Chapter 27
Elena
The storm had fully arrived by the time Elena left Carter's apartment.
Rain hammered the streets so hard that it looked like the city was disappearing behind a curtain of water in the dark night.
The wind tugged at her coat the entire way to her car.
None of it felt as violent as the storm raging inside her head.
She practically threw herself into the driver’s seat of her car, her hands shaking so violently she missed the ignition slot twice.
He’s lying. He has to be lying, her mind screamed.
Carter wasn't a liar—deep down, she knew his integrity was the one thing she had always been able to trust—but right now, believing him meant her entire life was a lie.
And she couldn't accept that. Not yet.
She hit the gas, her tires skidding over the wet road. Driving through Manhattan in this downpour felt like navigating underwater.
The wipers whipped back and forth in a losing battle against the glass, unable to stop the heavy rain from blurring the streetlamps into bleeding smears of red and yellow. Every time lightning cracked overhead, casting a ghostly light across the skyscrapers, Elena flinched.
She was drowning in fury. She was mad at Carter for keeping secrets, but most of all, she was mad at herself. Because those photographs... they weren't faked.
“You should dress more like Aunt Julia, El.”
“Your aunt Julia thinks we should invest in this.”
“Aunt Julia said...”
Kyle’s voice echoed in her memory, a sickening playback of clues she had been too blind to see. He hadn't just been comparing her to her aunt; he had been taking notes. How could she have been so incredibly naive?
By the time she pulled up to the Upper East Side estate, her jaw ached from clenching it.
Julia's mansion loomed behind massive iron gates, surrounded by manicured, sprawling gardens that looked wild and menacing under the black sky.
At the edge of the property sat the sprawling Victorian greenhouse, its glass panes reflecting the flashes of lightning.
The security guard at the gatehouse was huddled inside against the weather, barely glancing up as she flew past the sensor. She parked haphazardly on the gravel drive.
As she marched toward the main structure, a sudden vibration buzzed against her thigh. Her phone. Carter’s name flashed on the screen. A wave of bitter resentment washed over her.
She shoved her wet hand into her pocket and blindly mashed the side buttons until the ringing stopped, plunging her back into the howling dark of the storm.
She didn't find Julia in the main house. The lights were mostly dim, the massive rooms eerie and silent as if the staff had been abruptly dismissed for the evening. Elena was about to turn back when she noticed a faint, warm glow blooming from inside the glass greenhouse connecting to the garage.
Elena pushed the heavy glass door open, stepped into the humid, earthy air, and stopped dead.
Julia was there, but she wasn't tending to the plants. The greenhouse opened into the private garage, where several designer suitcases stood packed by the door. Julia looked as though she were making final preparations before a trip.
She was leaving.
“Elena," Julia said, not even looking up. Her voice was a chilling portrait of aristocratic calm.
"You're soaking wet. Most people ring the bell before barging into someone's home.”
"You slept with Kyle," Elena said, the words cutting through the sound of rain drumming heavily against the glass roof above.
Julia paused, a. She slowly turned around, a faint, condescending smile curved her lips.—perfectly poised, utterly devoid of guilt.
"Kyle was a tool, darling. A weak, easily molded boy. If he sought comfort in the arms of a woman who actually knows how to manage a legacy, you should blame your own lack of sophistication, not me."
"How could you do this to me?!" Elena yelled, stepping closer, the scent of damp earth and crushed orchids suddenly making her sick.
"He was my husband!"
"And he would have ruined you," Julia snapped, her mask slipping just enough to show a flash of ice.
"Just like that pathetic charity case you fawned over in college."
The room seemed to tilt. "Carter," Elena breathed, her stomach dropping. "It was you. The hit-and-run... his family..."
"I gave that boy a choice," Julia shrugged, casually turning back to zip her suitcase.
"I offered him a generous sum to walk away from you. He refused. He thought his little middle-class morality was stronger than us. I simply reminded him that choices have consequences. He chose his pride over his family's safety. If anything, he is the one who is responsible for their troubles."
