The grand hall fell into a hush as the auctioneer stepped onto the gilded podium, announcing loudly.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we begin tonight’s event with a priceless piece donated by Hamilton Enterprises.”

The velvet box opened under the spotlight.

Gasps echoed.

An emerald necklace deep, vivid green like wild forest after rain. Raw and captivating.

Alexander's smile froze, he could recognize that jewelry anywhere afterall he had chosen the emeralds himself saying that they matched my eyes…eyes that once looked at him like he was my whole world.

Now they glinted coldly beneath auction lights.

Stephanie leaned in eagerly. “It’s stunning! Who owned it, Alex? I want it.”

Before he could respond, she raised her paddle, bidding like a woman obsessed.

The gavel dropped.

Sold.

Another box. The second item: a limited-edition diamond wristwatch. I had given it to him on his 30th birthday…the first year he forgot mine and yet I never said a word. Just smiled and wrapped it around his wrist.

Sold.

The third: a vintage brooch inlaid with rare rubies. Passed down from Alexander’s grandmother, gifted to me when I became his wife. It was the only heirloom I had ever received.

Sold.

Each memoryladen piece sold off like it was scrap metal. And I stood beside Alexander, composed like he wanted me to…just as his secretary.

Alexander turned sharply towards me, completely ignoring the eyes, the murmurs and the cameras altogether.

“Lavina....that...that necklace was your favorite, you bawled your eyes when it was merely scratched then how could you just give it away? Don't you remember thatit was my gift to you on our wedding night?”

He watched in horror as the necklace was brought to Stephanie and even though he gifted her more expensive things…this one necklace of mine around his mistress’s neck felt…wrong.

“All I did…” I said, my voice low “..was enhance your public image. Kept your reputation spotless without costing you a dime. Isn’t that what you always wanted, Alexander?”

Picking up a glass of red wine from a nearby tray I raised it in the air.

“Cheers to Mr Hamilton!”

The crowd erupted in applause, raising their glasses.

Alexander didn’t move. His eyes locked on mine…his heart feeling unfathomable.

Then he turned away, swallowed by a sea of powerful men and fake laughter.

I downed the wine in one sharp gulp and walked out, the applause echoing behind me like cruel laughter.

The hallway was dim but as I turned the corner, I froze.

Stephanie.

I stilled, blood draining from my face when she smiled...that same cruel smile from when we were children.

When she shoved me headfirst into the pond until I nearly drowned.

When she pushed me down the stairs and framed me as a liar infront of the Winslet family.

Then came the shove.

I stumbled backward into the freezing cold storage room. The heavy door slamming shut.

“Tonight was mine!” She sneered “But you stole the spotlight my spotlight? So here..have your moment..alone, in the dark while I toast champagne with your husband.”

“Stephanie, you are insane!” I pounded on the door. “Let me out!”

“No one’s coming, bitch. You thought auctioning off those trinkets would make Alex pity you? Feel guilty?"

"I don’t care about Alexander! You can have him!”

“Oh, I will.” she purred, voice laced with poison. “But really, thank you. While I was moaning under silk sheets in Paris with your husband, you were busy playing housemaid scrubbing Alexander’s mess, building his empire from the dirt."

“You shameless snake! If anything, you are the other woman. The mistress!”

“Mistress?” she laughed. “I was his first. His everything. He lost his virginity to me, Lavina. And when you were miscarrying? I told him I had the flu, and he left you in the hospital to hold me through the night in Paris.”

My heart sank as miserable tears threatened to escape my eyes. Stephanie laughed at my stunned silence before she turned and walked away, her heels echoing, her last word hanging in the air:

“Enjoy the cold, sis.”

The auction ended and Alexander with a stomach full of anger waited for me to show up.

“Alex sister was too angry with me, I messed up big-“

“You messed up? It is her who has been throwing a tantrum just because I sacked her off! Let her be if this is what she wants!

Let me see how many days can she live without me!” With that Alexander left with Stephanie.

I pulled out my phone, fingers trembling…no signal.

Time blurred as I lost the feeling in my body and my body swayed before collapsing.

But just before everything faded, the door burst open with a loud, violent crash.

“Clear the way! MOVE!”

I couldn’t lift my head, but I caught the deep voices, the urgency in their steps and the sharp command that silenced everyone.

Men in a dark suit threw a coat over me while paramedics rescued me. "Ms. Winslet please hold on!"

Hours later I woke up to my hand attached to an IV drip.

A familiar doctor who was attending to me for the past three years for fertility treatments appeared by my side slong with others.

“Miss Lavina you are lucky.

