Chapter 2 - The First Crack
Her name was Rosa, and she stopped me in the side hall near the pantry while Victoria was upstairs changing for a charity luncheon.
“Mrs. Ashford,” she said quietly.
I smiled. “Elena is fine.”
Her eyes flicked toward the staircase. “Then Elena.”
She wrung her hands once, embarrassed already for speaking.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Rosa looked at me the way women sometimes look at each other when men and mothers have built a room that only women can read clearly.
“For leaving you here.”
I felt something cold slide into my stomach.
“She said you quit.”
Rosa gave one hollow laugh. “Mrs. Ashford told me there was no longer room in the budget. Then she told me family should not need help with ordinary domestic tasks.”
I thought of the mansion, the imported light fixtures, the florist invoice still lying open on the breakfast table.
“Why tell me this?”
“Because she said it in front of me.” Rosa swallowed. “She told Mr. Ashford that now you could ‘start earning your keep.’”
When I turned toward the kitchen, Rosa caught my wrist lightly.
“Be careful,” she whispered. “Your mother-in-law changes the rules after you agree to them.”
That night, when I asked Julian why Rosa had really left, he was stretched on the bed in our third-floor suite, half-reading emails.
“She was too expensive,” he said.
“Victoria said now I can earn my keep.”
He did not look up. “She was joking.”
“She wasn’t.”
Julian exhaled as though I had already become tiring.
“Elena, my mother has a sharp tongue. You knew that before we got married.”
I stood at the foot of the bed in my robe, suddenly too aware of the room around us—the antique vanity, the silk drapes, the tray where Victoria had instructed staff to leave our tea each morning.
“I didn’t marry you to become unpaid staff in your mother’s house.”
Now he looked up.
Not angry yet.
Annoyed.
“No one said that.”
But his tone said something else.
It said I was expected to drop the subject, and we both knew it.
Then, because my instincts were trying to save me and my heart was still betraying them, I asked the question that mattered.
“Julian… this is temporary, right?”
That pause changed everything.
Only a second. Barely longer.
But long enough.
“Of course,” he said.
May you like
I smiled because he was looking at me.
And that was the moment I began lying to myself on purpose.
