Chapter 1:
(The Beginning of a Nightmare)
The bass thumped through the floorboards like a second heartbeat, one that drowned out the fragile rhythm of Bellatriz Dawson's own. She stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, a chipped ceramic plate in her trembling hands, the remnants of the spaghetti she'd spent three hours preparing growing cold, congealing into something that looked like entrails.
Jason Carter had texted her two hours ago. Bringing the crew over. Clean yourself up.
She'd thought "the crew" meant Ethan, maybe Marcus. She'd changed into the only dress he hadn't thrown away during one of his rages, a faded navy thing from her sixteenth birthday, the fabric worn thin as tissue paper at the seams. She'd even tried with her hair, pinning back the wild curls he usually complained about, pulling so hard at her scalp that her eyes had watered.
But this...
This was something else entirely.
The living room had transformed into something unrecognizable. Jason's penthouse, their penthouse, though the lease had never carried her name swam in purple strobe lights that made everything look bruised. The sickly-sweet fog of expensive vape smoke hung heavy, coating her throat with the taste of artificial grapes and burning money. Bodies moved everywhere, champagne bottles already sweating on her grandmother's antique coffee table, the one Jason had "allowed" her to bring from her mother's abandoned house. The wood was already water-stained. She could hear her grandmother's voice in her head, That table survived the Depression, Bellatriz. It survived your grandfather's death. It won't survive him.
"Bellatriz!" Jason's voice cut through the noise like a whip cracking against skin. "Get your ass in here!"
She moved like a ghost haunting her own life. The plate felt impossibly heavy, the ceramic suddenly the weight of gravestones. She'd made enough for six people, thinking, hoping that maybe tonight would be different. Maybe he'd remember the boy who used to bring her soup when she had colds, who'd held her while she cried about her father's empty grave, who'd whispered I'll never let anyone hurt you into her hair like a prayer.
Instead, she found him sprawled on the leather sectional like a king holding court over a kingdom of ash.
Ethan Cole sat to his right, that perpetual smirk playing on his pretty-boy face, iPhone already raised to capture whatever humiliation came next. Marcus Hayes lounged across from them, his dark eyes crawling over Bellatriz with undisguised contempt, already muttering something to Kayla Simone that made the blonde heiress throw her head back in laughter that sounded like shattering crystal.
And Alexander Brooks.
He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Atlanta's glittering skyline, a crystal tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. The youngest billionaire in Georgia's Medical-tech corridor. The man who'd built an empire before he could legally drink. He didn't look at her. He never really looked at anyone. But something in his posture, rigid, turned slightly away from the chaos, his reflection in the glass a ghost superimposed over the city lights made her stomach twist with an emotion she couldn't name. Something between recognition and warning.
"Finally." Jason spread his arms wide, and she saw the watch she'd saved eight months to buy him, the one he'd thrown at her head last Tuesday. "My little ghost decided to join the living."
"Hi," Bellatriz whispered. The word dissolved in the noise like sugar in acid. She tried again, louder, her voice cracking: "I made dinner"
"Dinner?" Kayla's voice could etch glass. She stood up, all five-foot-eleven of designer labels and inherited cruelty, and sauntered over on legs that probably cost more than Bellatriz's entire existence. Her manicured nail french tips, probably $80, the cost of Bellatriz's groceries for a month traced the chipped edge of the plate Bellatriz still clutched. "Oh, baby. Look at this. She's serving us leftovers from whatever shelter kitchen she crawled out of."
"They're fresh," Bellatriz said, hating how small she sounded, how the words came out like a child's plea. "I made them for.."
"For what?" Jason stood up. Six-foot-two of athletic muscle and practiced charm, moving toward her with that particular gait that made her ribs remember old bruises, that made her collarbone ache with phantom pain. "For me? For us?" He laughed, and it sounded like breaking glass, like her mother's favorite vase the night Jason had decided she was looking at him wrong. "Bella, baby, look around. Do we look like we eat off discount ceramic ?"
Ethan finally lowered his phone, but his eyes stayed amused, hungry. "Come on, Jase. Don't be harsh. She's trying."
"Trying?" Marcus spoke for the first time, his voice a gravelly rumble that somehow carried over the music, over the blood rushing in Bellatriz's ears. "Trying to embarrass you, maybe. Look at her. My housekeeper dresses better." He said it casually, like commenting on weather, and Kayla laughed again, that high, terrible sound.
Bellatriz felt her face burn, the heat of shame so intense she thought her skin might blister. The navy dress. She'd thought, she'd hoped,
"Actually," Jason said, and his tone shifted into something worse than anger. Something playful. The tone he used right before. "Let's make this interesting." He reached into his pocket and produced his phone, swiping with theatrical slowness, each movement designed to stretch the moment, to let her drown in anticipation. "You want to serve us dinner, Bella? Fine. Serve us dinner."
He turned the screen toward her.
Instagram. His account. A photo from three hours ago Jasmine Renee in a bikini that probably cost more than Bellatriz's monthly allowance, if she still received one, pressed against Jason's chest at some rooftop pool, his hand possessive on her hip. The caption: Finally free from the ghost. Living my best life.
The plate slipped.
It didn't shatter, somehow, impossibly, it bounced on the carpet with a dull thud that seemed louder than the bass, spaghetti splattering across the white fibers in thick, mortifying ropes. The sauce looked like blood. No one moved to help. Kayla stepped back with a shriek of laughter, checking her Louboutins for damage, her face twisted in disgust.
"Pick it up," Jason said quietly. The room had gone still, everyone waiting, watching.
"Jason, please.."
"Pick. It. Up."
She knelt. The carpet burned her knees through the thin fabric of the navy dress. Her hands shook so badly she could barely scrape the noodles together, sauce smearing across her palms, her wrists, staining the dress she'd thought he might like, the dress that suddenly felt like a shroud.
"While you're down there," Jason continued, and she heard him moving, circling her like a shark scenting blood, his shadow falling over her, "tell everyone how we met. Come on. The tragic little lonely neglected girl story. They love that shit."
"Don't," she breathed, the word barely audible, her throat closing around it.
"Don't?" He laughed, and she felt the vibration of it through the floor. "You don't get to say 'don't' anymore, Bella. You don't get to say anything unless I give you permission." He crouched beside her, close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath, the cologne she'd saved three months to buy him, now mixed with something else Jasmine Renee's perfume, probably, something expensive and cloying.
"Tell them. Tell them how you were starving. How you were wearing the same clothes for a week. How you came to me like a stray cat, begging"
"I was sixteen ," she whispered. The words scraped out of her throat like broken things, like the pieces of herself she'd been trying to hold together for three years. "You said you'd take care of me. You said.."
"I said a lot of things." He stood up, dusting off his designer jeans as if she'd contaminated them with her poverty, her need. "That's what you do with strays. You say things. You feed them until they stop being amusing." He turned to his audience, arms spread wide, the king in his court. "And now? Now she's just... sad. Clinging to something that's been dead for years."
Alexander Brooks moved.
It was the smallest thing, a shift of weight, a turn of his head. For one impossible second, his eyes met Bellatriz's across the room, across the wreckage of her dignity. Something flickered there, something that might have been recognition or might have been disgust, she couldn't tell, couldn't trust her own perception anymore. Then he looked away, back to his whiskey, to the city lights, to anything but her.
"Let's play a game," Kayla suggested, clapping her hands with childish glee that made Bellatriz's teeth ache. "Truth or dare, but only dares. And only for the ghost."
"No," Bellatriz said. She was still on her knees. The spaghetti was still in her hands, cold now, the smell of tomatoes and oregano making her nauseous. "Jason, I can't, I won't..."
"Won't?" He grabbed her arm, hauling her up with a force that made her shoulder scream, that made her remember the night he'd dislocated it and told the ER doctor she'd fallen down stairs. "You live in my house. You eat my food. You wear my clothes" He gestured at the navy dress with contempt, with revulsion. "and you think you get to say won't ?"
He shoved her toward the center of the room. The strobe lights made everything surreal, broken into jerky frames of horror, her life a stop-motion film of degradation. She saw her reflection in the dark windows pale, wild-haired, eighteen going on ancient, a stranger with her face and didn't recognize herself. Didn't recognize anything.
