Chapter 6 Ellis Women Don’t Hide #2
“Which one?” She holds each dress against her sun-kissed skin as she shifts her weight.
Everything about her screams ‘darling of society’.
Exactly what the Founding Families want in their heirlooms masquerading as women.
Luna is softer, sweeter, infinitely more palatable than me.
The new public face of the Ellis name, while I sit in the shadows, teeth bared, fingers stained with the truth they all pretend not to see.
I take another sip of whiskey, buying time. Even now, she dresses for a world she still believes can be redeemed. Sometimes I wonder if she resents me for abandoning her to navigate it alone. If she does, she never would admit it. But I’d understand if she did.
The emerald silk catches the city lights, its shimmer subtle but impossible to ignore. “The green,” I murmur. “It has teeth.”
Her laugh fizzes like champagne. “Only you would describe a dress that way.” She drapes the blush chiffon over a chair with grace I used to possess, back when I cared about such things.
I shift toward the balcony again, but Luna’s reflection appears in the glass beside mine, an unintentional portrait in stark contrast that would drive any artist to madness.
Her golden waves catch the last spill of light, luminous and impossibly gentle, while my raven hair drinks in the sun, devouring brightness instead of reflecting it.
Even nature knows which Ellis sister chose the path of light.
Only our eyes betray our shared blood. Father’s piercing green that could strip away pretense with a single glance.
Luna wears it like spring moss, warm and guileless.
But in me, it’s permafrost—frigid, unyielding, honed by a lifetime of precision.
Father once called it a weapon, when he caught me mimicking his glower in the mirror.
I wonder if he’d admire how lethally I’ve learned to use it.
“Why aren’t you dressed?” Luna’s voice carries the barest edge of panic.
I keep my gaze fixed on the skyline, not wanting to see the disappointment cross her face. “I’m not going.”
“But you promised.” The hurt in her voice makes me wince. “Just yesterday you said you’d come with me. I’ve been telling everyone you’ll be there.”
“Everyone?” I laugh, bitter. “You mean the vultures who used to flock around our parents?”
“I just . . .” Her fingers smooth phantom creases from her dress. “I miss you. It’s not the same, going to these things alone.”
“You don’t need me there. You charm them all perfectly well on your own.”
“But I do need you.” She steps closer, and I catch the faint scent of jasmine and orange blossom.
Mom’s signature perfume. Of course Luna would wear it, trying so hard to keep their memory alive in every little way.
“You’re my sister, Aria. My strength. Without you there, I feel so .
. .” She trails off, those damn dimples fading as her voice thins to a tremble.
“Luna . . .”
“Alexander keeps asking about you,” she adds softly.
“He’s handled everything since . . . well, everything.
The funeral. The estate. Making sure we didn’t lose the house.
The research division position he offered me?
It’s real work, Aria. Groundbreaking projects.
He even cleared my security access himself. ”
“How considerate.” I can’t keep the venom out of my voice. “So efficient, isn’t he? Making himself indispensable before the bodies were even cold.”
“Don’t start.” She turns away, but not before I catch the shimmer in her eyes. “The board was ready to freeze all our assets during the investigation, Alexander prevented that. He’s the reason we still have access to their research, their accounts—”
“Their unfinished work,” I cut in, the words sharp. “Funny how that was his first priority.”
“Because he knew how much it mattered!” Her voice cracks, frustration rare and raw. “He gave me a chance to continue their legacy—”
“Under his careful supervision.” I cut her off. “Tell me, does he still review your lab reports personally? Such special attention from the great Alexander Darkmoor.”
Her breath stutters, while tears spill silently down her cheeks. My sweet, sensitive sister.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I just can’t stomach it tonight. Their pity and rehearsed condolences.”
“I understand.” She dabs at her eyes with careful fingers. “But maybe . . . maybe it would help to have someone there who actually cares?” She hesitates, then adds, gentler, “Dominic asked about you again. He’ll be there tonight.”
My throat locks. Dom’s most recent note still sits unopened in my drawer, stacked atop a dozen others.
I haven’t seen him since the funeral. That night, he’d shown up at my door with a bottle of expensive whiskey, and a vial of Silverhaze that promised oblivion.
Not because he was cruel, but because that’s how he survived his own demons. Numbness as mercy. Distraction as love.