Elena searched the face in front of her, desperately trying to find the aunt she grew up idolizing. She couldn't look past the truth anymore. A wave of pure nausea washed over her.
“Are you for real, you psychotic bitch?"
Elena gasped, backing away.
The pretty mask had slipped, the woman standing before her was a monster, a stranger. Elena grew up thinking Julia was just stiff, just a product of old-money classism who was disappointed in Elena’s rebellious streaks. She never imagined this level of malice.
"What did I ever do to you? Why do you hate me so much?"
"Because you exist," Julia hissed, her voice dropping into a venomous whisper as she stepped around the bench. The lightning flashed above, casting skeletal shadows of the greenhouse’s iron beams across Julia’s face.
"You are just like your mother. Everyone loved Eleanor.
'Oh, Eleanor is so brilliant, Eleanor is the true muse of Waldorf Fashions.
' I spent my entire life in her shadow. And when those two died, they left the company to you—a clueless, emotional child—and I was expected to just play the doting aunt? "
Elena could do nothing but stare in shock as Julia scoffed, her eyes gleaming with decades of buried, toxic resentment.
"Your mother was a fraud. And you are a weak imitation. I wasn't about to let Eleanor’s brat inherit the empire I actually worked to maintain."
"You embezzled from us," Elena said, her voice shaking but furious as she remembered Carter’s spreadsheets. "You bled Waldorf Fashions dry! My father trusted you! It’s my company, Julia. And I’m taking it back. You're going to jail."
As soon as she said it, a massive deafening crack of thunder shook the entire structure.
The lights in the greenhouse vanished, plunging them into pitch-black darkness, save for the violent flashes of lightning outside. The wind howled, a savage roar that rattled the glass panes directly above their heads.
Elena turned to run for the door, but she never made it.
A sudden, blinding explosion of pain erupted at the back of her skull. She stumbled forward, her knees hitting the hard stone floor, a heavy iron trowel clattering beside her. The world spun, black spots dancing in her vision.
"No, you ungrateful little brat," Julia’s voice snarled from the darkness.
"You are not ruining my plans. I have seventy million dollars waiting for me from the investors Kyle scammed and that idiot Carter. He honestly thought he could come back here to mock me and play the hero? My jet leaves for the Cayman Islands tonight and you are not stopping me."
Elena tried to push herself up, but her limbs felt like lead. Through the haze of a concussion, she felt Julia’s hands—surprisingly strong and frantic—shoving her against the thick iron support beam of the greenhouse.
Before Elena could even scream, a heavy hemp twine was wrapped brutally around her chest and arms, pinning her to the column. Her legs were bound tightly at the ankles.
"Let me go!" Elena choked out, but her voice was weak.
"Goodbye, Elena," Julia whispered.
Through the dark, Elena heard a loud, metallic smash.
Julia had slammed her heavy suitcases into the glass display shelving nearby, fracturing the structural integrity of the old iron tiering.
Potted plants began to shatter on the floor.
Then, the heavy glass door slammed shut, and the lock clicked from the outside.
Elena was trapped. Above her, the terrifying sound of creaking metal and groaning glass began to echo. The storm was in full force now, and with the support shelves damaged, the heavy glass roof directly above her was fracturing under the wind. It was going to collapse right on top of her.
She desperately wriggled her fingers, trying to reach into her pocket for her phone, but the twine was wrapped too tightly. She couldn't move an inch.
A cold, paralyzing dread settled deep in her chest. Was she going to die here?
Tears of pure regret finally cut through the dirt on her face.
She had fought with Carter. She had screamed at him, pushed him away, when he was the only one who had ever truly tried to protect her.
She thought of what Julia had put his poor family through, all because of her.
She wished she could go back. She wished she had told him she loved him one last time.
A violent gust of wind screamed through the garden. Above her, the distinct, terrifying sound of iron snapping echoed through the dark. The shadow of the massive glass roof began to shift, tilting downward.
As a deafening explosion of shattering glass roared around her, Elena’s vision finally failed her, and the world went completely black.