"Here's your dare," Jason announced to the room, to his court, his subjects. "Call your mother. Right now. Put her on speaker. Tell her exactly what you are. Tell her how you moved in with a man at sixteen. Tell her how you spread your legs for groceries and rent money. Tell her"
"She already knows," Bellatriz heard herself say. The words came from somewhere distant, somewhere that hadn't quite died yet, a last ember in the ash. "She encouraged it. She said you were my best option. She said"
"Then call her and tell her you're worthless even at that ." Jason's smile was beautiful and terrible, the smile of the boy she'd loved superimposed over the monster he'd become, like a double exposure. "Tell her you're so pathetic I have to bring other women home just to feel something. Tell her!!
The doorbell rang.
Everyone froze. Jason's hand tightened on her arm, nails digging into the soft flesh where old bruises layered like geological strata, like rings in a tree marking years of damage.
"Expecting someone?" Ethan asked, already filming again, his phone a black eye pointed at her soul.
Jason's smile turned predatory, turned victorious. "Actually... yeah." He looked down at Bellatriz, and for a moment, just a moment she saw the boy she'd fallen in love with. The one who'd found her crying behind the library at her community college, who'd bought her coffee and listened to her talk about her late father, who'd wiped her tears and said You're safe now . "Remember Clara?"
Clara Williams. The actress. The "distant girlfriend" who was apparently not distant enough.
"She's in town for a premiere," Jason continued, releasing Bellatriz with a shove that sent her stumbling into the coffee table. The champagne bottles rattled. Her grandmother's table. Everything rattling, everything falling apart. "Thought it'd be fun for you two to meet. Since you're both... mine ."
The doorbell rang again. Insistent. Demanding. Like a heartbeat.
Bellatriz stood in the wreckage of her life, food on her hands, shame in her throat, eighteen years of loneliness and three years of systematic destruction pressing down on her chest like a stone and realized something terrible.
She had nowhere to go.
Her mother had made that clear sixteen months ago. You're his problem now. except her mother's old house while Monica Dawson's left for her restaurant business in Italy, her childhood bedroom where she'd written in journals Jason had later burned. Her father's family had stopped talking to her mother years before Bellatriz was born,
She had two hundred dollars in a savings account she couldn't access without Jason's permission, no job, no friends, no high school diploma because Jason had "convinced" her to drop out to "focus on them," to be available, to be grateful.
She was a ghost haunting a life that had never really been hers.
And the worst part the part that made her want to scream until her throat bled, until her voice gave out and she could finally be silent, was that some broken piece of her still remembered what it felt like to hope.
"Get the door, Bella," Jason commanded, already turning back to his drink, his kingdom. "Introduce yourself properly. Tell her how grateful you are that I let you stay."
She moved toward the door like a sleepwalker, like a woman walking to her own execution. Past Alexander Brooks, who still didn't look at her, his reflection in the glass showing nothing. Past Kayla's delighted whisper to Marcus. Past Ethan's eternal camera lens, recording everything, preserving her humiliation in digital amber.
Her hand found the doorknob. Cold metal. Real. Solid. The only real thing left.
Behind her, Jason laughed, and it followed her like a curse. "Welcome to the rest of your life, ghost."
Bellatriz opened the door.
And Clara Williams, age 22, walked in.
She was devastating. An expensive silver silk gown that flowed like liquid mercury, catching the strobe lights and throwing them back as stars. Black high heels that made her legs endless, sculptural. An expensive silver bag that probably contained more than Bellatriz's net worth. She was extremely beautiful, blonde hair in perfect waves, her pedicure nails visible through strappy sandals, classic makeup that made her look like she'd stepped out of a 1940s film, all cheekbones and red lips and untouchable grace.
"Oh," she said, looking Bellatriz up and down with eyes that missed nothing, that catalogued every flaw, every stain, every broken thing. "You must be the ghost."
Bellatriz said nothing. Could say nothing.
"Jason told me a lot about you," Clara continued, stepping inside, her perfume something French and expensive, filling the space between them like a barrier. She didn't move aside. Bellatriz had to step back, had to retreat, had to make herself smaller to let Clara pass.
"Clara baby, come join us!" Jason called out, his voice warm, welcoming, the voice he used for people who mattered.
"See that, Bella?" Kayla added, her voice dripping venom and envy in equal measure. "This is what we call beauty ."
"Indeed," Marcus said, his eyes on Clara with appreciation that made Bellatriz feel invisible, feel like she might dissolve into the air. "A beautiful actress."
Ethan laughed, his camera finally lowering, satisfied with his footage.
Alexander remained cold, completely focused on his phone, his drink, the city lights anything but the drama unfolding in the room he'd chosen to occupy.
"Close the door, come in, and stop embarrassing me," Jason told Bellatriz, not looking at her, already reaching for Clara.
"Oh, poor thing," Clara called out to Bellatriz mockingly, turning back, her smile sharp as a blade. "Come, let me help you clean up." She said it like an order, like a command to a servant.
Bellatriz didn't move. Couldn't move.
"This is what Jason likes about me," Clara added, her eyes on Jason, on her competition, on her victory. "My kindness."
She stood up and walked to Bellatriz, heels clicking on the hardwood like a countdown. Bella flinched, couldn't stop herself, the reflex ingrained, muscle memory of violence.
Clara stopped. Her eyes narrowed, something calculating moving behind the perfect makeup. "Oh," she said, too loud, designed to be heard. "He hits you?"
"No... I"
"No need for the lies," Clara cut her off, her voice dropping to something almost gentle, almost sympathetic, which was worse. "It's obvious."
She walked closer to Bellatriz, close enough that Bellatriz could see the pores in her perfect skin, could smell the champagne on her breath. And then Clara leaned in, her lips brushing Bellatriz's ear, her whisper soft enough for only Bellatriz to hear, intimate as a lover's secret:
"I was once like you," Clara breathed. "The only difference is that I learned to hit back. But you..." She pulled back just enough to meet Bellatriz's eyes, her own bright with cruel amusement. "You learned to obey. And take in everything."
She laughed then, a musical sound that filled the room, and Bellatriz felt tears flood her eyes, hot and humiliating, felt them spill over before she could stop them, tracking through the grime on her face.
"Kayla, let me have your makeup kit," Clara announced, turning away, dismissing Bellatriz as easily as flicking off a light switch. "Let's get Bellatriz a makeover. We don't need ghosts in here, or our party would be ruined."
Kayla brought over her makeup kit, a sleek black case that probably cost more than Bellatriz's monthly food budget, and gave it to Clara with a smirk.
"No, don't... I" Bellatriz whispered, the protest dying in her throat.
"She's doing you a favor," Marcus said, his voice bored. "You look like you came out of trash with that dress and pale face."
Bellatriz stood motionless as Clara did her makeup, her fingers rough, efficient, painting Bellatriz's face like a doll's, like a corpse's. The foundation was too light, the blush too bright, the lipstick too red, she looked like a parody of herself, like a clown, like a victim dressed up for display.
After Clara was done, she smiled, satisfied with her work, with her canvas. "Now," she said, stepping back to admire the destruction. "You need to change this worn-out dress."
"Kayla, do you have some spare clothes in your car?" Clara asked, not taking her eyes off Bellatriz. "You and Bellatriz almost have the same shape?"
"Hell no," Kayla replied, her lip curling. "Besides, I can't give my clothes to trash."
"Check my car," a voice cut through the room, low and cold and unexpected. "There's a dress in it."
Everyone turned to Alexander's direction, confusion rippling through the room like a wave. He finally looked up from his phone, his eyes meeting no one's, focused on some middle distance.
Clara rushed out to get the dress, her heels clicking with new urgency, new curiosity.
Moments later, she arrived carrying a gift bag, the logo unmistakable.
When she opened it, she gasped in surprise, the sound genuine, shocked, the first real emotion Bellatriz had heard all night.
"Alexander," Clara said, her voice hushed, reverent, "this is Louis Vuitton . Extremely expensive limited gown. It cost thousands of dollars."
All eyes turned to Alexander with looks of confusion that demanded explanation, that demanded to know why this iceberg of a man would involve himself and offer such an expensive Dress to Bellatriz like it cost nothing, like she worth it.
