Chapter Twenty-Six Elise #2
I didn't even realize the resentment, the hatred, had started there, like a small seed you didn't even have to tend to, and it still bloomed uncontrollably anyway.
My father, on the other hand, was growing more and more miserable each day.
When I was a child, I remember him being happy, playing with me, and giving me gifts. I can remember holidays and vacations, and him carrying me in his arms and telling me that he loved me.
Then I would be taken from his arms by my mother, placed with the au pair, my dance teacher, or a trainer, and told to go practice. My father never fought against this, never raised a single word of defense against my mother for me.
I remember snooping in his home office, as most children do when they're told not to, and opening a drawer in his desk. He had pictures—hundreds of them—of this pretty redhead. Pale skin, bright green eyes, freckles across her nose and cheeks, and a glowing smile.
Some photos were of her alone—on a beach in a sundress, grinning beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. Standing in front of a tall, glimmering Christmas tree. Kneeling in a lush garden, dirt on her knees, smiling up at the camera like whoever was behind it meant the world to her.
Some photos were of them together, my father younger and smiling more than I had ever seen.
In one of the photos, she wore a beautiful white dress and veil, and my father was in a tux, holding her face while kissing her. In another, he looked at her as if she were the only person alive.
That one stopped me cold.
He had never looked at my mother like that.
I didn't understand it. I was thirteen and still believed in fairy tales and that my mom was the love of my dad's life. So I just asked her.
"Mom," I said, holding up one of the prints, "why does Dad have pictures of this lady in his desk?"
I'll never forget her face—it was like someone had drained all the color from it, and she had completely forgotten I was there.
Storming into his office like a tornado, she ripped out every single drawer and froze when the pictures spilled out across the floor.
With a shaky hand, she grabbed the one by her feet.
In it, the redhead was blowing a kiss at the camera.
Her voice cracked me like a whip, "Go to your room, Elise."
I did, but I snuck out and peeked around the corner to see what she was doing.
I watched, confused, as she lit the fireplace in the grand living room, carried the drawer of photos over to it, and started tossing the pictures in, one by one.
She didn't speak, she just watched as the flames disintegrated every memory.
My father got home just in time to watch her toss in the last ones.
The sound from his mouth wasn't human, and the look on his face was pure rage.
He lunged for the fireplace while my mother tossed in the last photo with a smirk, her chin raised in defiance.
He tried to grab them from the fire and burned his hands, then exploded with a fury that still made me scared to think about.
I retreated to my room—to my closet—covering my ears with my hands. I listened to them rage at each other until the house shook, their screams bled through the walls for hours.
After that night, they seemed to enter a cold war, barely speaking to each other but not showing full-on animosity.
My mother drank more and ate less, while my father spent more time in his office in the city.
I didn't ask questions, and I somehow understood that I wasn't enough to fill in the gap that stretched between them.
When I was fourteen, I wanted to go shopping with my friends as we normally did on Fridays. So, I went to my father's office, walking right past his assistant before she could finish her warning.
"Miss Cabot, I'll let him know that—"
I scoffed at her and walked right up to his door, shoving it open. I'm his princess, I don't need an appointment to see him.
"Daddy, can I have—" I walked into his office and froze.
He was sitting at his desk, hunched slightly forward, eyes locked on his laptop screen. His face was... haunting. A weird combination of heartbreak and love that made me stumble.
My father never looked at me—or my mom—with even a fraction of that emotion before. He looked up when he saw me and tried—and failed—to smile. He stood from the desk and hugged me like he always did—one-armed, distracted—already reaching into his pocket for his wallet.
The black card was placed in my hand, and he patted me on the head. "Go have fun."
And I tried, but all afternoon, I couldn't shake what I saw on his laptop—he didn't click away in time.
A family photo, posted on social media. That pretty redhead from those pictures was being embraced from behind by an incredibly handsome man, who was gazing down at her as if she were his entire world.
On either side of her were two boys, twins, who looked like carbon copies of that man with the redhead's green eyes.
They held onto her tightly, beaming at the camera while she smiled brightly, beautifully.
The four of them stood in front of a glittering Christmas tree. They looked happy. They looked like they belonged together. They looked like a real family—something you only see in movies.
When I got home, I asked my mother, and that was the night she spilled it all to me, deciding that I was old enough to know the ways of the world. She poured herself a martini and stirred it lazily as she explained the way women get ahead in this life.
The beginning of her and my father came at the expense of Claire Kensington, his first wife, that pretty redhead.
She cackled—actually cackled—as she regaled me about the PR spin: they took total control of the narrative.
He and Bella fell madly in love. Claire, ever the graceful, heartbroken saint of a woman, bowed out, not wanting to stand in the way of their happily ever after.
"That stupid, barren bitch didn't even know I was fucking him right under her nose," she smirked, sipping from the glass in her hand.
My mother told me with pride, and at that moment, she had never looked more powerful to me.
I had always held an awe for my mother—simultaneously terrified and worshipful of this woman who birthed me, who pushed me to be the very best because she knew I could be, who loved me above all because she expected better from me.
That was the day that I truly understood the world.
My father was weak, but he was useful.
Men in general are weak. But if handled correctly—if manipulated right—they could be invaluable tools.
When I had told my mother this, she had stared at me for a long moment, then a slow smile spread across her face.
She stood up, went over to the bar, and poured me my first real drink.
She handed it to me, clinked her glass with mine, and as I drank, she looked at me with more pride than I had ever seen.
Even more than when I won Miss Grand National Tween.
That pride became an addiction to me.
I pulled away from my father and burrowed myself closer to my mother.
When I turned sixteen, however, the pageant game shifted. I was entered into bigger pageants with stronger, hungrier competition. No matter how hard I practiced, my dance routine wasn't tight enough. My answers were not eloquent enough. My body was not toned enough.
The girl who once dominated started taking home runner-up sashes and meager checks.
Eventually, I stopped even placing entirely, and my mother couldn't mask her disappointment in my failure.
I wasn't stupid; I knew the rules of the game she invented. When I won, I was valuable and something close to adored by my mother. But when I lost? I was nothing, useless.
Just like my father.
I wasn't a person, I was an extension of my mother—her grand prize, so when I lost, she lost.
And there are very few things Bella Cabot hates more than losing.
When I was seventeen, I was tossed onto the grandest stage yet—politics.
My father's inner circle had convinced him. He had the face. He had the image. He had the capital, the charisma, and the insider knowledge of which pockets to line with what money. He was bred for optics and precision.
He had an easy victory to become the Massachusetts State Treasurer.
The campaign itself was a different kind of pageantry—it was theater.
Family photos were strategically plastered across every brochure, billboard, and website, portraying us as the poster family for the American Dream.
We made appearances at charity galas and fundraisers, and took photo ops at food drives and ribbon-cuttings.
I was primped and prodded by my mother at every turn, like I was a child again, while she hissed corrections through her teeth.
They all started to blend together at one point.
Until the one that rocked my father to his core.
A Saturday in April, the biggest gala in the city for the Boston Children's Hospital, at the most opulent hotel in the city.
I was standing with my mother and father, smiling like I was trained to and wearing a modest blush gown that made me look childlike—the exact image they were going for.
I was calculating when I could excuse myself to the bathroom to take another bump while my mother gossiped nastily with another wife about some poor, unfortunate soul.
My father chatted with John Q. Taxpayer about problems that the government would pretend to care about.
Then he froze, his entire body going stiff, as if someone had just tased him.
Following his starstruck gaze, I could feel myself freeze too.