“He’s been sending flowers,” Luna continues. “The ones you won’t acknowledge. Every time I put them in water, you toss them in the trash.”
The truth stings. Once, I would have clung to those gestures. My throat forms a protest, but Luna continues.
“And that necklace last week? I looked it up, and it’s worth more than some people make in a year. Plus, you’re still ignoring his calls—”
“Because every time I answer, he tells me I need to stop.” I snap. “He said grief was making me paranoid. That I needed to let it go.” I laugh again, sharp and strained. “As if Dominic Blackwood has ever let go of a single goddamn thing in his life.”
“Or maybe he’s trying to protect you—”
“The only way he knows how.” My voice softens, despite everything. “By making it disappear. That’s what Kian taught him, isn’t it? If it hurts, bury it. If you can’t bury it, set it on fire.”
“He loves you,” Luna says gently. “Six years, Aria. That has to mean something.”
“Why the sudden push for me to see Dom? I thought you didn’t even like him.”
“I don’t,” Luna admits. “But he made you happy. And he loves you in his own broken, backward way. I know you miss him, even if you won’t say it out loud.
” Her fingers twist in the hem of her dress.
“You weren’t there when the whispers started about you after the funeral, people calling it a ‘tragic breakdown.’ Dom defended you.
Still does. Even after you shut him out. ”
“We’re not together,” I say, but it lands empty. How do you sever something that’s etched into your bones?
That night at The Den, when I couldn’t stop crying, he’d pulled me into one of the private rooms. But this wasn’t like our usual storms, where power and pain bled into clarity.
Where submission gave way to control. Where I let him strip me down until I forgot how to think, or marked him until my darkness had somewhere to go.
This grief was different. It didn’t break. It just . . . lingered. And I watched it terrify him.
He held me anyway. Let me destroy his shirt with tears and spit fury about conspiracies and cover-ups while his hands trembled against my hair. For the first time in six years, Dominic Blackwood didn’t know how to fix me.
He tried everything. Another drink. Another dose of pain disguised as salvation. But this wasn’t something we could beat out of each other.
“You don’t have to love me. Just don’t leave me.
” The words had cracked in his throat, raw, unscripted and terrifyingly real.
The moment they escaped, he flinched, like he’d exposed something he couldn’t stuff back in.
And maybe he had. He must’ve seen it in my eyes that I was already retreating.
That this grief was taking me somewhere he couldn’t follow.
He’d said things like this before, always in moments when control slipped through his fingers.
Little confessions in the dark after particularly brutal nights.
Whispered fears when he thought I was sleeping.
But he’d never sounded quite this scared.
I knew, abstractly, that it stemmed from something deeper—scars left by Kian’s particular brand of fatherhood, wounds that still bled when pressed.
But Dom never talked about it, and I never pushed.
We both preferred our pain more tangible.
I remember touching his face then, and how he leaned into my hand like a man starving. But I still left. Had to leave. Because staying meant drowning, and letting him pull me under until I forgot why I was angry and terrified. Until I forgot everything but him.
And I couldn’t forget. Not this time.
“Aria?” Luna’s voice cuts through the memory, uncertain. “Did you even hear what I just said?”
I blink, realizing I’ve been staring through the skyline, not at it. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You know what Mother would say if she saw you like this?” Luna’s voice dips to a whisper. “She’d say you’re too brilliant to waste away up here.”
The words hit their mark with devastating accuracy.
Mom never wasted anything—not time, not resources, not potential.
Even her love was measured and calculated, doled out in careful portions meant to shape me into something worthy of the Ellis name.
Brilliant was her highest praise and her sharpest weapon.
When she said it, pride and resentment twisted tighter in my chest, two vines strangling the same root.
But she was right about one thing. Hiding never fixed anything. Even if she’d meant it as another lesson, another way to turn weakness into strategy. I close my eyes, seeing her disappointed frown. Even now, I can hear her voice.
Ellis women don’t hide, darling. We strategize.
And isn’t that what I’ve been doing up here?
Hiding? While Alexander sinks his teeth into our research.
While Luna drowns in his curated benevolence, mistaking his control for kindness.
Mom would be disappointed. Not because I’m grieving, but because I’m doing it so inefficiently.
If she taught me anything, it was that pain should be useful.
Even grief can be a weapon, if you wield it right.
“Fine.” The word slips free. “I’ll come.