"It's for my sister," he replied, his face expressionless as marble, as the moon. "But she can use it. It's of no use now."
He sipped his drink, the movement precise, controlled.
"There you go," Clara said, thrusting the bag at Bellatriz, her curiosity already fading, her attention returning to Jason, to her prize. "Change and come out."
"Bellatriz doesn't wear dresses like this," Jason said, his voice tight, something ugly moving in his eyes. "She doesn't know the value... she.."
"Or maybe you don't let her wear them," Alexander cut him off, his voice still flat, still cold, but something in the words, something in the precision of them, making the room go quiet. "Because you feel she isn't worth it."
He sipped his drink again, and the silence stretched, taut as a wire.
Moments later, Bellatriz walked in.
The Louis Vuitton gown fit perfectly in places that had been hidden before, showing her slim thick perfect curves, the body Jason had claimed ownership of, that he had used and criticized and controlled. The fabric was silk and power and something she hadn't felt in years.
possibility . She felt transformed. She felt exposed. She felt, for the first time in years, visible.
As she walked, Kayla paused the music, the sudden silence shocking, heavy.
Marcus and Ethan smiled, knowingly, waiting for the next act in this play.
Clara stood up from Jason's lap, her face tightening, something jealous and surprised in her perfect features.
Jason rose, and Bellatriz saw his jaw tighten, saw his hand clench, saw the rage building behind his eyes. the rage that came when she dared to be more than he'd allowed, more than he'd designed.
"Let the show begin," he said, his voice soft and dangerous.
"Bellatriz has a surprise for us," he announced to the room, to his audience, to his jury. "Come here."
"Jason, please don't..." Bellatriz said, barely holding back her tears, her voice small in the dress that suddenly felt like armor and target both.
But Jason didn't listen. He never listened. He brought out his phone, swiping with that theatrical slowness, that love of performance.
"Here," he announced, holding the screen up like a trophy, like evidence. "I found this while searching for something in the room. She kept it a secret from me."
He showed everyone Bellatriz's medical and pregnancy results, the papers she'd hidden in her underwear drawer, the secret she'd been nursing for three weeks, the hope she'd been protecting like a candle flame.
"Please stop," she whispered.
"What's this?" Clara asked, leaning in, her voice surprised for the second time that night. "She's pregnant?"
"Our little ghost is pregnant," Kayla added, her voice mocking, delighted. "Jason, you're now a father."
"Who's the father of that thing you're carrying?" Jason turned to Bellatriz, his eyes cold, his voice colder. "What do you mean? You know I don't cheat and I don't.."
"Don't what?" Jason cut her off, his voice rising. "Sleep around?"
Tears flowed down Bellatriz's eyes, the mascara Clara had applied running in black rivers.
"Oh, I see," Jason said, his voice dropping to something conversational, something terrifying in its calm. "So you wanna use this pregnancy to trap me."
"Jason, don't be like that..." Clara said, her voice uncertain, something almost like discomfort in her perfect face.
"Stay out of this, Clara!"
Jason yelled, the sound sudden, violent, making everyone flinch. The real Jason, the one behind the charm, behind the smile.
"Jason, please," Bellatriz begged, the words automatic, the pleading reflexive, learned through years of survival.
"Look at you," Jason continued, his voice building, his audience watching, recording, feeding. "Pathetic loser. I feed you, clothe you, gave you a roof over your head, and now you want to trap me with that thing ? In your dreams, Bella. You can't even take care of yourself, and now you want to keep a baby?"
"No, please don't hurt my baby," Bella cried out, the words torn from her, the last thing she had, the last hope.
"You know what," Jason said, his voice suddenly decisive, final. "Ethan, take Bellatriz down the street and get that thing flushed out. I'll pay."
"No," Bellatriz whispered, the word barely audible, her hands moving to her stomach, protective, instinctive.
"Please," she begged, falling to her knees, the expensive dress pooling around her, the silk against the carpet, the shame complete. "Don't hurt my baby."
"Leave my house," Jason said, his voice flat, dismissive, turning away from her, from the mess, from the problem. "Since you want to keep that thing, fine. Let me see how you survive out there without me."
Bella stood up. Her legs shook. Her whole body shook.
She looked at everyone. Ethan, still holding his phone, his smirk satisfied. Kayla, examining her nails. Marcus, bored. Clara, already moving back to Jason, reclaiming her territory. Alexander, looking at his phone, his face still blank, still cold, still absent .
It was obvious. No one gave a fuck about her.
And just then, her eyes met with Alexander's.
He turned his head, looking at his phone, totally remaining indifferent, the moment of connection, if it had ever existed,gone, erased, never happened.
She walked out.
The door closed behind her with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence. The end of a chapter. The beginning of whatever came next.
Behind her, she heard the music start again. The party continuing. Her absence noted only in the space she left behind, the space that would fill immediately, seamlessly, as if she'd never been there at all.
Bellatriz Dawson, eighteen years old, pregnant, wearing a three hundred-thousand-dollar dress she didn't own, stepped into the Atlanta night with two hundred dollars she couldn't access, nowhere to go, and the certain knowledge that she had never, in her entire life, been alone like this.
The city lights blurred through her tears. The bass from the penthouse faded as the elevator descended, taking her down, down, down.
Behind the mask of her painted face, behind the dress that wasn't hers, behind the life that had never been hers, something was cracking open. Something was breaking, or waking, or dying.
The nightmare was ending.
Or, perhaps, truly beginning.
[End of Chapter 1] BEHIND THE MASK
Chapter 1:
(The Beginning of a Nightmare)
The bass thumped through the floorboards like a second heartbeat, one that drowned out the fragile rhythm of Bellatriz Dawson's own. She stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, a chipped ceramic plate in her trembling hands, the remnants of the spaghetti she'd spent three hours preparing growing cold, congealing into something that looked like entrails.
Jason Carter had texted her two hours ago. Bringing the crew over. Clean yourself up.
She'd thought "the crew" meant Ethan, maybe Marcus. She'd changed into the only dress he hadn't thrown away during one of his rages, a faded navy thing from her sixteenth birthday, the fabric worn thin as tissue paper at the seams. She'd even tried with her hair, pinning back the wild curls he usually complained about, pulling so hard at her scalp that her eyes had watered.
But this...
This was something else entirely.
The living room had transformed into something unrecognizable. Jason's penthouse, their penthouse, though the lease had never carried her name swam in purple strobe lights that made everything look bruised. The sickly-sweet fog of expensive vape smoke hung heavy, coating her throat with the taste of artificial grapes and burning money. Bodies moved everywhere, champagne bottles already sweating on her grandmother's antique coffee table, the one Jason had "allowed" her to bring from her mother's abandoned house. The wood was already water-stained. She could hear her grandmother's voice in her head, That table survived the Depression, Bellatriz. It survived your grandfather's death. It won't survive him.
"Bellatriz!" Jason's voice cut through the noise like a whip cracking against skin. "Get your ass in here!"
She moved like a ghost haunting her own life. The plate felt impossibly heavy, the ceramic suddenly the weight of gravestones. She'd made enough for six people, thinking, hoping that maybe tonight would be different. Maybe he'd remember the boy who used to bring her soup when she had colds, who'd held her while she cried about her father's empty grave, who'd whispered I'll never let anyone hurt you into her hair like a prayer.
Instead, she found him sprawled on the leather sectional like a king holding court over a kingdom of ash.
Ethan Cole sat to his right, that perpetual smirk playing on his pretty-boy face, iPhone already raised to capture whatever humiliation came next. Marcus Hayes lounged across from them, his dark eyes crawling over Bellatriz with undisguised contempt, already muttering something to Kayla Simone that made the blonde heiress throw her head back in laughter that sounded like shattering crystal.
And Alexander Brooks.
He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Atlanta's glittering skyline, a crystal tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. The youngest billionaire in Georgia's Medical-tech corridor. The man who'd built an empire before he could legally drink. He didn't look at her. He never really looked at anyone. But something in his posture, rigid, turned slightly away from the chaos, his reflection in the glass a ghost superimposed over the city lights made her stomach twist with an emotion she couldn't name. Something between recognition and warning.
