CHAPTER TWO
1068 Words
Eighteen years ago…
The rain wouldn’t stop that night. It poured down heavily like the sky knew what was ahead and grieving in advance.
The windows of the black Mercedes car weren't spared, the rain lashed against it harshly as the car turned into the driveway of the Hart estate.
Seraphina—seven, thin, shivering. It was her first time seeing the outside world, her tiny fingers clutched a plastic bag with all her belongings in it. Her eyes were wide with fear. She’d never seen a house so large. It looked like a castle. But a cold one.
“Welcome to your new home.” Henry Hart said, smiling to her as he opened the car door, stepped out and shielded her with his umbrella.
She scrambled after him, her shoes squeaking with each step.
The front door opened before they reached it. A tall, slender woman stood in the doorway, arms folded, face stiff.
Maureen Hart.
Next to her, a girl around Seraphina’s age, with shiny black curls and a pink dress, held a doll by the neck looking fiercely at Seraphina, frowning.
Ivy Hart.
“Maureen,” Henry said, ushering Seraphina in. “This is Seraphina. She is now a member of the family and she will be staying with us from now on.”
Maureen didn’t smile.
“You went to a charity home and brought back… this?” She looked Seraphina up and down as if she were something that had crawled out of the gutter.
“She’s a good girl,” Henry said, gently placing a hand on Seraphina’s shoulder. “Smart. Quiet. She needs a home.”
“We already have a daughter.”
Seraphina flinched as Maureen turned and walked away, heels clacking on the marble floor.
“Don’t worry,” Henry whispered to Seraphina, giving her shoulder a squeeze.
---
The first slap came two weeks later.
Seraphina had accidentally knocked over Ivy’s perfume bottle while dusting her dresser.
“You stupid girl!” Maureen snapped. “Are you blind, or do you think this is the slum orphanage you came out from?”
She slapped Seraphina’s face hard enough to knock her into the dresser.
Ivy stood at the doorway, watching. Smiling.
“Clean this mess before my husband comes home. Or else I'll send you back into the street where you belong.”
Selina bit her lip, tears flowing down her cheeks. She nodded and bent down quickly to clean the glass. One of the glass pricked her finger, but she hid it quickly, out of fear of being slapped again.
She called Henry “Papa.” He was the only light in that house. He’d bring her books. Sit with her in the garden and read with her. Those were the only time she felt safe.
But he was also blind—to Maureen’s venom, to Ivy’s bullying, to the fact that the moment he left the room, Seraphina became their target.
At school, Ivy made sure Seraphina had no friends.
“She’s not my real sister,” Ivy would announce. “She’s adopted from a shelter. And her mother was probably a prostitute.”
Those words hit Seraphina deeply.
No matter how hard she studied or how well she behaved, she was always a shadow behind Ivy’s spotlight.
At dinner, Maureen would serve Ivy the bigger piece of chicken. Seraphina got scraps.
When she cried, she was told to be grateful.
“You could’ve been on the street, begging,” Maureen would say. “Don’t think you’re entitled to anything here.”
Still, she stayed silent.
For Henry. Her papa.
---
She was sixteen when he collapsed in the study.
Seraphina had just brought him tea when his hand clutched his chest and his eyes went wide with pain.
“Papa?”
He crumpled to the floor.
“Papaaaaa!”
She screamed for help, shaking him, tears streaming down her face. His lips moved, but no sound came. He was gone before the ambulance arrived.
At the funeral, Seraphina clung to his photo, numb. The one person who had loved her—gone. And with him, any protection she had, left also.
From that day, everything changed.
Seraphina was moved into the attic room.
The garden books disappeared. The warmth, all gone.
Now she was the house maid.
Not even Ivy bothered hiding it anymore.
One afternoon, Seraphina came down the stairs to find them laughing in the living room.
“She either make do with whatever is handed to her, or she goes back to the street. This home is not a shelter for abandoned children.” Maureen said, pouring herself some wine.
Ivy giggled. “Maybe we should hang a sign on the door: No Orphans Allowed.”
Mother and daughter laughed out loudly.
They didn’t know Seraphina was standing there, hearing them.
She turned back up the stairs silently to her attic room, her heart tearing apart one piece at a time.
Still, she stayed. Because there was nowhere else to go.
And somehow, deep down, she still hoped they’d change.
Seraphina sat on the cold attic floor later that afternoon with her knees pulled to her chest.
She stared at the single photograph she’d kept hidden all these years—Henry Hart, smiling with his arms around her. The only man who had ever looked at her like she was worth something.
They took everything else from her—her room, the warmth, her dignity. But they couldn’t take the memory of him.
She heard laughter downstairs.
Maureen’s voice. Ivy’s too. Then a deep male voice that made her pause.
She tiptoed to the door and stepped out again to see who it was.
“Ivy,” Maureen’s voice was gentle. “Let him breathe, he just arrived.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” the man replied, his voice smooth. “It’s always a pleasure seeing you, Ivy.”
Then Maureen spoke again. Lower and firmer.
“Don’t forget our deal, Garrett. Once the merger is sealed, Seraphina is yours to do with as you please. Just keep up appearances until the ink dries. After that—divorce her, ignore her, whatever, I don’t care.”
Seraphina caught her breath, her eyes opened wide.
She didn’t know who Garrett was. But, in that moment, Seraphina realized something;
She had been sold.
Not for love.
Not for family.
But for business.
- Writer
