The first light of dawn had only just begun to bleed into the sky, staining it shades of violet and rose, when Elara settled into the sleek ergonomic chair in her home office. The room, like much of the penthouse, was a study in minimalist elegance, but it was here she felt most at home. The scent of freshly brewed coffee—a rich, dark roast she preferred over the bitter blends Cassian favored—mingled with the clean, citrusy notes of her shampoo. Wrapped in a plush, dove-grey robe, her damp hair coiling in dark tendrils against the fabric, she opened her laptop.
The screen glowed to life, illuminating her face. In the three days since the board meeting, her professional landscape had transformed. Where once her inbox contained polite requests and preliminary reports, it now overflowed with urgent memos, complex departmental budgets requiring her sign-off, and ambitious project proposals from managers eager to curry favor. Her workload had quadrupled, a tangible testament to the respect—and the fear—she now commanded. It was a mountain of responsibility, and she welcomed it.
Her fingers began to dance across the keyboard, a soft, rapid tapping that was the only sound in the serene quiet. She was a study in concentration, her brow slightly furrowed, her entire being focused on the financial projections dancing across the screen. This was her element: deciphering complexity, finding order in chaos, building something solid and real.
The vibration was a rude, jarring intrusion. Her phone skittered across the polished glass of her desk, the screen flashing with an name she had not seen in months: Mother. A slight frown touched her lips. She ignored it, her fingers never faltering. The call went to voicemail.
Thirty seconds later, it rang again. The same name. The same insistent, shrill tone. Her jaw tightened. Again, she tapped 'decline', the motion sharp and final.
When it rang for the third time, a relentless, demanding peal that shattered her hard-won focus, a cold anger settled in her stomach. She snatched the phone, her knuckles white.
"Hello," she said, her voice flat, a barren plain of sound that gave nothing away.
---
Cassian, already dressed for the day, found himself with a rare moment of idleness. He wandered into his old study, now more of a library, and absently ran a finger over the spine of a leather-bound book. His life before Elara felt like a monochrome film—efficient, powerful, but utterly devoid of hue. Now, the penthouse was filled with the subtle scent of her perfume, the soft rustle of her turning pages, the unexpected melody of her laughter. It was… warm.
A glance at the clock confirmed his thoughts. She was late. Elara was an early bird, often the first to the breakfast table. Concern, a novel and persistent emotion where she was concerned, nudged him. He was about to go and check on her when he heard the sharp, rapid click-clack of her pencil heels on the marble floor.
She entered the dining room, a storm contained in a tailored navy dress. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead, bypassing him completely as she took her seat. She didn't speak. Instead, she picked up her fork and began to eat with a methodical, aggressive precision. Her face was a calm mask, but her grey eyes… they were a battlefield, swirling with a silent, turbulent war.
.
Cassian watched her for a long moment, the newspaper forgotten in his hands. He decided to try and lance the gloom, to return to their new, familiar dance of teasing banter. He leaned forward, a carefully crafted, playful smirk tugging at his lips.
"Hmm," he mused, his tone deliberately light. "A cloud seems to have settled over our breakfast table. I wonder what could have upset our elegant Lady Elara so early in the day." He paused for effect, his eyes twinkling. "Mmm, oh! I have it. Richard hasn't dared to contact you since the board meeting, has he? A terrible oversight on his part. Shall I have him fired?"
The reaction was not the one he had come to expect. There was no long-suffering sigh, no dry retort, no roll of her expressive eyes. Elara's head snapped up, and her gaze locked with his. It was a glare of such pure, undiluted fury that Cassian felt a jolt, a primal alarm that screamed danger. Her eyes, usually the color of a misty sea, were now the sharp, cold steel of a honed blade. It was a look that promised immediate and visceral retribution , a look that told him if he uttered one more teasing word, she would not hesitate to follow through on her previous threat and punch his teeth out.
He recoiled slightly, his smirk vanishing. He cleared his throat, the sound awkward in the tense silence. "Elara," he said, his voice now low and completely serious, all traces of playfulness gone. "What's wrong?"
She looked down at her plate, her jaw so tight he could see the muscle feathering. The silence stretched, taut as a wire. Finally, she spoke, the words clipped and hard. "Mother…. she called me." She took a sharp breath, the next words laced with a pain so profound it seemed to chill the air between them. "She says… she misses me. She wants to see me."
Another heavy silence descended. Cassian studied her profile, the delicate line of her nose, the stubborn set of her chin. He could see the old wounds, freshly torn open. "Do you believe it?" he asked, his voice quiet, a stark contrast to his earlier teasing.
Her gaze remained fixed on her uneaten food. When she answered, her voice was an icy stone, devoid of all hope. "Not even a fraction of it."
"Then will you go?"
