Chapter 4 Beauty That Silenced a Room

Alisha couldn't tell how long she had been asleep.

She turned and slowly blinked awake, more like consciousness returning to her in slow motion.

Then she opened her hazy eyes which obviously seemed clouded with sleep.

And to her utmost dismay, she opened those eyes to tall white blinding walls with glitters of grand chandeliers overhead. The grandeur of the room was beyond words.

She sat up fast, then she pressed her palms into her eyes just to be sure she wasn't dreaming, and at the same time half-convinced the room would dissolve into the dirt floor of her father’s house.

She was absolutely sure of that fact until she opened those eyes again. What stared back at her was a sight she couldn't recognize. She gasped in disbelief because no matter how she thought about it, this just doesn't make sense.

Everything about the room seemed designed to overwhelm, the towering white walls, the breathtaking ceiling, and the massive chandelier sparkling above.

Her breath seized for a minute.

She sat properly this time and repeatedly chanted. You're dreaming, Alisha. You have to be dreaming. But when she looked for the third time, the chandelier was still there. The walls were still there. And the bed underneath her was still hugging her as if it had been made for a queen.

For one confused moment, she thought she was dead. Maybe she had died beside her father in that wreckage, and somehow, this was the afterlife. The moment the thought formed in her chest, it immediately reopened a grief she wasn't ready to face.

Father.

That singular thought was all it took to jolt her completely awake.

She wasted no time before jumping out of bed. She threw the covers aside, barely noticing the cold floor underneath her bare feet.

She hurried towards the door, jerked it open, and nearly collided with a young maid standing outside, with a neat stack of folded clothes balanced in her arms.

The woman smiled warmly, then dipped her head, and then in a professional tone she said,

"Good morning, madam."

Madam.

The word unsettled something inside Alisha. The word sounded foreign when attached to her. Madam? Her? A girl who had, up until yesterday, been counting coins to buy her father's medicine?

Then, without warning, yesterday came rushing back. The road. The screech of tires. Her father's body. The man, that man, stepping out of a car that gleamed like a knife.

The last trace of uncertainty vanished from her face.

Her eyes turned cold.

She pushed past the startled maid without a word and hurried down the corridor. The floor was so polished and smooth that her heel slipped and she almost fell. She caught herself against the wall just in time. She looked down, surprised. She’d never stood on a floor like this. It shone like still water. In her village the floors were cement or dust; here it looked as if someone had poured glass over marble and made it reflect the sky.

She didn't have time to marvel.

She followed the arguing voices through the archway and then she saw him.

The man from the accident. He was tall. Broad-shouldered. Standing in the middle of a room that looked very dreamy.

Her steps slowed as she clenched her hands.

She almost stormed straight into the room, but something made her stop. The guy wasn’t alone. A tall, elegant woman stood opposite him, and their voices were rising, sharp and angry.

She was elegant in every way, designer clothes, perfect hair, effortless posture. The kind of beauty money and control could create.

Alisha immediately pressed herself against the pillar at the edge of the passage, half hidden in shadow, and then listened.

In the living room.

Sebastian stood squared off against his mother, jaw tight, eyes burning.

Vanessa Blackwood was, as always, dressed like the world was her runway. Her hair had been swept up effortlessly, her cream dress hugged her figure without a single wrinkle in sight, and the stilettos on her feet definitely cost a fortune.

Anyone who saw her would have sworn she was in her early thirties.

She was, in fact, forty-five.

She'd had Sebastian at nineteen. Even at that, looking at her, you'd be convinced that Vanessa Blackwood did not age the way other women did.

Whether it was the punishing yoga she never skipped, the obsessive skincare routine, the diet measured out like an architect’s blueprint, or some mix of all three, Vanessa Blackwood did not age. Time simply refused to touch her.

She crafted herself. And the end result was a woman who looked like she'd stepped out of a magazine and simply forgotten to step back in.

Or maybe Vanessa Blackwood was just one of those women the universe had decided to spoil.

Whatever it was, it worked. She was, in a single word, beautiful.

From the looks of things, the beautiful woman seemed locked in a heated argument with the handsome man from yesterday.

Inside the Living Room

Sebastian Blackwood faced his mother with anger blazing in his eyes.

"No, Mom. You don't get to stand there and tell me what I did or didn't see. I know exactly what I walked in on. So don't insult my intelligence."

"Victoria wouldn't do that." Vanessa's tone was firm, as if she was equally pleading.

"Sebastian, I've known that girl since she was in pigtails. I watched her grow up. There has to be a misunderstanding. Someone had to have set her up. And frankly? I still don't trust that sister of hers. Clara." She said the name like she was spitting out a bad grape. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that Clara was the one who insisted you fly all the way out there for a surprise proposal? Doesn't that feel staged to you? What if that poor girl was framed?"

Sebastian snorted incredulously and then dragged both hands through his hair. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Listen to me." Vanessa stepped closer. "I understand how it must have looked. I do. Walking in on the woman you were about to propose to, in that kind of position.

Sebastian, I can't imagine. But please. Before you burn everything to the ground, ask yourself if you might be judging her too quickly. That Roman, your so-called friend, how many times has he done this to you? How many times has he taken something from you just because he could? What if she's another one of his games? What if she's the victim here?"

She chewed her lip, thinking hard.

"I'd stake my name on it," she went on. "Victoria was a virgin before all of this. She's a decent girl. Very gentle. This whole thing, it just doesn't add up. No matter which way I turn it, it doesn't add up."

Sebastian shook his head, a bitter smile ghosting across his lips. "Mom. You are free to believe whatever damn fairy tale you wish to believe. But I know what I saw. And I'm telling you, I'm done. Done with Victoria. Done with all of it."

"What?" Vanessa's eyes widened. "No. No, no, no. Sebs, don't be like this. You do not throw a woman away over one mistake. This is the twenty-first century, darling. Couples fight, couples fall, couples forgive. Do you think every marriage you see out there survived on perfection?" She lifted her chin. "I've told you before and I'll say it again: the only daughter-in-law I will ever accept into this family is Victoria. Victoria Whitmore. Full stop."

Sebastian stared at her.

Then he laughed. A dry sarcastic laugh that sounded wounded with no joy in it at all.

"You never fail to amaze me, Mother. Truly. And the worst part is I don't even know why I'm surprised anymore." He shook his head, still smiling that plastic smile. "I have more on my plate right now than you can possibly imagine. I don't have the energy to keep dancing around this with you. So hear me, really hear me this time, because I will not say it twice."

He stepped closer to her and this time his voice dropped lower, his anger evident.

"Victoria and I are over. Over. And it will be over my dead body before I ever let that woman back into my life. Do you understand me? So you either accept it, or you go find her another husband. Frankly, I don't care. But as far as I'm concerned, this conversation is finished."

Vanessa opened her mouth to fire back but had suddenly stopped because something had caught her eye. A figure, half-hidden by the pillar near the hallway.

She turned. Then light shifted, illuminating a face that made Vanessa Blackwood, who had seen beauty in every corner of the world, who had dined with royalty and mingled with the elite, forget how to breathe.

Vanessa's breath left her body in a single, silent rush.

Because the face in front of her was, without question, the most beautiful face she had ever seen in her life.

Feeling exposed under the unbearable strain of her glare, Alisha cast her eyes downward, endlessly fidgeting with her fingers. She couldn't have known it then, but that single beat of silence had just rewritten the future of the entire Blackwood family.