Over the next few days, my existence within the Brooks estate became beautifully, perfectly still.
I slept whenever Leo slept. I ate hot meals, read books in the gardens, and let the private medical staff tend to my recovery. My mother, Eleanor, entered my room every afternoon, sitting silently beside my bed without flooding my mind with exhausting questions. She simply smoothed my hair back, just as she had when I was a child.
“I warned you repeatedly that I didn’t trust the calculations on that man,” she murmured softly one evening. “But I also know that sometimes a daughter has to break her own world apart to learn exactly how to rebuild it from the bedrock.”
I didn’t argue with her. She was entirely correct.
I had desperately wanted an ordinary, unpretentious life. I wanted someone to look at me without immediately calculating the net worth of Brooks Global behind my eyes. That was why I had intentionally allowed Dominic to believe a minimized version of my history—that my father was a regional independent businessman, that my family was comfortable but entirely detached from the elite tiers of capital.
What I had failed to factor into my equation was that Dominic didn’t even love that ordinary version of me. He merely tolerated my presence while I served his daily routines. He humiliated me whenever he required an ego boost to feel superior. And the exact moment I was at my most vulnerable—cut open from a C-section and holding his five-day-old son—he treated me worse than an expendable contract worker.
On my fourth morning at the estate, a cardboard box arrived via courier. It was cheap, poorly sealed with heavy tape, with my name scribbled across the side in his aggressive handwriting: “FOR AUDREY.”
Mr. Vance placed it in the reception hall. “This was dispatched from Mr. Vance’s address, ma’am.”
I instructed him to open it. Inside were my remaining personal items from the apartment: an old bathrobe, pharmacy cosmetics, prenatal magazines, worn slippers, and a single folded sheet of paper.
I opened the note:
