Chapter 6

Scarlett POV:

For days, I locked myself in my room, the shame too heavy to bear. The final humiliation was being prepared: my twentieth birthday party. It was supposed to be a grand celebration, the official announcement of my engagement to Jax. Now, it felt like a funeral.

A few days before the party, I was in my private sitting room, trying to find a moment of peace. My eyes fell upon the mantelpiece, where my mother's favorite crystal music box sat. It was the last gift she had ever given me. I wound it up, and the soft, tinkling melody that had soothed me since childhood filled the room.

Daisy-Mae entered without knocking, a sickly-sweet smile on her face. "That's so pretty," she said, walking toward the mantel. "Can I see?"

Before I could answer, she reached for it. Her movements were just a little too clumsy, her grip a little too loose. The music box slipped from her fingers and shattered on the marble hearth.

The music stopped. The silence was absolute.

Something inside me snapped. The grief, the betrayal, the endless public humiliations-it all came boiling to the surface.

"GET OUT!" I screamed, a raw, guttural sound of pure rage. I pointed a trembling finger at the door. "Get out of my sight! You destroy everything you touch!"

Tears streamed down her face, but her eyes-for just a second-held a flicker of triumph. "I'm sorry!" she wailed, backing away as if she feared for her life. "It was an accident!"

She fled the room, leaving me alone with the glittering shards of my last connection to my mother. I collapsed to my knees, my body wracked with sobs of pure, unfiltered anguish. I didn't know it then, but her tears were fake, and my real ones were being recorded.