"Finally." Jason spread his arms wide, and she saw the watch she'd saved eight months to buy him, the one he'd thrown at her head last Tuesday. "My little ghost decided to join the living."
"Hi," Bellatriz whispered. The word dissolved in the noise like sugar in acid. She tried again, louder, her voice cracking: "I made dinner"
"Dinner?" Kayla's voice could etch glass. She stood up, all five-foot-eleven of designer labels and inherited cruelty, and sauntered over on legs that probably cost more than Bellatriz's entire existence. Her manicured nail french tips, probably $80, the cost of Bellatriz's groceries for a month traced the chipped edge of the plate Bellatriz still clutched. "Oh, baby. Look at this. She's serving us leftovers from whatever shelter kitchen she crawled out of."
"They're fresh," Bellatriz said, hating how small she sounded, how the words came out like a child's plea. "I made them for.."
"For what?" Jason stood up. Six-foot-two of athletic muscle and practiced charm, moving toward her with that particular gait that made her ribs remember old bruises, that made her collarbone ache with phantom pain. "For me? For us?" He laughed, and it sounded like breaking glass, like her mother's favorite vase the night Jason had decided she was looking at him wrong. "Bella, baby, look around. Do we look like we eat off discount ceramic ?"
Ethan finally lowered his phone, but his eyes stayed amused, hungry. "Come on, Jase. Don't be harsh. She's trying."
"Trying?" Marcus spoke for the first time, his voice a gravelly rumble that somehow carried over the music, over the blood rushing in Bellatriz's ears. "Trying to embarrass you, maybe. Look at her. My housekeeper dresses better." He said it casually, like commenting on weather, and Kayla laughed again, that high, terrible sound.
Bellatriz felt her face burn, the heat of shame so intense she thought her skin might blister. The navy dress. She'd thought, she'd hoped,
"Actually," Jason said, and his tone shifted into something worse than anger. Something playful. The tone he used right before. "Let's make this interesting." He reached into his pocket and produced his phone, swiping with theatrical slowness, each movement designed to stretch the moment, to let her drown in anticipation. "You want to serve us dinner, Bella? Fine. Serve us dinner."
He turned the screen toward her.
Instagram. His account. A photo from three hours ago Jasmine Renee in a bikini that probably cost more than Bellatriz's monthly allowance, if she still received one, pressed against Jason's chest at some rooftop pool, his hand possessive on her hip. The caption: Finally free from the ghost. Living my best life.
The plate slipped.
It didn't shatter, somehow, impossibly, it bounced on the carpet with a dull thud that seemed louder than the bass, spaghetti splattering across the white fibers in thick, mortifying ropes. The sauce looked like blood. No one moved to help. Kayla stepped back with a shriek of laughter, checking her Louboutins for damage, her face twisted in disgust.
"Pick it up," Jason said quietly. The room had gone still, everyone waiting, watching.
"Jason, please.."
"Pick. It. Up."
She knelt. The carpet burned her knees through the thin fabric of the navy dress. Her hands shook so badly she could barely scrape the noodles together, sauce smearing across her palms, her wrists, staining the dress she'd thought he might like, the dress that suddenly felt like a shroud.
"While you're down there," Jason continued, and she heard him moving, circling her like a shark scenting blood, his shadow falling over her, "tell everyone how we met. Come on. The tragic little lonely neglected girl story. They love that shit."
"Don't," she breathed, the word barely audible, her throat closing around it.
"Don't?" He laughed, and she felt the vibration of it through the floor. "You don't get to say 'don't' anymore, Bella. You don't get to say anything unless I give you permission." He crouched beside her, close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath, the cologne she'd saved three months to buy him, now mixed with something else Jasmine Renee's perfume, probably, something expensive and cloying.
"Tell them. Tell them how you were starving. How you were wearing the same clothes for a week. How you came to me like a stray cat, begging"
"I was sixteen ," she whispered. The words scraped out of her throat like broken things, like the pieces of herself she'd been trying to hold together for three years. "You said you'd take care of me. You said.."
"I said a lot of things." He stood up, dusting off his designer jeans as if she'd contaminated them with her poverty, her need. "That's what you do with strays. You say things. You feed them until they stop being amusing." He turned to his audience, arms spread wide, the king in his court. "And now? Now she's just... sad. Clinging to something that's been dead for years."
Alexander Brooks moved.
It was the smallest thing, a shift of weight, a turn of his head. For one impossible second, his eyes met Bellatriz's across the room, across the wreckage of her dignity. Something flickered there, something that might have been recognition or might have been disgust, she couldn't tell, couldn't trust her own perception anymore. Then he looked away, back to his whiskey, to the city lights, to anything but her.
"Let's play a game," Kayla suggested, clapping her hands with childish glee that made Bellatriz's teeth ache. "Truth or dare, but only dares. And only for the ghost."
"No," Bellatriz said. She was still on her knees. The spaghetti was still in her hands, cold now, the smell of tomatoes and oregano making her nauseous. "Jason, I can't, I won't..."
"Won't?" He grabbed her arm, hauling her up with a force that made her shoulder scream, that made her remember the night he'd dislocated it and told the ER doctor she'd fallen down stairs. "You live in my house. You eat my food. You wear my clothes" He gestured at the navy dress with contempt, with revulsion. "and you think you get to say won't ?"
He shoved her toward the center of the room. The strobe lights made everything surreal, broken into jerky frames of horror, her life a stop-motion film of degradation. She saw her reflection in the dark windows pale, wild-haired, eighteen going on ancient, a stranger with her face and didn't recognize herself. Didn't recognize anything.
"Here's your dare," Jason announced to the room, to his court, his subjects. "Call your mother. Right now. Put her on speaker. Tell her exactly what you are. Tell her how you moved in with a man at sixteen. Tell her how you spread your legs for groceries and rent money. Tell her"
"She already knows," Bellatriz heard herself say. The words came from somewhere distant, somewhere that hadn't quite died yet, a last ember in the ash. "She encouraged it. She said you were my best option. She said"
"Then call her and tell her you're worthless even at that ." Jason's smile was beautiful and terrible, the smile of the boy she'd loved superimposed over the monster he'd become, like a double exposure. "Tell her you're so pathetic I have to bring other women home just to feel something. Tell her!!
The doorbell rang.
Everyone froze. Jason's hand tightened on her arm, nails digging into the soft flesh where old bruises layered like geological strata, like rings in a tree marking years of damage.
"Expecting someone?" Ethan asked, already filming again, his phone a black eye pointed at her soul.
Jason's smile turned predatory, turned victorious. "Actually... yeah." He looked down at Bellatriz, and for a moment, just a moment she saw the boy she'd fallen in love with. The one who'd found her crying behind the library at her community college, who'd bought her coffee and listened to her talk about her late father, who'd wiped her tears and said You're safe now . "Remember Clara?"
Clara Williams. The actress. The "distant girlfriend" who was apparently not distant enough.
"She's in town for a premiere," Jason continued, releasing Bellatriz with a shove that sent her stumbling into the coffee table. The champagne bottles rattled. Her grandmother's table. Everything rattling, everything falling apart. "Thought it'd be fun for you two to meet. Since you're both... mine ."
The doorbell rang again. Insistent. Demanding. Like a heartbeat.
Bellatriz stood in the wreckage of her life, food on her hands, shame in her throat, eighteen years of loneliness and three years of systematic destruction pressing down on her chest like a stone and realized something terrible.
She had nowhere to go.
Her mother had made that clear sixteen months ago. You're his problem now. except her mother's old house while Monica Dawson's left for her restaurant business in Italy, her childhood bedroom where she'd written in journals Jason had later burned. Her father's family had stopped talking to her mother years before Bellatriz was born,
She had two hundred dollars in a savings account she couldn't access without Jason's permission, no job, no friends, no high school diploma because Jason had "convinced" her to drop out to "focus on them," to be available, to be grateful.
She was a ghost haunting a life that had never really been hers.
And the worst part the part that made her want to scream until her throat bled, until her voice gave out and she could finally be silent, was that some broken piece of her still remembered what it felt like to hope.
"Get the door, Bella," Jason commanded, already turning back to his drink, his kingdom. "Introduce yourself properly. Tell her how grateful you are that I let you stay."
