CELESTE's POV:

Seraphina sobbed louder, hiding her smirk against his chest as she cried in his arms. “I only came to congratulate her, but she...she went crazy. She said I wanted her dead so she was going to kill me first. She's insane, Blake. Take me out of here before she kills me.”

Blake hugged Seraphina closer into his arms, holding her as though she were fragile glass.

He stepped toward me, his hand twitching as though he might strike me the next second. I froze, anticipating the sting of it on my cheeks, but at the last second, he stopped, his voice colder than ice.

“You’ve truly disappointed me, Celeste.”

Tears blinded me. My wrist still bled from the pulled IV, my body still weak from surgery, but none of it hurt as much as his words.

He didn’t even notice the blood on my sheets. He only saw Seraphina’s faked tears.

And as he led her out, she glanced back at me with a triumphant smirk...the look of a woman who knew she had won.

The door slammed shut behind them with a bang that made me shiver, and I wondered how I got myself in this position. How I got myself here, where I can't even stand up for myself, because I knew that I was always the villain. The other woman in Blake's life despite being his wife and mother of his child.

A year earlier, before the scandals and the shame, there was a girl who thought loving Blake Lancaster from afar was enough. A girl who believed that one day, if she loved quietly and patiently, he might turn and see her.

I wasn’t that girl anymore. But I remembered her. I remembered the night everything changed…

On that day, there was a ball party going on, and the White family was invited.

Everyone left for the party, except me.

I was told to stay back home, locked up in my bedroom because no one needed my presence at the ball.

"Where do you think you're getting all dressed up to, Celeste?" I remember my mother saying right after bursting into my room. She had this disgusted look I could never mistake on her face.

I paused, the bright shade of pink lip gloss I was about to apply to my lips hung in the air as I sat before the dressing table.

Turning to her, I swallowed subconsciously, surprised by the question.

"Um, mother. Weren't we all invited to the ball? Everyone else is getting prepared so I thought I could join you guys..."

"You thought what, Celeste?" She cut me off in a frustrated tone.

"Do I have to keep reminding you? Why do you consider yourself a White? Are you forgetting what you truly are? You're just going to be a waste of space! So for your own good and to avoid bringing further embarrassment and drama to our family with your presence, you'd better stay back, locked up in your bedroom as always, or else, you know what's going down," She bluntly said to me, glaring, before storming out.

I bit hard on my lips, trying not to let her words get to me. I should probably have gotten used to it, but I don't think so anymore because I felt that.

Then I caught Seraphina resting on my door frame with a smirk on her face.

"Oh dear sister. Mum is being harsh on you again, isn't she?" She pouted her lips, wearing a sad look on her face as she walked in with this air of arrogance around her.

"You were the one behind this, weren't you?" My voice was hard.

"Ya right," she rolled her eyes lazily with a hiss. "It doesn't take a genius to figure it out unless you have no brain cells. What did you think? That I would let your threat slide so easily? That I’d allow some girl dragged in from the slums to stand beside me in a room full of wealthy heirs and suitors? Please, Celeste. Know your place.”

“I didn’t threaten you. I only wanted to know why you're doing this to him. Blake is your fiancé. You know how much he loves you so why hurt him this way? He doesn’t deserve it, Seraphina. What you are doing to him is wrong—”

Before I could finish, Seraphina’s hand shot out and shoved my head against the dresser with a sharp thud that made my head spin. The lip gloss rolled off and clattered to the floor. She leaned in close, her perfume choking me, her nails digging into my skin as she pressed me harder into the table. Her eyes glinted with menace.

“You don’t get to lecture me on the do’s and don’ts of my life, bitch” she hissed. “You’d better focus on your unwanted existence and figure out how to crawl your way out of this house for good. Because the next time you dare preach to me, Celeste…” She tilted her head, her voice dropping lower, almost dangerous. “…I won’t take it so lightly.”

With that, she straightened, tossed her blonde hair arrogantly over her shoulder, and marched to the door. She slammed it shut with such force that the walls rattled. The sudden noise made me flinch, my heart jerking in my chest as silence rushed back in.

****

My brows drew together in concern as I watched from my window above later that evening, taking in little, but foreign details about him.

"Blake?" I whispered, disbelief curling in my chest because the Blake I was seeing below right now wasn't the impeccably dressed and responsible man I had grown to love over the years.

He had just driven into the White's Residence in a flash, his face dark, and his steps unsteady as he got down from his car in haste while clutching onto a bottle in his fist. His shirt was untucked and his tie was undone. This was so unlike him.

I had the urge to run to him. To know what's wrong and what made him this way because it felt so wrong seeing him look like a fragile egg that could break any time from now. But I stopped myself from making a move. Maybe he came to see Seraphina.

Shouldn't I probably inform him that she's not around? I thought.

Then suddenly, I heard the crash of a bottle somewhere in the hall downstairs and I rushed out of my bedroom to find him looking so disheveled, leaning onto the wall like it was the only form of support he got in his vulnerable state, the wine bottle shattered in shards around him. It made my heart squeeze.

"Blake," a gasp left my lips. "What happened to you?"

“Seraphina?” His voice was rough, broken, as he lifted his gray eyes to mine.

Seraphina? He is so in love with her that even in his drunken state, all he could see was her. I thought with an aching heart.

The realization hit me so hard that I froze where I stood, breath caught in my throat. He stumbled forward, the world tilting around him, his gaze unfocused. He called her name again, softer this time, like a plea.

"I'm so sorry, Sera. Please don't leave me," he said as he stepped forward, not minding the shards of glass around him. "I will do anything. Anything at all to make it up to you. I love you so much, Seraphina. Just—don't leave."

I should have corrected him. I should have told him to leave. But then his arms were around me, pulling me close, his lips finding mine with desperate hunger and then..

My heart betrayed me.

For years, since high school, I had dreamed of this. Dreamed of him. Of what it would feel like to be in his arms, to taste the love I had longed for in silence. And now… here it was, handed to me in the cruelest, most forbidden way.

Why should she have everything? The bitter voice whispered inside me. Why should she get to cheat on him, laugh at him, and still keep him? Why can’t I have one night, just one where he chooses me instead?

Besides, I've been in his life long before she came around and stole everything from me.

My parents love, their care, everything I ever wanted was given to her on a platter of gold after my parents found their long lost daughter after so many years.

And I? I was cast aside like I didn't belong there anymore. Seraphina became the True Heiress to the White's lineage while I was kept on the sidelines, watching with a broken heart.

As if that wasn't heartbreaking enough, she then caught Blake's attention like a piece of cheese while I remained in the shadows.

So I didn’t push him away. I closed my eyes, swallowed my guilt, and let him have me. Not as myself, but as the woman he thought I was as he pulled me into one of the bedrooms that turned out to be mine without hesitation, and I let him, cherishing the little forbidden moment.

When dawn broke, he was asleep. I slipped quietly out of bed, leaving no trace, no words, no confession.