Chapter 8

I was numbly packing the last of my things when the front door to the penthouse slammed open.

Chace stormed in, his face a thundercloud of rage. Karyn trailed behind him, her eyes red and swollen from crying.

He saw my suitcase by the door and kicked it. The latches broke, and my belongings spilled across the floor.

Clothes, books, and memories scattered at my feet. Among them was a small, leather-bound sketchbook. My mother's last gift to me.

Karyn shrieked, pointing at the sketchbook. "That's her stuff! Burn it! Burn it all!"

Chace snatched the sketchbook from the floor. He held it in his hand, a cruel smile playing on his lips. "You know, I was the one who paid for your mother's hospital bills when she was dying of her 'stress-induced illness'."

He said the words with a sneer, as if her pain was a ridiculous invention.

"I thought I was doing a good deed," he continued, "helping the poor, tragic artist. Turns out, I was just enabling a homewrecker."

He flicked through the pages, his thumb smudging the delicate charcoal drawings. He held up a portrait of me as a child, my mother's signature in the corner.

"Look at this. So innocent," he sneered. "I wonder if she knew she was destroying a family."

"She didn't!" I cried, tears streaming down my face. "Karyn's mother was the one who had the affair! My mother was the victim!"

Karyn flew at me, her face twisted in a mask of rage. She slapped me, hard, across the face. "How dare you! You liar!"

I tried to push her away, but Chace stepped between us. He shoved me, and I stumbled backward, falling to the floor.

He stood over me, a look of utter contempt on his face. "You're pathetic, Ember. Always playing the victim."

He tapped the sketchbook against his hand. "You know, I could have your mother' s grave moved. To a public cemetery. Or maybe I could just have her ashes... scattered. In a sewer, maybe. Where they belong."

The world went silent.

The threat was so vile, so monstrous, I couldn't breathe. He was threatening to desecrate my mother's final resting place. He was threatening to destroy the only physical piece of her I had left in this world.

This was the man I had loved. This was the man who had sworn to protect me.

"You're not human," I whispered, the words choked with a pain so deep it felt like it was tearing me apart from the inside out.

Karyn, seeing she had Chace's full support, became hysterical. "Who is she, Chace? Who is this nobody to talk to us like that? Make her pay!"

Chace looked down at me, his eyes cold and empty. "You want to stay in my life, Ember? Fine. But from now on, you're Karyn's servant. You will do everything she says. You will apologize to her, on your knees, for the lies you've told."

He leaned in closer, his voice a venomous whisper. "And you will thank her for her generosity in allowing a piece of trash like you to even breathe the same air. And if you don't," he held up the sketchbook, "I will personally grind your mother's bones to dust and flush them down the toilet."

I stared at him, my vision blurring. I saw flashes of our life together-the laughter, the shared dreams, the promises. It all felt like a movie about someone else's life.

A single, hot tear rolled down my cheek. It wasn't a tear of sadness. It was a tear of pure, unadulterated rage.

I lunged at him, my hands balled into fists, aiming for his smug, handsome face.

He caught my wrists easily, his grip like steel. He looked bored. "Don't."

He let me go and turned to Karyn. "Her things are in the way. Make her move them to your room."

He wanted me to carry his fiancée's luggage.

They walked away, their laughter echoing in the large, empty room. Karyn was already making a list of chores for me.

I knelt on the floor amidst the wreckage of my life, my mother' s sketchbook clutched to my chest. The last thread of love I had for Chace Mcfarland had just been violently, brutally severed.

And in its place, something cold and hard began to grow.