She moved toward the door like a sleepwalker, like a woman walking to her own execution. Past Alexander Brooks, who still didn't look at her, his reflection in the glass showing nothing. Past Kayla's delighted whisper to Marcus. Past Ethan's eternal camera lens, recording everything, preserving her humiliation in digital amber.
Her hand found the doorknob. Cold metal. Real. Solid. The only real thing left.
Behind her, Jason laughed, and it followed her like a curse. "Welcome to the rest of your life, ghost."
Bellatriz opened the door.
And Clara Williams, age 22, walked in.
She was devastating. An expensive silver silk gown that flowed like liquid mercury, catching the strobe lights and throwing them back as stars. Black high heels that made her legs endless, sculptural. An expensive silver bag that probably contained more than Bellatriz's net worth. She was extremely beautiful, blonde hair in perfect waves, her pedicure nails visible through strappy sandals, classic makeup that made her look like she'd stepped out of a 1940s film, all cheekbones and red lips and untouchable grace.
"Oh," she said, looking Bellatriz up and down with eyes that missed nothing, that catalogued every flaw, every stain, every broken thing. "You must be the ghost."
Bellatriz said nothing. Could say nothing.
"Jason told me a lot about you," Clara continued, stepping inside, her perfume something French and expensive, filling the space between them like a barrier. She didn't move aside. Bellatriz had to step back, had to retreat, had to make herself smaller to let Clara pass.
"Clara baby, come join us!" Jason called out, his voice warm, welcoming, the voice he used for people who mattered.
"See that, Bella?" Kayla added, her voice dripping venom and envy in equal measure. "This is what we call beauty ."
"Indeed," Marcus said, his eyes on Clara with appreciation that made Bellatriz feel invisible, feel like she might dissolve into the air. "A beautiful actress."
Ethan laughed, his camera finally lowering, satisfied with his footage.
Alexander remained cold, completely focused on his phone, his drink, the city lights anything but the drama unfolding in the room he'd chosen to occupy.
"Close the door, come in, and stop embarrassing me," Jason told Bellatriz, not looking at her, already reaching for Clara.
"Oh, poor thing," Clara called out to Bellatriz mockingly, turning back, her smile sharp as a blade. "Come, let me help you clean up." She said it like an order, like a command to a servant.
Bellatriz didn't move. Couldn't move.
"This is what Jason likes about me," Clara added, her eyes on Jason, on her competition, on her victory. "My kindness."
She stood up and walked to Bellatriz, heels clicking on the hardwood like a countdown. Bella flinched, couldn't stop herself, the reflex ingrained, muscle memory of violence.
Clara stopped. Her eyes narrowed, something calculating moving behind the perfect makeup. "Oh," she said, too loud, designed to be heard. "He hits you?"
"No... I"
"No need for the lies," Clara cut her off, her voice dropping to something almost gentle, almost sympathetic, which was worse. "It's obvious."
She walked closer to Bellatriz, close enough that Bellatriz could see the pores in her perfect skin, could smell the champagne on her breath. And then Clara leaned in, her lips brushing Bellatriz's ear, her whisper soft enough for only Bellatriz to hear, intimate as a lover's secret:
"I was once like you," Clara breathed. "The only difference is that I learned to hit back. But you..." She pulled back just enough to meet Bellatriz's eyes, her own bright with cruel amusement. "You learned to obey. And take in everything."
She laughed then, a musical sound that filled the room, and Bellatriz felt tears flood her eyes, hot and humiliating, felt them spill over before she could stop them, tracking through the grime on her face.
"Kayla, let me have your makeup kit," Clara announced, turning away, dismissing Bellatriz as easily as flicking off a light switch. "Let's get Bellatriz a makeover. We don't need ghosts in here, or our party would be ruined."
Kayla brought over her makeup kit, a sleek black case that probably cost more than Bellatriz's monthly food budget, and gave it to Clara with a smirk.
"No, don't... I" Bellatriz whispered, the protest dying in her throat.
"She's doing you a favor," Marcus said, his voice bored. "You look like you came out of trash with that dress and pale face."
Bellatriz stood motionless as Clara did her makeup, her fingers rough, efficient, painting Bellatriz's face like a doll's, like a corpse's. The foundation was too light, the blush too bright, the lipstick too red, she looked like a parody of herself, like a clown, like a victim dressed up for display.
After Clara was done, she smiled, satisfied with her work, with her canvas. "Now," she said, stepping back to admire the destruction. "You need to change this worn-out dress."
"Kayla, do you have some spare clothes in your car?" Clara asked, not taking her eyes off Bellatriz. "You and Bellatriz almost have the same shape?"
"Hell no," Kayla replied, her lip curling. "Besides, I can't give my clothes to trash."
"Check my car," a voice cut through the room, low and cold and unexpected. "There's a dress in it."
Everyone turned to Alexander's direction, confusion rippling through the room like a wave. He finally looked up from his phone, his eyes meeting no one's, focused on some middle distance.
Clara rushed out to get the dress, her heels clicking with new urgency, new curiosity.
Moments later, she arrived carrying a gift bag, the logo unmistakable.
When she opened it, she gasped in surprise, the sound genuine, shocked, the first real emotion Bellatriz had heard all night.
"Alexander," Clara said, her voice hushed, reverent, "this is Louis Vuitton . Extremely expensive limited gown. It cost thousands of dollars."
All eyes turned to Alexander with looks of confusion that demanded explanation, that demanded to know why this iceberg of a man would involve himself and offer such an expensive Dress to Bellatriz like it cost nothing, like she worth it.
"It's for my sister," he replied, his face expressionless as marble, as the moon. "But she can use it. It's of no use now."
He sipped his drink, the movement precise, controlled.
"There you go," Clara said, thrusting the bag at Bellatriz, her curiosity already fading, her attention returning to Jason, to her prize. "Change and come out."
"Bellatriz doesn't wear dresses like this," Jason said, his voice tight, something ugly moving in his eyes. "She doesn't know the value... she.."
"Or maybe you don't let her wear them," Alexander cut him off, his voice still flat, still cold, but something in the words, something in the precision of them, making the room go quiet. "Because you feel she isn't worth it."
He sipped his drink again, and the silence stretched, taut as a wire.
Moments later, Bellatriz walked in.
The Louis Vuitton gown fit perfectly in places that had been hidden before, showing her slim thick perfect curves, the body Jason had claimed ownership of, that he had used and criticized and controlled. The fabric was silk and power and something she hadn't felt in years.
possibility . She felt transformed. She felt exposed. She felt, for the first time in years, visible.
As she walked, Kayla paused the music, the sudden silence shocking, heavy.
Marcus and Ethan smiled, knowingly, waiting for the next act in this play.
Clara stood up from Jason's lap, her face tightening, something jealous and surprised in her perfect features.
Jason rose, and Bellatriz saw his jaw tighten, saw his hand clench, saw the rage building behind his eyes. the rage that came when she dared to be more than he'd allowed, more than he'd designed.
"Let the show begin," he said, his voice soft and dangerous.
"Bellatriz has a surprise for us," he announced to the room, to his audience, to his jury. "Come here."
"Jason, please don't..." Bellatriz said, barely holding back her tears, her voice small in the dress that suddenly felt like armor and target both.
But Jason didn't listen. He never listened. He brought out his phone, swiping with that theatrical slowness, that love of performance.
"Here," he announced, holding the screen up like a trophy, like evidence. "I found this while searching for something in the room. She kept it a secret from me."
He showed everyone Bellatriz's medical and pregnancy results, the papers she'd hidden in her underwear drawer, the secret she'd been nursing for three weeks, the hope she'd been protecting like a candle flame.
"Please stop," she whispered.
"What's this?" Clara asked, leaning in, her voice surprised for the second time that night. "She's pregnant?"
"Our little ghost is pregnant," Kayla added, her voice mocking, delighted. "Jason, you're now a father."
"Who's the father of that thing you're carrying?" Jason turned to Bellatriz, his eyes cold, his voice colder. "What do you mean? You know I don't cheat and I don't.."
"Don't what?" Jason cut her off, his voice rising. "Sleep around?"
Tears flowed down Bellatriz's eyes, the mascara Clara had applied running in black rivers.
