A quiet, controlled fire.
Four years ago, I left this country broken, terrified, barely able to breathe.
Now I was walking back in with my head high, my hair cut short in a dark, sharp bob that brushed my shoulders, my makeup soft but intentional, my clothes neat and structured. I looked like a woman with a plan. A woman who owned her own story.
Not the girl they chased.
Not the girl they tried to ruin.
Not the girl they thought disappeared.
“Mamá,” Leo whispered, tugging my hand. “Why is it so cold? Spain is warmer.”
“Welcome to America, mi amor,” I murmured. “Land of too much air-conditioning.”
He giggled. The sound steadied me more than anything else possibly could.
We walked through the terminal quietly. A few people glanced my way…tiny flickers of curiosity…but no one stared long enough to recognize me. Maybe the haircut worked. Maybe four years was enough time for my face to fade from public memory.
Or maybe they simply didn’t expect a runaway heiress to be holding a nearly-four-year-old boy with a dragon book and asking for directions to the taxi stand.
Outside, the city hit me in a rush…the traffic, the noise, the familiar scent of exhaust mixed with winter air. My chest tightened. The last time I breathed this in, I was a different person.
“Ready?” I asked Leo.
He nodded with the fierce confidence only children possess.
We took a cab to my childhood home. I expected dread to suffocate me on the way, but what filled me was something else…anticipation. Years of fear had eaten through every part of me, but now that I was back, now that I had crossed the ocean willingly…
I wanted my life back.
The cab rolled to a stop in front of the house.
And I froze.
The Oslo mansion…my mother’s house…looked nothing like the place I grew up.
Tall weeds choked the edges of the walkway. The lawn was overgrown. The curtains were heavy, strange, mismatched. And in the driveway was a car I didn’t recognize, a silver sedan with a dented bumper.
Someone was living here.
Someone who wasn’t me.
Leo squeezed my hand. “Is this your house, mamá?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “It is.”
It was supposed to be mine. By birth. By right. By blood.
And yet for years I had lived like a ghost while someone else enjoyed what my mother left behind.
I walked up the path, my heels crunching over dead leaves. Leo held his dragon book tightly, like he sensed the storm in the air.
I rang the doorbell.
Footsteps. A lock clicked.
The door swung open.
Martha.
Her hair was curled and dyed honey blond, her lips painted a garish red. She wore a silk robe…my mother’s silk robe…and her eyes widened when she registered my face.
Then narrowed.
“Well… well…well!” she sneered. “Look who rose from the dead.”
Leo shifted behind me, but I placed a steadying hand on his head.
“Martha,” I said calmly. “Get out of my house.”
She laughed. Loud. Sharp. Ugly.
“Oh please. This house? Yours? You abandoned it. You abandoned everything. And you think you can stroll in and claim ownership? You must be more delusional than I thought.”
The old me would have shrunk.
The old me would have stuttered.
The old me would have backed down.
But that woman was long gone.
“I didn’t abandon anything,” I said. “I was forced out. And now I’m back. Move.”
Her face twisted with rage.
“How dare you? How dare you come here after everything you caused?”
“Everything I caused?” I asked quietly.
“Our father is in jail!” she screamed. “Do you know why? Because he took money for your endorsement deals. Money he couldn’t refund after you vanished. Money he owed. You did that. YOU!”
Her shrill voice echoed through the house. Leo pressed closer to me.
“Martha,” I said, voice controlled and even, “your father went to jail because he signed deals under my name. My money. My image. He exploited me. Don’t twist this.”
Her mouth quivered with anger, but she threw her chin up.
“You stupid little tramp,” she spat. “I’m calling the guards.”
She snapped her fingers and two uniformed private security officers stepped forward from the hallway…my hallway.
“Arrest her,” Martha commanded. “She’s trespassing.”
The guards hesitated. They looked at me…my eyes, my posture, the child at my side. Something didn’t add up for them.
“I said arrest her!” Martha screeched.
The guards stepped closer.
Leo gasped and held my hand tighter.
And then…
A shadow darkened the doorway behind me.
A presence. Heavy. Dominant. Familiar.
A voice like thunder cut through the tension.
“No one touches her.”
My breath froze.
I didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was.
Alpha Braham.
His scent rolled in first…pine, storm, smoke.
Then his footsteps.
Then his silhouette beside me, tall and broad, his eyes burning with something primal.
The guards instantly bowed their heads.
Martha staggered backward.
“You…You can’t just walk in here!” she stuttered.
“This is not your house,” Braham said, his voice low and deadly. “And she is not trespassing.”
Martha trembled. “W-Why are you here? What do you want?”
“What is mine,” he answered simply.
My heart lurched…anger, fear, and heat all clashing.
I moved in front of him sharply, my own voice rising with fury.
“Don’t.”
He blinked, surprised.
“I didn’t ask for your protection,” I said through clenched teeth. “I didn’t come back for a bodyguard. I came back to claim my life. Myself. I don’t need you to fight my battles.”
Silence punched through the room.
Martha stared.
The guards froze.
Braham’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t speak.
Good.
I turned back to Martha.
“Get. Out. Of. My. House.”
Her mouth opened, then closed, then trembled. She started backing away, muttering curses, pulling out her phone, grabbing her robe tighter.
I stepped into the house fully, my spine straight, my son’s hand in mine, Braham standing behind me like the storm I refused to acknowledge.
My voice was calm, steady, absolute.
“This ends today. All of it.”
Leo squeezed my fingers.
Braham’s breath shifted behind me.
Martha bolted for the stairs.
For the first time in four years, I wasn’t running.
I was home.
And I wasn’t leaving.
- Writer