This was the question, the crux of the war in her eyes. She stared at her plate as if it held the answer, her knuckles white where she gripped her fork. He waited, giving her the space he knew she needed, the respect he now always afforded her.
"If you don't want to go," he said, his voice firm and unwavering, a solid rock in her churning sea, "you don't need to. You answer to no one but yourself, Elara. Your life is your own to command. Remember that."
She took a deep, shuddering breath, a soldier steeling herself for a battle she never wanted. "I will do it," she declared, her voice gaining a sliver of hardened steel. She looked at him then, her eyes filled with a grim resolve. After a hard swallow, she continued, "Today, these ties will either bind or break. I will end this lingering confusion once and for all."
The rest of the breakfast passed in a heavy, gloomy silence, the clink of cutlery the only conversation.
---
Cassian drove her to her parents' house himself, the powerful car gliding through the streets in a cocoon of quiet tension. Before she opened the door, he placed a hand on her arm, stopping her. He turned to her, his dark eyes intense and unwavering.
"Remember what I said," he reiterated, his gaze holding hers. "Your life is your own. No one else's. You hold the power here." He gave her a firm, reassuring thumbs-up, a gesture so uncharacteristically boyish it almost made her smile.
Elara managed a small, tight, dismissive smile in return. "I know." It was all she could trust herself to say.
She walked up the manicured path, a path that held a lifetime of memories, each one now viewed through a new, harsh lens. She rang the bell, the chime echoing ominously in the quiet street. The door was opened by her mother, Serena, who immediately arranged her features into a mask of pained delight.
"Oh! Elara, dear! You came!" she trilled, pulling her into a brief, brittle hug that felt as authentic as a stage prop. Her perfume, a cloying floral, assaulted Elara's senses.
Elara allowed the embrace, her own body remaining stiff and unyielding. She moved into the living room and sat on the edge of an overstuffed, floral-print couch, her posture ramrod straight. Her mother fluttered around, a hummingbird of nervous energy, talking about the unseasonable chill, a tedious charity luncheon, the rising cost of imported cheeses.
Then, with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel, Serena made her incision. "It's such a shame, you know. About Lena's wedding being cancelled. The venue alone was a fortune. All those deposits, just… lost." She sighed, a theatrical, world-weary sound. "It's been six months since your… swift marriage, and with all the… extravagant purchases Aris made to keep up appearances, well, debts pile up, don't they? He did the right thing and married her last month, of course. A small, quiet ceremony. No fuss. She's living with him in that little flat of his now, the only thing he has left." The words were expertly crafted, each one a tiny, poisoned dart aimed directly at Elara's heart, subtly painting her as the architect of their collective ruin.
Finding it futile to engage, Elara stood and moved across the room, away from her mother's toxic aura. She sat beside her father, Robert, on a worn leather armchair. The contrast was heartbreaking. Where Serena was a carefully preserved mannequin of past glamour, Robert looked like a man eroded by stress and regret. Dark, bruise-like circles shadowed his eyes, and the lines on his face seemed carved by a relentless chisel of worry.
She placed a gentle hand over his. His skin was cool and papery. "Dad… how have you been?" she asked, her voice softening despite her resolve.
Instead of answering, he looked at her, his eyes full of a confused, weary hurt. "Why… why him, Elara? Cassian Thorne? Of all people. He's… formidable."
"He treats me well," she replied, her voice even, a simple statement of fact.
"So did we," Robert countered, a faint plea threading through his words. "We treated you well too, right? Gave you everything."
Elara's smile was small and sorrowful as she withdrew her hand, folding them neatly in her lap. "You are my parents. So, if you don't mind, can I ask you a question?"
Robert gestured for her to continue, a wary, tired look in his eyes.
"You have loved me and taken care of me for all these years," she began, her voice deceptively soft, like the calm before a storm. "So, let me ask you, what is my favourite food?"
Robert was taken aback. He blinked, his mind clearly scrambling through a dusty filing cabinet of half-remembered details. "You… you like sh-shrimp soup, right? From that little French place?"
Elara didn't look at him. She turned her gaze to her mother, who was watching with thinly veiled impatience. "What about you, Mother? What do you think my favorite is?"
Serena waved a dismissive, bejeweled hand. "Of course it's shrimp, isn't it? Lena loves it, so you must, too. Why does it even matter, darling? Such a trivial thing."
Elara closed her eyes and released a long, weary sigh, the sound of the final, frayed string between them snapping. When she opened them, her gaze was clear, hard, and utterly devoid of illusion. "I am allergic to shellfish. Deathly allergic. It's Lena's favorite. Not mine. It has never been mine."
The silence in the room was absolute, a vacuum sucking all the air and pretense out of it. Both her parents stared at her, their mouths slightly agape, caught in the stark, unforgiving light of a truth they had never bothered to see.