"Oh, I see," Jason said, his voice dropping to something conversational, something terrifying in its calm. "So you wanna use this pregnancy to trap me."
"Jason, don't be like that..." Clara said, her voice uncertain, something almost like discomfort in her perfect face.
"Stay out of this, Clara!"
Jason yelled, the sound sudden, violent, making everyone flinch. The real Jason, the one behind the charm, behind the smile.
"Jason, please," Bellatriz begged, the words automatic, the pleading reflexive, learned through years of survival.
"Look at you," Jason continued, his voice building, his audience watching, recording, feeding. "Pathetic loser. I feed you, clothe you, gave you a roof over your head, and now you want to trap me with that thing ? In your dreams, Bella. You can't even take care of yourself, and now you want to keep a baby?"
"No, please don't hurt my baby," Bella cried out, the words torn from her, the last thing she had, the last hope.
"You know what," Jason said, his voice suddenly decisive, final. "Ethan, take Bellatriz down the street and get that thing flushed out. I'll pay."
"No," Bellatriz whispered, the word barely audible, her hands moving to her stomach, protective, instinctive.
"Please," she begged, falling to her knees, the expensive dress pooling around her, the silk against the carpet, the shame complete. "Don't hurt my baby."
"Leave my house," Jason said, his voice flat, dismissive, turning away from her, from the mess, from the problem. "Since you want to keep that thing, fine. Let me see how you survive out there without me."
Bella stood up. Her legs shook. Her whole body shook.
She looked at everyone. Ethan, still holding his phone, his smirk satisfied. Kayla, examining her nails. Marcus, bored. Clara, already moving back to Jason, reclaiming her territory. Alexander, looking at his phone, his face still blank, still cold, still absent .
It was obvious. No one gave a fuck about her.
And just then, her eyes met with Alexander's.
He turned his head, looking at his phone, totally remaining indifferent, the moment of connection, if it had ever existed,gone, erased, never happened.
She walked out.
The door closed behind her with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence. The end of a chapter. The beginning of whatever came next.
Behind her, she heard the music start again. The party continuing. Her absence noted only in the space she left behind, the space that would fill immediately, seamlessly, as if she'd never been there at all.
Bellatriz Dawson, eighteen years old, pregnant, wearing a three hundred-thousand-dollar dress she didn't own, stepped into the Atlanta night with two hundred dollars she couldn't access, nowhere to go, and the certain knowledge that she had never, in her entire life, been alone like this.
The city lights blurred through her tears. The bass from the penthouse faded as the elevator descended, taking her down, down, down.
Behind the mask of her painted face, behind the dress that wasn't hers, behind the life that had never been hers, something was cracking open. Something was breaking, or waking, or dying.
The nightmare was ending.
Or, perhaps, truly beginning.
[End of Chapter 1]BEHIND THE MASK
Chapter 1:
(The Beginning of a Nightmare)
The bass thumped through the floorboards like a second heartbeat, one that drowned out the fragile rhythm of Bellatriz Dawson's own. She stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, a chipped ceramic plate in her trembling hands, the remnants of the spaghetti she'd spent three hours preparing growing cold, congealing into something that looked like entrails.
Jason Carter had texted her two hours ago. Bringing the crew over. Clean yourself up.
She'd thought "the crew" meant Ethan, maybe Marcus. She'd changed into the only dress he hadn't thrown away during one of his rages, a faded navy thing from her sixteenth birthday, the fabric worn thin as tissue paper at the seams. She'd even tried with her hair, pinning back the wild curls he usually complained about, pulling so hard at her scalp that her eyes had watered.
But this...
This was something else entirely.
The living room had transformed into something unrecognizable. Jason's penthouse, their penthouse, though the lease had never carried her name swam in purple strobe lights that made everything look bruised. The sickly-sweet fog of expensive vape smoke hung heavy, coating her throat with the taste of artificial grapes and burning money. Bodies moved everywhere, champagne bottles already sweating on her grandmother's antique coffee table, the one Jason had "allowed" her to bring from her mother's abandoned house. The wood was already water-stained. She could hear her grandmother's voice in her head, That table survived the Depression, Bellatriz. It survived your grandfather's death. It won't survive him.
"Bellatriz!" Jason's voice cut through the noise like a whip cracking against skin. "Get your ass in here!"
She moved like a ghost haunting her own life. The plate felt impossibly heavy, the ceramic suddenly the weight of gravestones. She'd made enough for six people, thinking, hoping that maybe tonight would be different. Maybe he'd remember the boy who used to bring her soup when she had colds, who'd held her while she cried about her father's empty grave, who'd whispered I'll never let anyone hurt you into her hair like a prayer.
Instead, she found him sprawled on the leather sectional like a king holding court over a kingdom of ash.
Ethan Cole sat to his right, that perpetual smirk playing on his pretty-boy face, iPhone already raised to capture whatever humiliation came next. Marcus Hayes lounged across from them, his dark eyes crawling over Bellatriz with undisguised contempt, already muttering something to Kayla Simone that made the blonde heiress throw her head back in laughter that sounded like shattering crystal.
And Alexander Brooks.
He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Atlanta's glittering skyline, a crystal tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. The youngest billionaire in Georgia's Medical-tech corridor. The man who'd built an empire before he could legally drink. He didn't look at her. He never really looked at anyone. But something in his posture, rigid, turned slightly away from the chaos, his reflection in the glass a ghost superimposed over the city lights made her stomach twist with an emotion she couldn't name. Something between recognition and warning.
"Finally." Jason spread his arms wide, and she saw the watch she'd saved eight months to buy him, the one he'd thrown at her head last Tuesday. "My little ghost decided to join the living."
"Hi," Bellatriz whispered. The word dissolved in the noise like sugar in acid. She tried again, louder, her voice cracking: "I made dinner"
"Dinner?" Kayla's voice could etch glass. She stood up, all five-foot-eleven of designer labels and inherited cruelty, and sauntered over on legs that probably cost more than Bellatriz's entire existence. Her manicured nail french tips, probably $80, the cost of Bellatriz's groceries for a month traced the chipped edge of the plate Bellatriz still clutched. "Oh, baby. Look at this. She's serving us leftovers from whatever shelter kitchen she crawled out of."
"They're fresh," Bellatriz said, hating how small she sounded, how the words came out like a child's plea. "I made them for.."
"For what?" Jason stood up. Six-foot-two of athletic muscle and practiced charm, moving toward her with that particular gait that made her ribs remember old bruises, that made her collarbone ache with phantom pain. "For me? For us?" He laughed, and it sounded like breaking glass, like her mother's favorite vase the night Jason had decided she was looking at him wrong. "Bella, baby, look around. Do we look like we eat off discount ceramic ?"
Ethan finally lowered his phone, but his eyes stayed amused, hungry. "Come on, Jase. Don't be harsh. She's trying."
"Trying?" Marcus spoke for the first time, his voice a gravelly rumble that somehow carried over the music, over the blood rushing in Bellatriz's ears. "Trying to embarrass you, maybe. Look at her. My housekeeper dresses better." He said it casually, like commenting on weather, and Kayla laughed again, that high, terrible sound.
Bellatriz felt her face burn, the heat of shame so intense she thought her skin might blister. The navy dress. She'd thought, she'd hoped,
"Actually," Jason said, and his tone shifted into something worse than anger. Something playful. The tone he used right before. "Let's make this interesting." He reached into his pocket and produced his phone, swiping with theatrical slowness, each movement designed to stretch the moment, to let her drown in anticipation. "You want to serve us dinner, Bella? Fine. Serve us dinner."
He turned the screen toward her.
Instagram. His account. A photo from three hours ago Jasmine Renee in a bikini that probably cost more than Bellatriz's monthly allowance, if she still received one, pressed against Jason's chest at some rooftop pool, his hand possessive on her hip. The caption: Finally free from the ghost. Living my best life.
The plate slipped.
It didn't shatter, somehow, impossibly, it bounced on the carpet with a dull thud that seemed louder than the bass, spaghetti splattering across the white fibers in thick, mortifying ropes. The sauce looked like blood. No one moved to help. Kayla stepped back with a shriek of laughter, checking her Louboutins for damage, her face twisted in disgust.
"Pick it up," Jason said quietly. The room had gone still, everyone waiting, watching.
