“Mom?” she hissed, her voice trembling with something between rage and hurt. “Did I hear you correctly? You want to invite her?”
Her fingers curled into fists around her fork like a weapon.
I straightened my back, though my pulse jumped. “Yes, Celeste. She is family, whether you like it or not. Your father-” My voice cracked, but I forced it steady. “Edward’s dying wish was to see a harmonious family. That includes Sera.”
How could I make them understand? That the daughter Edward had asked for, the child he longed for in his final moments, was actually Sera.
Celeste’s chair screeched against the floor as she shot to her feet, trembling. “So that’s it?
Even you’ve chosen her now? After everything? After all these years, when you begged me to come back, when you cried and pleaded for me to return? And now that I have, you run after Sera instead?”
Her eyes glittered with wetness, but the fury in them burned hotter.
“She’s the reason I had to leave in the first place, and yet you choose her over me?” She threw the fork across the room, and it clattered into a vase that wobbled and crashed to the floor.
“You might as well have left me to die abroad!”
“Celeste!” Ethan barked, his voice cutting through the tension. He slammed his hand against the table, rattling the silverware. “Enough! We’ve discussed this matter before.
You’re being childish. It’s been ten years; give it a fucking rest!”
Celeste’s breath came in sharp, ragged pulls.
She looked at Ethan, then at me-her eyes full of betrayal, of disbelief-and then she turned on her heel.
Her footsteps pounded out of the room, and a door slammed with a violence that made the chandelier tremble.
Silence fell heavily over the dining room. I stared down at the shards of porcelain scattered across the floor, my appetite gone, my hands shaking faintly in my lap.
I whispered, more to myself than to Ethan, “Why does it always feel like no matter what I do, I am failing one of them?”
Ethan said nothing, his face a mask of tension, his jaw tight.
But inside me, Edward’s words echoed still. ‘Don’t make the same mistake I did’
CELESTE’S POV
I stormed out of the house, fury burning so hot inside me it felt like it would flay the skin off my bones.
It was an old, familiar kind of heat-one I used to wear like armor as a child when I didn’t get my way, except this wasn’t childish anymore. This was different.
This was bone-deep, grown-up rage-the kind that came from betrayal, from humiliation.
And unlike when I was a child, everyone didn’t immediately jump to do my bidding to appease me.
My heels clicked against the pavement like angry punctuation, echoing back at me in the cooling evening air.
The rhythm wasn’t just sound-it was the only thing tethering me to myself, reminding me that I still had power, still had presence.
I went out through the manor gates, down the street, and…
I didn’t even know where I thought I was going. My body moved before my mind did, powered by outrage, by a refusal to sit one more second at that table listening to them spew absolute fucking bullshit.
Behind me, there was nothing-no hurried footsteps, no voice calling my name. Neither Ethan nor Mother came after me.
Their absence was like a slap to the face. It pressed in on me, heavy, suffocating, cruel in its indifference.
And it stung, sharp and intimate, like only family could manage.
How dare they?
How dare they sit at their perfect little dinner and talk about poor, misunderstood Sera like she was a victim?
Like she didn’t rip our family apart the night she ripped my heart out?
She was the villain, and yet somehow, they acted like she deserved sympathy.
As if her sad little sob story excused the chaos she left in her wake.
As if her suffering outweighed mine when she’d been the cause of it in the first place.
My own blood family, treating me like I was the intruder. Like I was the one who didn’t belong.
It was grotesque.
I was the one who’d been loyal, who had carried the family name like a crown, who had bent myself into whatever shape Mother demanded.
Perfect, polished, precious Celeste.
I was the perfect daughter, the perfect sister.
And still, they dared to put her on a pedestal and leave me standing in the dirt.
I did not fucking deserve this.
And I wouldn’t fucking take it.
I yanked my phone out of my bag and jabbed at Kieran’s number. It only rang once before his voice slid into my ear-flat, distracted.
“Celeste, I’m in a meeting.” Just that. No warmth, no affection.
The words tumbled out, breathless, desperate. Surely he would hear it, the crack in my voice, the plea woven underneath. “Kieran, I’m so upset! You won’t believe what Mother and-“
“I said I was in a meeting, Celeste. If it’s urgent, tell the driver to take you wherever you want; you have my card and no qualms about using it as you wish. I’ll speak to you later.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the glowing screen incredulously, the rejection sharp as glass. It lodged in my chest, cutting every time I tried to breathe.
When had this happened?
How had this happened?
How had I gone from the darling of my family, the apple of Kieran’s eye, to this…this… outcast?
I was Celeste Eloise Lockwood, dammit!
Adoration was my birthright; I didn’t claw my way into the spotlight-I was the spotlight.
My laughter lit up rooms, my beauty turned heads, my charm could muddle even the sharpest minds.
Loyalty was never something I begged for-it came crawling to me, desperate, inevitable, like moths to flame.
The thought of losing that pull, of no longer being the gravity that every room revolved around, was intolerable.
They had no right to look away.
Sera had no right to have them look at her.
I hurled my phone down onto the pavement. It skidded across the ground with a satisfying crack. A few pedestrians glanced over; I threw them a glare sharp enough to cut, daring them to comment. They looked away.
Good. Let them. At least strangers still remembered how to fear me.
“Drive,” I snapped at the driver Kieran had given me as I slid into the backseat. “Take me to the mall. Now?”
The words came out clipped, vicious. Control, I reminded myself. Power. If they would not give it to me, I would take it back piece by piece.
He scurried to obey.
By the time we reached the mall, my blood had cooled into something darker, heavier. Rage was one thing, but humiliation-that was poison. It ate slowly, leaving nothing but bitterness.
And oh, how it ate. Already I felt it working through me, gnawing away at my composure, leaving behind only the ache of being dismissed, diminished.
I wasn’t going to sit at home like some abandoned pet. If no one wanted to choose me, then I would choose myself.
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