Chapter 7
Elara
The hallway stretched before me—red mahogany panels gleaming under crystal chandeliers, Persian runners muffling footsteps, oil paintings of dead Vanes watching from gilded frames. I'd walked this corridor a thousand times. In my previous life, I'd run down it at dawn to deliver Julian's coffee before he left for work.
Now each step felt like walking away from a grave.
"Elara!"
The voice came from the servants' stairwell—sharp, panicked, desperate.
I turned. Mamá burst through the narrow door, still wearing her gray cleaning uniform. Rubber gloves yellow with dish soap. Hair escaping from her tight bun. She grabbed my wrist hard enough to leave marks.
"Are you crazy?" Her accent thickened with agitation. "I was outside the door! I heard everything! Why did you refuse to go to Boston? Why did you give back the necklace?"
I pulled my arm free, leaving red crescents where her nails had dug in. "I need to study for midterms. My GPA—"
"Your GPA?" She laughed—a high, brittle sound. "Dios mío, what GPA matters more than Julian? Elara, the Kennedy gala—do you know what kind of opportunity that is? All those important people, and if you're there beside him, everyone will think you're his—"
"His what?" The words came out flat. Dead. "His girlfriend? His companion? His pet?"
She flinched. "Don't talk like that. You know what I mean. If you just try harder, if you show him—"
"Show him what?" My voice cracked. "Mamá, I've spent a year showing him. Every morning at 5 AM, making his coffee. Learning about jazz because he mentioned Miles Davis once. Wearing colors I thought he'd like. Not making friends because I was too busy being available for him."
I could see her mouth opening to protest, so I pressed on. "And you know what he showed me? That he finds me disgusting. That I'm beneath his notice. That I'm—" I choked on the word. "—nothing to him."
"You're giving up." Her eyes filled with tears. "After everything. After a whole year of trying, you're just giving up?"
In my previous life, those tears would have broken me. Made me apologize, promise to try harder, agree to go to Boston.
Now I just felt tired.
"I'm not giving up, Mamá. I'm waking up."
---
My bedroom door clicked shut behind me. Twenty square meters of space that wasn't quite servant quarters but wasn't quite family either—the perfect metaphor for my existence at Blackwood Estate.
I slid down the door until I sat on the carpet, knees pulled to my chest.
The tears came then. Silent. Wrenching. Not for Julian—never for him again—but for the girl I'd been. The one who'd believed in fairy tales. Who'd thought love could bridge the gap between management and staff, between Vane and Vance.
Who'd been so fucking stupid.
I was not that girl anymore.
I stood. Walked to my desk where my laptop sat open, surrounded by textbooks and flashcards. AP Calculus. AP US History. SAT prep books with dog-eared pages.
In my previous timeline, I'd let these slip. Too busy chasing Julian to maintain my 3.95 GPA. Too pregnant to take the SAT. Too broken to apply to colleges.
Not this time.
I opened Common Application and pulled up my saved draft. Target schools: UC Berkeley. Stanford. Northwestern. Universities as far from New York as possible. As far from the Vanes as I could get.
Early Decision deadline: November 1st. Regular Decision: January 1st.
I had time. I could still salvage this.
I grabbed my journal—the one that used to be filled with "I love Julian" written in a hundred different fonts—and opened to a blank page.
October 20, 2024 / Day 1 of Rewriting Fate
Goals:
1. ✓ Avoid Boston trip (completed)
2. Ace midterms—push GPA to 4.0
3. SAT in December—target 1550+
4. Apply to California schools (get far from East Coast)
5. Find who drugged the wine (Sloane's cousin? Victoria?)
6. Make them pay for Lily (long-term)
I stared at that last line. My hand shook as I wrote it.
In my previous life, I'd never gotten justice. The foster parents who'd ignored her allergies faced no consequences. Julian had married Sloane, started a family, lived happily while my daughter rotted in a cheap plastic urn.
Not this time.
---
Six PM. I was three chapters deep in AP Calc when my door slammed open.
Mamá stood in the doorway, dragging my suitcase. Her eyes were red-rimmed but determined. Manic.
"I talked to Mr. Vane Senior," she announced. "I told him you changed your mind. You're taking Julian's private jet to Boston tomorrow at 7 AM."
The textbook slipped from my hands. "You did what?"
"What I had to do!" She started throwing clothes into the suitcase—including that pink lace dress I'd never worn, the one she'd bought for "special occasions." "You're too young to understand, pero yo sé mejor. I know better. This is your chance, mija. Your only chance."
I crossed the room in three steps and grabbed the suitcase. "I'm not going."
"Yes, you are!" She yanked it back. "You spent a whole year on this! Every morning with his coffee, every afternoon waiting for him to come home, every weekend learning about his interests! You can't give up now when you're so close!"
"Close to what?" My voice rose. "Mamá, he hates me. Did you see his face today? He thinks I'm pathetic. He thinks I'm—"
"He'll change his mind!" Tears streamed down her face. "If you just get him alone in Boston, if something happens at the gala, if you drink a little and he drinks a little and you end up in his room—"
The words hit like ice water.
"You want me to get him drunk?" I asked slowly. "You want me to... what? Seduce him? Trap him?"
"I want you to be smart!" She grabbed my shoulders, shaking me. "¡Escúchame! We have nothing, Elara. Nothing! I'm a cleaning woman. You're the dead driver's daughter. If you don't make Julian need you, if you don't make him responsible for you somehow, we'll end up on the street!"
I thought of the hotel room in my previous timeline. The wine that tasted wrong. Waking up to Julian's disgust and accusations.
Had it been her idea? Had she...?
No. I couldn't think about that now.
"Even if I did what you're suggesting," I said quietly, "even if I got pregnant, he wouldn't marry me. He'd force me to abort. Or take the baby and destroy me."
"You don't know that—"
"I do know that." The certainty in my voice made her pause. "Mamá, I know exactly what would happen. And I won't—I can't—go down that path again."
She stared at me, confusion and fear warring in her eyes. "Again? What do you mean?"
Footsteps in the hallway. Precise. Measured. The kind that made servants straighten their uniforms.
We both froze.
Three knocks. Sharp. Authoritative.
"Come in, Julian!" Mamá called out before I could stop her. She thought this was her chance—that he'd see her "dedication," see me "prepared" to go, and everything would work out.
She understood nothing.