"Jason, please.."
"Pick. It. Up."
She knelt. The carpet burned her knees through the thin fabric of the navy dress. Her hands shook so badly she could barely scrape the noodles together, sauce smearing across her palms, her wrists, staining the dress she'd thought he might like, the dress that suddenly felt like a shroud.
"While you're down there," Jason continued, and she heard him moving, circling her like a shark scenting blood, his shadow falling over her, "tell everyone how we met. Come on. The tragic little lonely neglected girl story. They love that shit."
"Don't," she breathed, the word barely audible, her throat closing around it.
"Don't?" He laughed, and she felt the vibration of it through the floor. "You don't get to say 'don't' anymore, Bella. You don't get to say anything unless I give you permission." He crouched beside her, close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath, the cologne she'd saved three months to buy him, now mixed with something else Jasmine Renee's perfume, probably, something expensive and cloying.
"Tell them. Tell them how you were starving. How you were wearing the same clothes for a week. How you came to me like a stray cat, begging"
"I was sixteen ," she whispered. The words scraped out of her throat like broken things, like the pieces of herself she'd been trying to hold together for three years. "You said you'd take care of me. You said.."
"I said a lot of things." He stood up, dusting off his designer jeans as if she'd contaminated them with her poverty, her need. "That's what you do with strays. You say things. You feed them until they stop being amusing." He turned to his audience, arms spread wide, the king in his court. "And now? Now she's just... sad. Clinging to something that's been dead for years."
Alexander Brooks moved.
It was the smallest thing, a shift of weight, a turn of his head. For one impossible second, his eyes met Bellatriz's across the room, across the wreckage of her dignity. Something flickered there, something that might have been recognition or might have been disgust, she couldn't tell, couldn't trust her own perception anymore. Then he looked away, back to his whiskey, to the city lights, to anything but her.
"Let's play a game," Kayla suggested, clapping her hands with childish glee that made Bellatriz's teeth ache. "Truth or dare, but only dares. And only for the ghost."
"No," Bellatriz said. She was still on her knees. The spaghetti was still in her hands, cold now, the smell of tomatoes and oregano making her nauseous. "Jason, I can't, I won't..."
"Won't?" He grabbed her arm, hauling her up with a force that made her shoulder scream, that made her remember the night he'd dislocated it and told the ER doctor she'd fallen down stairs. "You live in my house. You eat my food. You wear my clothes" He gestured at the navy dress with contempt, with revulsion. "and you think you get to say won't ?"
He shoved her toward the center of the room. The strobe lights made everything surreal, broken into jerky frames of horror, her life a stop-motion film of degradation. She saw her reflection in the dark windows pale, wild-haired, eighteen going on ancient, a stranger with her face and didn't recognize herself. Didn't recognize anything.
"Here's your dare," Jason announced to the room, to his court, his subjects. "Call your mother. Right now. Put her on speaker. Tell her exactly what you are. Tell her how you moved in with a man at sixteen. Tell her how you spread your legs for groceries and rent money. Tell her"
"She already knows," Bellatriz heard herself say. The words came from somewhere distant, somewhere that hadn't quite died yet, a last ember in the ash. "She encouraged it. She said you were my best option. She said"
"Then call her and tell her you're worthless even at that ." Jason's smile was beautiful and terrible, the smile of the boy she'd loved superimposed over the monster he'd become, like a double exposure. "Tell her you're so pathetic I have to bring other women home just to feel something. Tell her!!
The doorbell rang.
Everyone froze. Jason's hand tightened on her arm, nails digging into the soft flesh where old bruises layered like geological strata, like rings in a tree marking years of damage.
"Expecting someone?" Ethan asked, already filming again, his phone a black eye pointed at her soul.
Jason's smile turned predatory, turned victorious. "Actually... yeah." He looked down at Bellatriz, and for a moment, just a moment she saw the boy she'd fallen in love with. The one who'd found her crying behind the library at her community college, who'd bought her coffee and listened to her talk about her late father, who'd wiped her tears and said You're safe now . "Remember Clara?"
Clara Williams. The actress. The "distant girlfriend" who was apparently not distant enough.
"She's in town for a premiere," Jason continued, releasing Bellatriz with a shove that sent her stumbling into the coffee table. The champagne bottles rattled. Her grandmother's table. Everything rattling, everything falling apart. "Thought it'd be fun for you two to meet. Since you're both... mine ."
The doorbell rang again. Insistent. Demanding. Like a heartbeat.
Bellatriz stood in the wreckage of her life, food on her hands, shame in her throat, eighteen years of loneliness and three years of systematic destruction pressing down on her chest like a stone and realized something terrible.
She had nowhere to go.
Her mother had made that clear sixteen months ago. You're his problem now. except her mother's old house while Monica Dawson's left for her restaurant business in Italy, her childhood bedroom where she'd written in journals Jason had later burned. Her father's family had stopped talking to her mother years before Bellatriz was born,
She had two hundred dollars in a savings account she couldn't access without Jason's permission, no job, no friends, no high school diploma because Jason had "convinced" her to drop out to "focus on them," to be available, to be grateful.
She was a ghost haunting a life that had never really been hers.
And the worst part the part that made her want to scream until her throat bled, until her voice gave out and she could finally be silent, was that some broken piece of her still remembered what it felt like to hope.
"Get the door, Bella," Jason commanded, already turning back to his drink, his kingdom. "Introduce yourself properly. Tell her how grateful you are that I let you stay."
She moved toward the door like a sleepwalker, like a woman walking to her own execution. Past Alexander Brooks, who still didn't look at her, his reflection in the glass showing nothing. Past Kayla's delighted whisper to Marcus. Past Ethan's eternal camera lens, recording everything, preserving her humiliation in digital amber.
Her hand found the doorknob. Cold metal. Real. Solid. The only real thing left.
Behind her, Jason laughed, and it followed her like a curse. "Welcome to the rest of your life, ghost."
Bellatriz opened the door.
And Clara Williams, age 22, walked in.
She was devastating. An expensive silver silk gown that flowed like liquid mercury, catching the strobe lights and throwing them back as stars. Black high heels that made her legs endless, sculptural. An expensive silver bag that probably contained more than Bellatriz's net worth. She was extremely beautiful, blonde hair in perfect waves, her pedicure nails visible through strappy sandals, classic makeup that made her look like she'd stepped out of a 1940s film, all cheekbones and red lips and untouchable grace.
"Oh," she said, looking Bellatriz up and down with eyes that missed nothing, that catalogued every flaw, every stain, every broken thing. "You must be the ghost."
Bellatriz said nothing. Could say nothing.
"Jason told me a lot about you," Clara continued, stepping inside, her perfume something French and expensive, filling the space between them like a barrier. She didn't move aside. Bellatriz had to step back, had to retreat, had to make herself smaller to let Clara pass.
"Clara baby, come join us!" Jason called out, his voice warm, welcoming, the voice he used for people who mattered.
"See that, Bella?" Kayla added, her voice dripping venom and envy in equal measure. "This is what we call beauty ."
"Indeed," Marcus said, his eyes on Clara with appreciation that made Bellatriz feel invisible, feel like she might dissolve into the air. "A beautiful actress."
Ethan laughed, his camera finally lowering, satisfied with his footage.
Alexander remained cold, completely focused on his phone, his drink, the city lights anything but the drama unfolding in the room he'd chosen to occupy.
"Close the door, come in, and stop embarrassing me," Jason told Bellatriz, not looking at her, already reaching for Clara.
"Oh, poor thing," Clara called out to Bellatriz mockingly, turning back, her smile sharp as a blade. "Come, let me help you clean up." She said it like an order, like a command to a servant.
Bellatriz didn't move. Couldn't move.
"This is what Jason likes about me," Clara added, her eyes on Jason, on her competition, on her victory. "My kindness."
She stood up and walked to Bellatriz, heels clicking on the hardwood like a countdown. Bella flinched, couldn't stop herself, the reflex ingrained, muscle memory of violence.
Clara stopped. Her eyes narrowed, something calculating moving behind the perfect makeup. "Oh," she said, too loud, designed to be heard. "He hits you?"
"No... I"
"No need for the lies," Clara cut her off, her voice dropping to something almost gentle, almost sympathetic, which was worse. "It's obvious."
