Chapter 34 A House Built on Fear
Alyssa stood behind her daughter, staring at the back of Avery’s head with a pity so heavy it felt like a physical weight pressing on her chest. The words of comfort lodge behind her throat. ‘I’m here, baby. It’s over. You’re safe, but she swallowed them. They would only bounce off the wall Avery had built around herself tonight. Coming from her mother, they would sound like lies anyway. So Alyssa stayed silent and kept brushing, the only thing Avery had allowed her to do. Being permitted to touch her at all felt like a fragile mercy.
She had practically dragged Avery up the stairs with the guards’ help. Down in the marble foyer, Avery had collapsed the moment the gunshot cracked through the night air. No matter how Alyssa had begged “Please, sweetheart, get up, don’t make him come back”. Avery had stayed curled on the cold floor, her sobs so raw they seemed to tear straight out of her soul. Alyssa still heard them echoing in her ears: animal sounds of grief, thick and suffocating, rolling over her in waves.
She couldn’t begin to measure the size of the wound inside her daughter. To watch the man you love gunned down right in front of you, behind glass you couldn’t break or reach, close enough to see the light leave his eyes, too far to ever hold him, and the trigger pulled by your own father.
Except he wasn’t her father. Not really.
Alyssa lifted her gaze to the mirror. Avery stared back at her own reflection with dead, unseeing eyes, skin bare except for the delicate yin pendant resting against her collarbone, the one Leroy had given her last month, whispering that she was his balance, his other half. Now it looked like the only thing keeping her tethered to the world.
Alyssa’s own reflection swam with tears she refused to let fall. Thirty-three years of this house, this marriage, this monster wearing her husband’s face. She couldn’t even protect her girls from him. Charles Hales, Senator, philanthropist, pillar of society, had struck Avery tonight like she was a criminal.
And Letiana… sweet Letiana, torn from Alyssa’s arms hours after birth because of one tiny face deformity, because Charles couldn’t bear the blemish on his perfect image. He’d shipped the baby off like damaged goods.
Years later, when Letiana had come back and refused to play Avery’s double in some sick marriage, he’d hit her too. A normal father didn’t do these things. But Charles wasn’t their father. He was a bitter, impotent man who punished two innocent girls for existing, for being proof that another man had once touched his wife and given her what he never could.
As Alyssa studied her reflection, one thought gave her the smallest drop of comfort, Letiana had escaped this house. She couldn’t even call it a house. It was a prison, hell. If Letiana had grown up here, she would have become just like Avery: surviving beatings, hiding bruises under makeup and long sleeves, flinching at every shout.
To the world, Avery Hales was a spoiled, pampered girl, the daughter of Charles Hales. People saw wealth, luxury, influence. They never saw the truth. They didn’t know the screams behind closed doors or the fear that lived in her bones. They had no idea that a few hours ago, Charles had murdered someone, and Alyssa knew the body would never be found. And even if it was, no one would dare suspect him. To the world, he was the perfect charitable man. Only those who knew him behind the mask understood the monster beneath.
People envied Avery, but they didn’t know the price of that life. Yes, she was rich. Yes, she got anything she wanted. But every gift came with a leash around her neck, tightening around both her and her mother. Charles couldn’t let the world see his family living in fear, so Avery acted spoiled, acted rude. But underneath it all was a girl silently begging for help.
And now, a girl bleeding with the need for vengeance.
Alyssa’s hands still moved on autopilot, the brush gliding through Avery’s long, tangled hair in slow, careful strokes. The vanity bulbs were merciless, spotlighting every mark: the purple bloom across Avery’s cheekbone, the split in her lower lip, the ring of faint fingerprints circling her throat like a necklace of bruises.
Avery hadn’t blinked in minutes. The screaming had burned itself out an hour ago. Now there was only this thick, airless quiet, broken by the whisper of bristles against hair.
Alyssa caught sight of herself again, hollow cheeks, eyes swollen and red, the ghost of last week’s bruise fading beneath powder on her jawline. Years of swallowing her own screams, of teaching her daughter how to angle her face for photographs so the swelling wouldn’t show.
She set the brush down with a soft clack that sounded too loud in the stillness. Her fingers shook.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, voice cracking like thin ice. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
Avery didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge she’d heard.
Alyssa tried again, voice cracking. “If I had fought harder… if I had taken you both and run when you were babies…”
Avery’s head snapped toward her so fast the chair creaked.
“Don’t.”
The single word was hoarse, venomous. “Don’t you dare pretend you ever tried.”
Alyssa flinched as if slapped.
Avery’s eyes filled with tears that refused to fall. “You watched him kill Leroy. You watched him beat me until I spit blood. You watched him sell my sister like cattle. And you just… stood there. Like always.”
Alyssa’s knees buckled. She caught herself on the edge of the vanity, knuckles white.
“I was scared,” she breathed. “I’m still scared. Every day I wake up terrified he’ll decide I’m not useful anymore. That he’ll put a bullet in me the way he did…”
“In Leroy?” Avery finished, voice rising into something jagged and feral. “Say his name, Mother. Say it. You watched his brains hit the lens and you turned away. Just like you turned away every time he broke my ribs. Just like you turned away the day he ripped my twin, your daughter out of your arms because her face was wrong.”
Alyssa sobbed once, a broken, animal sound.
Avery stood up so fast the chair toppled. The yin pendant swung between her small breasts like a pendulum counting down to something terrible.
“You want forgiveness?” Avery laughed, and it was the ugliest sound Alyssa had ever heard. “You’ll get it the same day he does. Which is never.”
She walked past her mother, bare feet silent on the tile, and opened the walk-in closet.
Alyssa watched helplessly as Avery dressed with slow, mechanical movements, as if her mind wasn’t fully there. When Avery pulled the night wear over her shoulders, Alyssa finally spoke.
“Your father… he wants you to replace Leitana.”
Avery froze mid-motion. She turned sharply toward her mother, eyes narrowing in disbelief. “What?”
Alyssa swallowed. “He wants you to ruin the marriage.”