Opulent Obsession – Breaking Belles

His brother had just died, and I’d tried giving him the benefit of the doubt. He’d never been so cold to me in the entirety of our over-a-decade-long friendship, and he’d certainly never just outright given me money like that.

It had made me feel... cheap. Like he was distilling our friendship down to a transaction. I’m tired of you, please go away, here’s a hundred bucks if that will make it happen faster.

But I’d been stubborn. I wasn’t going to give up on ten years of being best friends, especially when I thought he might need me—Timothy had just died for Christ’s sake. If it had been my sibling, all I would have wanted was to bury my cheek against his broad, comforting chest.

However, when I went by, his mother answered the door and said he didn’t want to see me. He’d asked her to be his gatekeeper after the note so that he didn’t even have to deal with me.

And then everything moved so quickly. I was accepted into the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. I had to go. My scholarship at Darlington had dried up. My mysterious benefactor fueling my Darlington Scholarship had decided to stop paying my way.

I had no choice but to go.

I suppose it wasn’t true. I could have stayed and finished out my education in the shit public school system. I would have, if there’d been even a whisper or whimper of encouragement from Rafe.

But all I got was the cold stone of his walkway and the silence of the door being shut repeatedly in my face by his mother. His email went unchecked. No word. No communication.

Thirteen years of friendship and—well, I’d hoped for more. But then I’d always been a fool for imagining there could be anything between us, him the prince and me, the help’s daughter—and then he’d just cut me from his life as easily as the trash my mother threw out each week.

And so, ten days later, I’d boarded a bus, and never came home.

Until now.

For what? For this? Only to make myself as beautiful and appealing as a slutty cupcake, give him my soul through my eyes, and be rejected as thoroughly and painfully as when we were stupid kids?

Fuck Mrs. Hawthorne for ever helping to get my hopes up. I couldn’t believe I even came here to the Oleander. I couldn’t believe I was repeating my mother’s fate.

I was a rejected belle now, too. I guess I could join their little club.

I was shocked when Mama H told me. Was it really only yesterday that she blew my world wide open? Just yesterday when I followed her from the cafe to the little picturesque park by the river where she told me a tale I’ll never forget?

“Your mother was young and desperate when she got to this town,” Mama H said as she sat down on a park bench along an empty path. It was 11am on a Friday and no one was around. Swallowing hard, I sat down beside her. Did I want to hear what she had to say? Even then I knew that whatever Mama H was about to tell me, it was big. Maybe even rock-my-foundation big.

She didn’t disappoint. “She always reminded me a lot of myself. She worked as a washerwoman at one of the motels in a nearby town when she got the invitation.”

“Invitation?”

“To compete as a belle for the attention of one of the Initiates in the Order of the Silver Ghost.”

My head snapped to look at her. She wasn’t looking at me. She still stared straight ahead. Even though her demeanor was calm, I knew better. She was spilling secrets that were sacred. Secrets that powerful men would go to extreme lengths to be kept quiet.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Finally, Mama H looked my way. Her eyes were direct. She was unafraid. “You deserve to know. It’s your heritage.”

I’d felt my brow furrow. What the hell did that mean?

But she was already barreling on. “The Invitation could have meant everything to your mother. A new life. Riches beyond anything she’d ever known. All her dreams come true.”

I shook my head, confused. We both knew that wasn’t what happened.

Mama H’s face softened. “She wasn’t chosen that night.”

I felt her words like a physical blow. Not because I cared that much, but because I could imagine the blow my mother had felt. All her hopes for a better future, snatched away simply because a man hadn’t chosen her.

So, if she hadn’t been chosen, why the hell was Mama H even telling me this story?

“She was among the rejects,” Mama H went on.

Well, that felt like a harsh way to put it, sheesh, but then she continued, “—just like I was.”

My mouth dropped open just like when she’d first said it minutes before. I could barely voice the next words, “I don’t understand. I can’t imagine you as—”