She walked closer to Bellatriz, close enough that Bellatriz could see the pores in her perfect skin, could smell the champagne on her breath. And then Clara leaned in, her lips brushing Bellatriz's ear, her whisper soft enough for only Bellatriz to hear, intimate as a lover's secret:
"I was once like you," Clara breathed. "The only difference is that I learned to hit back. But you..." She pulled back just enough to meet Bellatriz's eyes, her own bright with cruel amusement. "You learned to obey. And take in everything."
She laughed then, a musical sound that filled the room, and Bellatriz felt tears flood her eyes, hot and humiliating, felt them spill over before she could stop them, tracking through the grime on her face.
"Kayla, let me have your makeup kit," Clara announced, turning away, dismissing Bellatriz as easily as flicking off a light switch. "Let's get Bellatriz a makeover. We don't need ghosts in here, or our party would be ruined."
Kayla brought over her makeup kit, a sleek black case that probably cost more than Bellatriz's monthly food budget, and gave it to Clara with a smirk.
"No, don't... I" Bellatriz whispered, the protest dying in her throat.
"She's doing you a favor," Marcus said, his voice bored. "You look like you came out of trash with that dress and pale face."
Bellatriz stood motionless as Clara did her makeup, her fingers rough, efficient, painting Bellatriz's face like a doll's, like a corpse's. The foundation was too light, the blush too bright, the lipstick too red, she looked like a parody of herself, like a clown, like a victim dressed up for display.
After Clara was done, she smiled, satisfied with her work, with her canvas. "Now," she said, stepping back to admire the destruction. "You need to change this worn-out dress."
"Kayla, do you have some spare clothes in your car?" Clara asked, not taking her eyes off Bellatriz. "You and Bellatriz almost have the same shape?"
"Hell no," Kayla replied, her lip curling. "Besides, I can't give my clothes to trash."
"Check my car," a voice cut through the room, low and cold and unexpected. "There's a dress in it."
Everyone turned to Alexander's direction, confusion rippling through the room like a wave. He finally looked up from his phone, his eyes meeting no one's, focused on some middle distance.
Clara rushed out to get the dress, her heels clicking with new urgency, new curiosity.
Moments later, she arrived carrying a gift bag, the logo unmistakable.
When she opened it, she gasped in surprise, the sound genuine, shocked, the first real emotion Bellatriz had heard all night.
"Alexander," Clara said, her voice hushed, reverent, "this is Louis Vuitton . Extremely expensive limited gown. It cost thousands of dollars."
All eyes turned to Alexander with looks of confusion that demanded explanation, that demanded to know why this iceberg of a man would involve himself and offer such an expensive Dress to Bellatriz like it cost nothing, like she worth it.
"It's for my sister," he replied, his face expressionless as marble, as the moon. "But she can use it. It's of no use now."
He sipped his drink, the movement precise, controlled.
"There you go," Clara said, thrusting the bag at Bellatriz, her curiosity already fading, her attention returning to Jason, to her prize. "Change and come out."
"Bellatriz doesn't wear dresses like this," Jason said, his voice tight, something ugly moving in his eyes. "She doesn't know the value... she.."
"Or maybe you don't let her wear them," Alexander cut him off, his voice still flat, still cold, but something in the words, something in the precision of them, making the room go quiet. "Because you feel she isn't worth it."
He sipped his drink again, and the silence stretched, taut as a wire.
Moments later, Bellatriz walked in.
The Louis Vuitton gown fit perfectly in places that had been hidden before, showing her slim thick perfect curves, the body Jason had claimed ownership of, that he had used and criticized and controlled. The fabric was silk and power and something she hadn't felt in years.
possibility . She felt transformed. She felt exposed. She felt, for the first time in years, visible.
As she walked, Kayla paused the music, the sudden silence shocking, heavy.
Marcus and Ethan smiled, knowingly, waiting for the next act in this play.
Clara stood up from Jason's lap, her face tightening, something jealous and surprised in her perfect features.
Jason rose, and Bellatriz saw his jaw tighten, saw his hand clench, saw the rage building behind his eyes. the rage that came when she dared to be more than he'd allowed, more than he'd designed.
"Let the show begin," he said, his voice soft and dangerous.
"Bellatriz has a surprise for us," he announced to the room, to his audience, to his jury. "Come here."
"Jason, please don't..." Bellatriz said, barely holding back her tears, her voice small in the dress that suddenly felt like armor and target both.
But Jason didn't listen. He never listened. He brought out his phone, swiping with that theatrical slowness, that love of performance.
"Here," he announced, holding the screen up like a trophy, like evidence. "I found this while searching for something in the room. She kept it a secret from me."
He showed everyone Bellatriz's medical and pregnancy results, the papers she'd hidden in her underwear drawer, the secret she'd been nursing for three weeks, the hope she'd been protecting like a candle flame.
"Please stop," she whispered.
"What's this?" Clara asked, leaning in, her voice surprised for the second time that night. "She's pregnant?"
"Our little ghost is pregnant," Kayla added, her voice mocking, delighted. "Jason, you're now a father."
"Who's the father of that thing you're carrying?" Jason turned to Bellatriz, his eyes cold, his voice colder. "What do you mean? You know I don't cheat and I don't.."
"Don't what?" Jason cut her off, his voice rising. "Sleep around?"
Tears flowed down Bellatriz's eyes, the mascara Clara had applied running in black rivers.
"Oh, I see," Jason said, his voice dropping to something conversational, something terrifying in its calm. "So you wanna use this pregnancy to trap me."
"Jason, don't be like that..." Clara said, her voice uncertain, something almost like discomfort in her perfect face.
"Stay out of this, Clara!"
Jason yelled, the sound sudden, violent, making everyone flinch. The real Jason, the one behind the charm, behind the smile.
"Jason, please," Bellatriz begged, the words automatic, the pleading reflexive, learned through years of survival.
"Look at you," Jason continued, his voice building, his audience watching, recording, feeding. "Pathetic loser. I feed you, clothe you, gave you a roof over your head, and now you want to trap me with that thing ? In your dreams, Bella. You can't even take care of yourself, and now you want to keep a baby?"
"No, please don't hurt my baby," Bella cried out, the words torn from her, the last thing she had, the last hope.
"You know what," Jason said, his voice suddenly decisive, final. "Ethan, take Bellatriz down the street and get that thing flushed out. I'll pay."
"No," Bellatriz whispered, the word barely audible, her hands moving to her stomach, protective, instinctive.
"Please," she begged, falling to her knees, the expensive dress pooling around her, the silk against the carpet, the shame complete. "Don't hurt my baby."
"Leave my house," Jason said, his voice flat, dismissive, turning away from her, from the mess, from the problem. "Since you want to keep that thing, fine. Let me see how you survive out there without me."
Bella stood up. Her legs shook. Her whole body shook.
She looked at everyone. Ethan, still holding his phone, his smirk satisfied. Kayla, examining her nails. Marcus, bored. Clara, already moving back to Jason, reclaiming her territory. Alexander, looking at his phone, his face still blank, still cold, still absent .
It was obvious. No one gave a fuck about her.
And just then, her eyes met with Alexander's.
He turned his head, looking at his phone, totally remaining indifferent, the moment of connection, if it had ever existed,gone, erased, never happened.
She walked out.
The door closed behind her with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence. The end of a chapter. The beginning of whatever came next.
Behind her, she heard the music start again. The party continuing. Her absence noted only in the space she left behind, the space that would fill immediately, seamlessly, as if she'd never been there at all.
Bellatriz Dawson, eighteen years old, pregnant, wearing a three hundred-thousand-dollar dress she didn't own, stepped into the Atlanta night with two hundred dollars she couldn't access, nowhere to go, and the certain knowledge that she had never, in her entire life, been alone like this.
The city lights blurred through her tears. The bass from the penthouse faded as the elevator descended, taking her down, down, down.
Behind the mask of her painted face, behind the dress that wasn't hers, behind the life that had never been hers, something was cracking open. Something was breaking, or waking, or dying.
The nightmare was ending.
Or, perhaps, truly beginning.
[End of Chapter 1]
©𝓑𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓻𝓲𝔃 𝓦𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓼