Jilted Heiress: Her Reign Has Begun

Etta Stark POV:

The days following the disastrous dinner blurred into a gray haze of isolation. I remained locked in my wing of the mansion, the silence my only companion.

One afternoon, one of the older housemaids, Maria, who had been with my family since before I was born, burst into my room without knocking, her face pale with panic.

"Miss Etta, you must come quickly!" she gasped, her hands trembling.

"Maria, what is it?"

"It' s him. Mr. Fremont… and the other one. They' re in the penthouse. They broke the lock."

A cold dread, sharp and immediate, washed over me. Not the penthouse. Not there.

The top floor of the Warren mansion had been given to my parents when they first merged their lives and companies with the Warrens. After they died, it was sealed. Preserved exactly as they had left it, a perfect, untouched monument to their memory. It was my sanctuary, the only place in this cold, sprawling house that felt like home. It was filled with my mother' s art, my father' s books, the faint, lingering scent of their presence.

I didn' t wait to hear more. I ran. I flew down the hallways and up the grand staircase, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird.

The doors to the penthouse were wide open. The scene inside was one of desecration.

My mother' s favorite vase, a delicate piece of Venetian glass, was shattered on the floor. My father' s leather-bound collection of first-edition novels had been pulled from the shelves and thrown into a messy pile in the corner. Curtains were torn from the windows. The air was thick with dust and destruction.

And in the middle of it all stood Corina Gonzales, holding a small, framed photograph. She had a theatrical smudge of dirt on her cheek and was dabbing at a superficial scratch on her arm.

Fremont was at her side in an instant, fussing over her like she was a wounded child. "Careful, clumsy girl," he cooed, his voice sickeningly sweet. "I told you this place was a dusty old mess." He glanced at the chaos around them without a hint of remorse. "We' ll have it all cleared out soon."

My voice was a raw, ragged thing. "What have you done?"

Fremont finally looked at me, his expression one of mild annoyance at the interruption. "Etta. We were just making some plans."

"Plans?" I choked out, gesturing to the wreckage.

"Corina had an idea," he said, his tone casual, as if discussing redecorating a guest room. "She thought this would make a wonderful nursery for the baby. Lots of natural light."

A nursery. They were going to turn my parents' memorial into a nursery for their child.

He turned his attention back to Corina, gently taking the photo from her hand to examine her tiny scratch. He didn' t even notice the river of tears streaming down my face.

A scream tore from my throat, a sound of pure, animalistic agony. The pain in my chest was so intense that my bandaged hand, the one he had injured, flared with a sympathetic, phantom ache. I clutched it, doubling over.

Startled by my scream, Corina dropped the photograph. The glass shattered. It was a picture of my parents on their wedding day. She had her foot on it. She ground her heel into my father' s smiling face, the sound of crunching glass echoing in the ruined room. It was deliberate.

Fremont immediately pulled her into his arms, shielding her again. "Etta, for Christ' s sake! You' re scaring her!" he yelled at me.

"What right do you have?" I sobbed, my voice breaking. "What right do you have to bring her here?"

"This is my family' s property, Etta," he said, his voice laced with cruel arrogance. "I don' t need your permission to be here."

I stared at him, my mind reeling. His grandfather, the patriarch, had personally handed me the key to this penthouse after my parents' funeral. He had promised me, his eyes full of tears, "This space is yours, Etta. Forever. A permanent testament to the Starks' sacrifice and our eternal gratitude."

Fremont was not just destroying a room; he was spitting on the very foundation of his family' s honor.

"This space is mine, too," I managed to say, my voice trembling but firm. "It was bought with Stark blood." I turned my furious gaze on Corina, who was hiding behind him like a coward. "And what right do you have, you parasite? Get out."

I lunged forward, my only thought to physically drag her from this sacred place.

Fremont moved faster. He stepped between us, his arms forming an impenetrable barrier. He was protecting her. Again. The image burned itself into my brain, a searing brand of betrayal.

"These are just things, Etta!" he snarled, his face twisted with impatience. "Just a bunch of sentimental junk!"

Junk.

He called my parents' memories junk.

Something inside me snapped. The last thread of love, of hope, of a decade-long history, severed completely.

I saw red. I grabbed the base of a heavy, broken floor lamp, its jagged metal edge aimed like a spear. My mind was a white-hot blank. I just wanted the pain to stop. I wanted them to stop.

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