That was it. The final, irrefutable proof of a lifetime of neglect. Elara stood up. She felt strangely light, as if a great weight had been lifted. She pulled a single, plain bank card from her purse and pressed it into her father's limp hand. Without a word, she turned and began to walk towards the door, her heels clicking a steady, final rhythm on the parquet floor.
"Elara…" Robert called out, his voice choked, looking from the card to her retreating back as if it were a foreign object.
"It will help you get over the debt quickly," she said without turning around. She paused at the doorway, her hand on the cool brass of the knob, and delivered her final, quiet blow. "Oh, and don't worry. It's not Cassian's money. It's my savings. From my previous job. The one Aris made me resign from because a Thorne wife shouldn't have a 'laborious job'."
But as her fingers tightened on the handle, her mother finally shattered. The carefully constructed facade crumbled into a pile of rage and bitterness.
"This is all your fault!" Serena shrieked, her voice rising to a hysterical pitch. "Your cruelty to Lena! Your selfishness! You humiliated her! You stole her future and then you flaunt your new life! You destroyed your sister's happiness! You destroyed this family!"
Elara stopped. She turned slowly, a cold, mirthless smile gracing her lips, a smile that didn't touch her eyes. The confrontation was here. It was time. A thought, sharp and painful, lanced through her: Why? Why does my own mother look at me with such venom, while her eyes soften only for Lena? What did I ever do, from the moment I was born, to deserve this?
"My cruelty?" Elara's voice was dangerously quiet, a whisper that carried more weight than her mother's scream. "Let's list my cruelties, Mother. Let's list every single time you looked straight through me as if I were made of glass."
She took a step back into the room, her grey eyes blazing with a cold fire.
"When I was seven, I won the school science fair. My project on photovoltaic cells. Lena came in third with a painted clay volcano. You spent the entire evening consoling her, telling her she was the most creative, the most special. My trophy was left in its box. You framed her participation certificate and hung it in the foyer."
"When I was fourteen,I was stung by a bee at a garden party. My throat began to close. I was searching for my EpiPen, terrified. You were across the lawn, laughing, helping Lena adjust the strap on her new sundress. You didn't even look up."
"My graduation from university,with highest honors in architectural design. You were an hour late. You told me the traffic was dreadful. I found out later you were late because you were helping Lena recover from a 'devastating' breakup with a boy she'd dated for two weeks."
"When I was sixteen,you decided my room had the better light. You made me swap with Lena. I spent the last two years of my childhood in a converted storage room next to the laundry, while she filled my old room with her things."
"When I got engaged to Aris,you didn't congratulate me. You took me aside and told me how 'lucky' I was, that I should learn from Lena how to be more 'vivacious' to 'keep' a man like him."
"And on my wedding day,"she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper, each word a shard of ice, "when he left me for her, in front of everyone we knew… your first words to me, in that quiet room, were not of comfort. They were, 'Don't make a scene, Elara. Think of the family. Think of the scandal.' You asked me, my own mother, to be understanding of the woman who had just driven a knife into my back."
She was standing directly before them now, her composure absolute, a queen passing judgment. Her voice never rose above that chilling, conversational tone, which made each meticulously recalled memory cut deeper than any shout ever could.
"You taught me that family is everything, Mother," Elara said, her smile now razor-sharp and final. "I'm just prioritizing my new one."
She looked from her mother's face, now twisted with a hatred that seemed to have been waiting years to break free, to her father's. His face was a mask of dawning, gut-wrenching horror and shame. He was finally reading the ledger of their parenthood, column by painful column, and the balance was devastatingly, irredeemably empty.
"I am done," Elara stated, the finality in her voice leaving no room for appeal, no hope for reconciliation. "Do not call me again."
She turned and walked out, closing the heavy oak door softly behind her. The gentle click of the latch was more definitive than any slam could ever have been.
Inside, two different worlds collapsed. Robert Vance sank onto the leather armchair, the bank card falling from his numb fingers to the floor. He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent, wretched sobs. The weight of his complacency, his willful blindness, his passive neglect, crashed down upon him, and the pain of realizing the daughter he had lost was an agony greater than any financial ruin.
Serena Vance, however, stood rigid, her arms crossed. Her face was contorted not with grief or remorse, but with pure, undiluted disgust. Her time had been wasted. Her narrative of a perfect, wronged Lena and a difficult, ungrateful Elara had been challenged and dismantled. In her eyes, Elara was not a wounded soul finally speaking her truth; she was an insolent child who had dared to expose the rot at the family's core, who had refused to play her assigned role. And for that, for the audacity of wanting to be seen, she would never, ever forgive her. The cold, hard hatred in her eyes was the final, ugly truth that Elara had, at last, set free.