Master Damien was deathly sick yesterday but when you did not answer your phone, he forced us to stop his treatment and go search for you instead. Even a moment of delay and your life could have been in danger. Or both of you wouldn’t have made it.” I could not speak due to astonishment before a single word registered in my mind.

"Both?" I asked making the fertility specialist smile.

“Yes, you and your baby. Congratulations Madam, you have finally conceived. The IVF treatment that failed four times previously was successful.

Last night we found that you are five months pregnant.”

After being discharged, I took a cab to Hamilton estate.

I stepped inside quietly, heading straight to the bedroom to pack what little still belonged to me when I heard the soft drag of fabric, followed by a low giggle echoing from inside.

Stephanie.

Standing in front of the mirror wearing my wedding dress.

The pearl-laced wedding gown that my grandma stitched on her deathbed, her last blessing to me when she realized that the Winslet household did not care for me at all and I was working five jobs in a row to accumulate some money to buy the silk fabric.

And now?

It hung limp on her frame, the front ripped open. She was using her hands to hold it together, her fingers curling into the delicate fabric like claws.

“Oh, here you are sister.” she beamed, twirling. “I was hoping you would have died but here you are, well guess what happened last night.”

My body stiffened. I already knew I wouldn’t like the answer.

She stepped closer, dragging the ruined hem across the floor. “Alexander took me to the rooftop suite of your favourite hotel. The one where you spent your last birthday alone in?” Her voice dripped with mock sweetness.

“He took me to your private suite with the balcony view.”

My stomach twisted. That used to be our place….the place where we spent our wedding night.

“We left the curtains open.” she said, her eyes glinting. “I screamed his name loud enough for the staff to hear.”

I tried not to flinch.

“Alexander said I taste sweeter and tore the dress open while I was still wearing it.”

My vision blurred.

Stephanie pulled back the sleeve, exposing red-purple love bites scattered across her collarbone, her chest.

“It got a little wild when I told him I was ready to start a family. He didn’t even hesitate.” She smiled, slow and smug. “Who knows? I might already be carrying his child.”

My fingers curled into fists. I was shaking.

“You are disgusting!” I whispered.

She leaned in, tilting her head with mock concern.

“Funny. That is different from what your husband thinks when he pushes my body and enter me again and again trying to impregnate me. Maybe I will finally give him what you could never.”

My last of the reason snapped and I slapped her hard.

The sound cracked through the room like thunder making Stephanie stumble in shock before she fell down with the impact.

“You!”

“Lavina?”

Alexander’s voice echoed.

He stepped in, brows furrowed, taking in the scene: Stephanie half-naked in my destroyed wedding gown on the floor, me standing in the doorway.

But Stephanie didn’t miss a beat.

“I am sorry sister!” she choked out, tears springing instantly to her eyes. “I was modelling the dress for a campaign… I swear, I didn’t mean to damage it! It just… ripped!”

“I-I am your culprit, I was the one who snatched your parent’s love but please forgive give sister, love cannot be forced…I-I can’t do anything else except….” She paused tears tumbling down her cheeks. “except dying……yes, once I die, everything will be yours…”

She got up instantly, picking up a fruit-knife.

“Stop” Alexander growled, lunging forward and yanking it from her. She let out a cry, twisted in his grip and then suddenly darted toward the nearest wall like she meant to crack her skull open.

Alexander caught her just in time, arms locking around her waist. She collapsed into his chest, sobbing like some tragic heroine from a cheap romance.

“Stephanie” he said firmly “I invited you here as my guest. If anyone has a problem with you, they have a problem with me!”

I watched them with numbness spreading in my heart, Stephanie clinging to Alexander, him protecting her like some wounded bird and my lips curled into a bitter smile.

When he turned to me his voice was colder than ice.

“Lavina, apologize to her!”

I merely looked at him numbly “Apologize? Alexander aren’t you even curious where I was last night?”

“I don’t care!” he cut in sharply. “You don’t get to hurt Stephanie! If you don’t apologize right now, I will block all your cards and shift your room to the servant quarters!”

My heart lurched.

My child had nearly died.

Our child.

And Alexander was busy soothing his mistress.

“That should humble you Lavina.” he added cruelly. “maybe I have spoiled you too much.”

I didn’t say a word.

Because in that moment, I realized the truth.

He never saw me as a wife, I was a pet, a maid he kept out of conveinience.

He thought taking away the money would crush me.

What he didn’t know was I had already been poor. Starving. Forgotten.

I only stayed because I loved him. I gave him everything my time, my youth, my soul while building his empire with my blood.

“Shift her to the servant quarters and don’t let her eat until she apologizes.” Before leaving, Alexander ordered the servants coldly.

Just like that I became a villainess in their lovestory.

The moment Alexander walked away with Stephanie, my phone buzzed to life with an anonymous number.

"Where was he? While you were losing consciousness in a storage room, where was your husband Miss Winslet?" The sheer anger in the male's voice made me freeze for a moment before I realized that there was only one person who would be angry like this.

Damien Stone.

“He was with...her.” My throat burned as I whispered.

"I can’t stay away anymore.” he answered his voice barely restrained.

“How long?” I whispered.

He didn’t hesitate.

“One week that's all. After that, I come to take you home.”

"Alright."

For days, I was a prisoner in my own home.

No locks. Just silence, and a house too large for a woman slowly unraveling.

Three times a day, the maid knocked. Her voice grew softer each time.

“Ma’am.” she whispered once through the door, almost trembling, “I know you did nothing wrong... Please eat something. Your hands are turning blue.”

But the head maid quickly intercepted, scolding harshly.

“You are not to disobey Mr. Alexander!” she snapped. “No meals until she apologizes.”

I never replied.

Only a few apples ever made it through. Slipped beneath my door in secret, wilted and cold yet I never once complained and ate them hungrily for the sake of my child.

Just sat by the window, wrapped in the same sweater I had worn since that night without a single blanket.

Counting backwards.

Three days have passed, four more days. Once the divorce agreement is approved by court I would leave. Burn every trace of this life behind me.

My phone never stopped buzzing.

Stephanie.

Her messages came like venom dressed in pearls each one designed to pierce.

On the morning I zipped my last bag, another message arrived.

[Stephanie: You never won our mothers, and you will never win Alex. One word from me, and he even forgot that you even exist.]

She was right.

Alexander never came home.

Not that night. Not the next.

But Stephanie made sure I saw him.

Every hour, a new video.

Him helping her into my favorite cashmere robe.

Him tying her hair into a ponytail in his farmhouse kitchen.

Him kissing her shoulder in bed.

Some clips were quieter and yet more sinister.

The way she filmed herself wearing his shirt, mouthing “I love you” before flipping the camera off with a wink.

Or the one where his voice whispered, off-screen “Steph if we have a daughter we will name her Hope, if it's a son Xavier.”

Once, I would have curled into my sheets and sobbed.

Now?

I just watched my reflection in the window, pale and calm as the morning sickness once again assaulted my senses and yet I slowly rubbed my belly calming down my child.

It was at that moment my phone buzzed with a message.

[ATTORNEY: “Congratulations! Miss Lavina not only your divorce is finalized but legally Alexander Hamilton is stripped off all his rights as a father, he will not have anything to do with the child in your womb.]

I wanted to be happy but tears tumbled my eyes as three years of marriage dissolved into dust. Cold bit through my sleeves as I walked towards the balcony, my hot breath coming in short pants fogging the air.

Each step I had taken to get there had felt heavier than the last.

My body ached from days without food, my legs trembling, head spinning with exhaustion.

But I needed air. I needed silence. I needed to feel something other than the bruising silence of that house.

And then.

A sudden crack ripped through the night.

Fireworks.

Loud. Violent and right above me making me startled.

I gasped and staggered back in panic making my heel caught on the uneven tile and just like that I fell hard.

A piercing pain ripped through my abdomen making me scream loudly.

My hands flew to my belly in terror.

I felt it. Warm. Wet. Spreading rapidly between my thighs.

The guards rushed forward, their faces finally shifting from apathy to alarm.

“Get the family doctor!”

A guard pulled out his phone to call Alexander.

“Sir! It’s Madam! She fell from the balcony, she’s bleeding badly. We need the doctor right away! Please-”

But before he could finish, Alexander’s voice cut in, sharp and cold through the speaker.

“I know her tricks damnit, this is just another act to avoid accepting her wrongdoings. Lavina is not to leave the house under any circumstance until she learns her place!”

The call disconnected.

The servant stared at the phone, stunned and ashamed.

I looked up at the CCTV camera at the balcony, tears of fury blurring my vision.

“I apologize!” I rasped, voice shaking as I clutched my stomach. “I am sorry for ever meeting you, for choosing a heartless man like you, for ever loving you Alexander Hamilton!”

Another firework exploded in the sky pink, then gold, then white.

Thousands of drones lit the sky at that moment in a formation.

[HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHANIE] was wriiten in air.

A miserable tear dribbled down.

So today was the day I was exchange with Stephanie at the hospital….it was my birthday as well.

“My baby…just save my baby.” Those were the last words, the only 'gift' I begged for before I lost my consciousness completely.

“Madam.? Madam?!"

"Hurry! Her body’s going cold!” one cried. "We didn't knew but while everyone was starving her, miss Lavina was already pregnant!"