Chapter 1

AMELIA

Once the clock struck ten pm, I knew it was going to be the worst night of my life.

Amelia Grayson, EXPELLED.

I read the email with tightly clenched fists, unable to stop the anger that spread through my chest.

I spent two whole years working on my application, getting a fucking scholarship into the most prestigious university in the country and yet, I had just been expelled.

The reasons?

Nudity, leaving the hostel past curfew, stealing, bullying, and abusing fellow students both physically and verbally.

“You got to be fucking kidding me,” I let out a shaky sigh, unable to contain my anger.

The list went on and it had only one person’s name written on it.

Bertha.

My step-sister.

My father’s illegitimate turned legitimate child and of course the family's golden child.

I grabbed my phone from the table, still with the email open as I left my bedroom and stomped downstairs with a dark expression.

Everything else, she could take away, everything else, she could steal from me…but not this.

As I descended the stairs in a hurry, the first person who noticed my arrival was Monica, my stepmother.

She was all smiles while speaking to the housekeeper, Trenton, but her expression turned foul the second she looked at me.

It didn’t bother me. I was used to it.

“Miss Amelia,” Trenton greeted with a warm smile, his aged eyes crinkled at the side when he met my gaze.

I walked past him, ignoring the only person in the mansion who was nice to me.

“What’s with the expression?” Monica tsked with a sneer, “Why do you have to show up and ruin my mood?” She said in a voice filled with displeasure. Her too-red lips twisted into a frown.

“Where’s Bertha?”

“What business for you have with my daughter?”

I gritted my teeth when I noticed the smug look on Monica's face. She knew. She knew exactly what was going on.

“What did you do, Monica?” I seethed with narrowed eyes, getting a bit of satisfaction when I noticed the corners of her lips twitch. She hated it when I called her by her name but then again, she hated everything about me.

“The question is…dear daughter, what did you do?” Monica replied and then laughed haughtily, she turned her attention back to Trenton who looked rather uncomfortable by our exchange.

“I worked hard to get into that school! I worked hard for it!” I argued, hating how I was unable to hold back my tears.

“And so what?” Monica lifted a brow in question. Just then, Bertha walked in looking all angelic and pretty, despite the striking similarities I had with my sister, one could tell that she was far more attractive than I was. From the blond hair she got from her mother and the black hair I got from my father.

Yet, she was also the person whose leaked images were being circulated around the university, and I was the person being blamed.

“Oh, mom!” Bertha exclaimed dramatically with teary eyes as she held on to her mother’s arm, “I told you we should’ve spoken to her first before we told the school,” she said, passing me a look of guilt and pity like she actually felt any.

“Hush now,” Monica cooed her twenty-year-old daughter like she was a child.

I’d almost roll my eyes at their antics if I wasn’t so angry at that moment.

“You and I both know your father’s word is law and it will always be, as long as he tells Amelia to take the blame, she will,” Monica’s tone dropped at the last word, her eyes meeting mine with barely hidden contempt.

“Dad approved of this?” I breathed out shakily, taking a step back as I tried to make sense of the situation.

“Of course he did,” Bertha scoffed, “As much as I felt guilty about it, Dad reassured me not to be, because after all…my education is more important than yours, I’m the heir to Grayson Holdings…I can’t get expelled, that’ll put a stain on father’s name!” she looked so innocent when she said those words that it almost justified her actions.

I gritted my teeth, listening to her every word felt like openly staring at needles piercing my skin.

I hated hearing those words over and over again. The reminder that I was not even considered a person in my own home.

Nothing I wanted was considered important.

Which was why I had to work hard for a scholarship and Bertha was admitted just by a word from my father to the dean.

Breathe, Amelia. Getting angrier will only make things worse.

I tried to control myself while I stood in front of the mother-daughter duo.

Bertha's tears were on the brink of falling when she let go of her mother and walked up to me.

“I’m so sorry little sister,” she said in a tremulous voice, “I know how hard you worked to get into that school,” she pulled me into a hug, tight, uncomfortable.

Then her mouth was positioned right next to my ear, “Let this be a warning to you, Amelia,” she whispered in a volume only the both of us could hear.

"You tried to take what was mine, a glory you could never reach!" I could imagine her sneer.

“You do not deserve nice things and you do not deserve to be on the same pedestal as me…I am heir, and you are the daughter of a dead whore, remember that!”

Her words were enough to make me see red, I pulled back and inhaled sharply, unable to stop myself as I slapped her cheek so hard my palm stung.

“Amelia!!!” I heard my father’s angry voice from behind me and my blood ran cold.

Just as expected, he didn’t wait for an explanation before taking his belt out of his waistband and inflicting three times more of the pain I did on his precious daughter.

I screamed and cried my throat raw, somehow it was drowned by Bertha's loud sobs and fake apologies as she ‘begged' my father to stop.

He didn’t.

Not until he was panting from exertion and I could feel my shirt get soaked with a mix of blood and sweat. My skin burned from it and my ears rang, my head aching from how much I had cried.

“Do not ever in your useless, pathetic existence, raise a hand to my daughter!” my father warned with an authoritative voice.

I’m your daughter too.

How tempted I was to say those words back at him.

Instead, I swallowed every reply and I did all I could do in that moment.

I ran.

Out of our mansion, out of our estate.

I kept running until my lungs could no longer take it. Then I stopped in the middle of the road, my legs giving out.

A disappointment, just like my entire fucking existence.

Then I heard it. The loud horn of an oncoming truck, I knew I should’ve moved or at least twitched, felt scared but instead, I felt a deep exhaustion that left me feeling numb.

Why should I move away?

There’s nothing to go back to.

My dreams, my hopes…all stolen, just like everything else, by Bertha.

All because I don’t deserve anything good. All because I’m the daughter of a dead whore. Yes, that is all I am…but not if I stay still a few moments longer.

I don’t really remember the truck hitting me. All I knew was that it all went dark before impact and the peace that came with it.

All of a sudden, it felt like chaos, my ears rang just as they did when my father hit me. Only this time, the pain in my head was explosive, so much so that I had to grit my teeth to keep myself from crying out.

Then I heard a deep voice, unfamiliar yet familiar in many ways.

Yelling.

Then calling out to me.

“Amelia, I’m fucking talking to you, don’t ignore me!”

What?

Then all of a sudden, the haze and the darkness cleared and my eyes snapped open.

“Ugh…” I groaned, my stomach hurting so much. I was covered in cold sweat get, I was standing.

How the fuck was I still standing after being hit?

“Amelia?”

There was that voice again, this time gentler and tinged with concern.

My blurry gaze cleared after a few seconds, then I realized I wasn’t in the middle of the road, I was in a kitchen. The most luxurious I’ve ever laid eyes on.

“What’s wrong? You look pale,”

More concern.

I looked down at my fingers that rested on the kitchen counter, no black nail polish, yet I knew it was mine, they rested on some papers, the top read, DIVORCE AGREEMENT.

What?

Was I so injured that I’d finally conjured up rubbish?

Or is this the afterlife?

Is there divorce in the afterlife?

Then I turned in the direction of the unfamiliar voice and I was met with the most beautiful pair of blue eyes I’d ever seen.

My breath caught in my throat and momentarily, everything else was forgotten.

“Amelia?” he called out again, his full pink lips moved as I heard the sound of my name.

Familiar yet unfamiliar.

What is this feeling?

“You…” I rasped, “Who are you?”

Then the concern and warmth in his eyes morphed into something entirely sinister, darker, anger maybe? Hatred? Definitely.

“I should’ve known you’d try to make a fucking scene,” he said with a shake of his head in an exasperated tone.

“I am not in the mood for your games, sign the papers so I can finally be rid of you!” he said, teeth bared out in anger and his time so harsh it made me flinch.

I shook my head, panic setting in a long with a mix of trepidation and dread.

“Who…are you?”

Then his eyes narrowed, and a look of confusion, suspicion, realization, and shock flitted across his perfectly sculpted features all at once.

“Amelia I…I'm your husband, I’m Roman,”

My what?