Ethan strikes back
Elena’s POV:
For the very first time in years,I had walked into a room with Ethan Cole and walked out stronger than him.
The gala had ended with the crowd whispering my name not in pity, but in awe.
It should have felt like victory.
But victories against Ethan never lasted long.
They were always short-lived.
By the end of the week, I understood that he was done playing in ballrooms and boardrooms.
His next battlefield would be my family.
It started with a call from my mother.
Her voice trembled in a way I hadn’t heard since I walked down from the altar and called the wedding off.
“Elena,” she said,
“We need to talk. Come home. Tonight.”
The pit that opened in my stomach told me everything I needed to know: Ethan had already been there.
Damien offered to come with me, but I refused.
My family’s house wasn’t neutral ground—it was my parents’ sanctuary.
And Ethan would use it against me if he saw me hiding behind Damien’s shadow.
So I went alone.
The Mendez mansion looked smaller than I remembered, though perhaps that was because Damien’s mansion had shifted my perception of power and wealth.
But its modest elegance had always been enough for us.
Tonight, though, it felt heavy, cloaked in tension.
My father was in the study, pacing.
My mother sat stiffly on the sofa, her hands folded in her lap.
Both of them looked up the moment I entered, their eyes not warm with welcome but sharp with worry.
“Elena,” my father said, his voice clipped.
“We’ve been hearing things. About you. About Damien Cross.”
I exhaled slowly, bracing myself.
“You’ve been hearing them from Ethan.”
My mother flinched. “He only came because he was concerned. He said you’ve been… reckless. That you’re letting Damien use you to settle his business rivalries. That you’re making yourself into a spectacle and disgrace.”
The words were blades, precisely chosen by Ethan.
Concern.
Reckless.
Spectacle.
Disgrace.
He knew exactly how to make them echo in my parents’ minds, turning my defiance into selfishness, my choices into mistakes.
“He said,” my father added, “that Damien parades you around to humiliate him. And when Damien is finished, you’ll be left with nothing. Again.”
“That you would be discarded”
Again. The word landed like a slap.
I wanted to scream.
To tell them Ethan was twisting everything.
That Damien wasn’t using me, that I was finally choosing for myself.
But the look in my parents’ eyes wasn’t anger—it was fear.
Fear for me.
Fear born of Ethan’s manipulation.
“Do you believe him?” I asked softly.
Silence. My mother’s eyes flicked away.
My father cleared his throat.
“We don’t know what to believe. But we do know this, Elena—you’re changing. You’re not the girl we raised anymore. And that terrifies us.”
Tears burned my eyes, but I blinked them back.
“Maybe I’m not the girl you raised anymore,” I said, my voice low but steady.
“Maybe I’m stronger. Isn’t that what you always wanted for me?”
My mother reached for my hand, her touch trembling.
“Not like this,” she whispered.
“Not in the shadows of men who use you.”
I pulled my hand back gently, because I couldn’t bear the weight of her doubt pressing into my skin.
He betrayed me now you guys want me to agree to him, I won't go back”
“I’m not in anyone’s shadow anymore,” I said.
But when I left that house, the certainty in my words didn’t feel as strong as it had at the gala.
Because Ethan had planted a seed of poison in the only soil that had ever truly mattered to me:
My family’s trust.
By the next day, society whispers had sharpened into something crueler.
“Elena’s turned her back on her family.”
“She’s blinded by Cross’s money.”
“Ungrateful girl—Ethan tried to warn her parents, and this is how she repays them?”
The narrative had shifted.
I was no longer just Damien’s rumored mistress or pawn.
I was now the ungrateful daughter, the reckless woman abandoning her family for power.
It was brilliant. Brutal. Entirely Ethan.
Damien found me in his office, staring at the headlines splashed across glossy magazines and social feeds.
His expression was unreadable as he set a file on his desk and crossed to me.
“He’s using your parents to isolate you,” Damien said.
“Classic strategy. If he can make you doubt yourself, he doesn’t need to win in public—he wins here.” His finger tapped lightly against my chest, over my heart.
I swallowed hard, fighting the sting of tears.
“It’s working. He turned them against me with a single conversation.”
“Now they don't believe anything I tell them”
“No.” Damien’s voice was firm, his hand gripping mine.
“He hasn’t turned them. He’s confused. There’s a difference.”
“He just made them not believe anything you say”
His words anchored me, but only just.
The pain of my parents’ doubt still gnawed at me, deeper than Ethan’s rage or Selena’s poison ever could.
“Then how do I fight him?” I whispered.
Damien’s mouth curved in that dangerous way, the one that promised storms.
“You stop playing defense. He’s using your family against you. We make it impossible for him to touch them again.”
“By what—cutting them off?” I demanded, horrified.
“No,” he said smoothly. “By showing them who he really is. Not just the mask he wears. The monster beneath.”
“But would my family really believe me, he has them wrapped around his fingers”
The thought sent a shiver through me. Ethan had always been careful around my parents, the perfect gentleman, the attentive fiancé. If they saw his cruelty—his obsession—they wouldn’t just doubt him. They’d despise him.
But could I risk dragging them further into this war?
Damien seemed to read the hesitation in my eyes. His thumb brushed against mine, gentler this time.
“You don’t win against men like Ethan by shielding the people you love. You win by making him regret ever touching them.”
“Making him regret ever using that strategy.”
I let the words settle, my fear warring with the fire inside me.
Ethan thought he could use my family to break me.
Instead, he had just shown me the next battlefield.
Now he has made my revenge stronger.
I would stop at nothing to bring him down.
I straightened, meeting Damien’s gaze. “Then we show them. We show my parents exactly who Ethan is.”
For the first time since the confrontation in my parents’ study, strength returned to my voice.
Because if Ethan wanted a war, I was done waiting for him to set the rules.
This time, I would.