The scent hit me first. A familiar, cloying sweetness,it's the same perfume I'd bought Tamara for her birthday. It lingered in the air of my boyfriend's apartment like a physical weight that pressed down on my lungs and stole my breath.It was the smell of betrayal, and it was everywhere.
"Jason!" The word ripped from my throat, a raw, strangled cry that felt foreign in the suffocating silence of the apartment. My breath hitched, a sob caught somewhere between my lungs and my heart. The air in the room, once warm with the promise of a future, was now just a suffocating memory. My duffel bag, packed and ready for a weekend getaway, felt like it was filled with stones.
He didn't flinch. He was just pulling on his shirt, his back to me, his movements cold and deliberate. His shoulders, a silhouette I knew by heart, were now a shape I didn't recognize.
"Selena, don't be dramatic," he said, his voice a flat, detached monotone. "This is a mistake. Let's just talk about this later."
"Talk about what?" I demanded, my voice rising in a frantic, panicked pitch. "The fact that you're in our home with my best friend?"
Tamara laughed, a cold, heartless sound that echoed off the high ceilings. She stood there in a thin blanket that was half-draped, a smug, knowing look on her face, as if she had just won a prize. Her eyes, which were once the color of friendship, were now filled with contempt.
"Why are you acting like a child, Selene?" Jason said, his voice flat. He finally turned around, and the casual indifference on his face was a final blow. "Her body's better than yours anyway and I needed to protect my job."
My blood ran cold. The words hit me like a physical blow and a sudden, bitter taste of betrayal flooded my mouth. The man standing in front of me wasn't the man I loved. He was a stranger a fraud.
"What did you say?" I whispered, my world tilting on its axis.
"You heard me," he said, his voice dangerously calm. "I'm up for a promotion, and I can't have someone like you holding me back so I was forced to choose. And I chose my career."
"Forced?" I repeated, my voice shaking with a rage that had nowhere to go. "Who forced you?"
He didn't answer. He just looked at me with a cold, blank stare. The silence was louder than any screaming. It was a silence filled with his lies, and the painful reality that my life was over. I was a failure. My family was relying on me to save them, but I couldn't even save myself.
"Jason, please, don't do this to us" I begged, the words catching in my throat. "After everything I did for you—why?"
He shrugged, a dismissive gesture that crumpled the last piece of my dignity. "look that is your problem and you see this relationship? It's over. So use the front door." He gestured with a flick of his head, a stranger pushing me out of a stranger's home. He threw a pillow at me, a final act of contempt. "Get out."
I walked out into the cold, into the rain. The icy drops felt like pinpricks on my skin, washing away the last remnants of warmth. My duffel bag felt impossibly heavy, each stitch a painful reminder of my betrayal. My entire life was packed into one bag.
Just hours ago, my manager's words echoed in my mind. "We're letting you go, Selena." A white envelope and a room full of pitying stares were all I got for three years of hard work. So right now I was out of my job and out of my supposed home and just then
My phone vibrated.
A text from my sister, Daniella.
"Selene, Mom needs help with the rent again. And the medical bills too… I don't know what to do."
The guilt i felt at that moment hit me like a sucker punch as my hands were empty and I had nothing left to give,look at my life I knew I had failed them.
___
A black car appeared like a silent, sleek predator that rolled up silently. It was a stark contrast to my misery, a sign of a world I didn't belong in. The tinted window slid down, and a woman stepped out. She looked like she'd walked straight out of an aristocrat's dream with silver hair slicked back, face sharp, unreadable. Her eyes locked onto mine, a cold fire in their depths.
"Are you Selena Vane?" she asked. Her voice was as smooth and polished as the car she'd stepped from.
I froze, the rain pasting strands of hair to my face. "Yes. Who's asking?"
"My name is Vivienne. And I believe we were fated to meet."
I almost walked away as I said"Look, lady, I'm not in the mood for cryptic rich people tonight."
She smiled faintly, a subtle curve of her lips that didn't reach her eyes. "Neither am I. But I'm here to offer you purpose. The kind of purpose that can save your family from a debt you don't even know they have."
My heart stopped, then began a frantic, panicked beat. "What do you know about my family?"
She didn't answer. "Your life has just been carefully taken apart by people who don't want you to succeed. And I need a girl with nothing left to lose."
"If this is a lie…"
"It's not," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "It's an offer. One that can save you from the people who did this to you."
I let out a shaky laugh, the kind that cracked under exhaustion. "You sound insane. Do you really expect me to believe some stranger in a luxury car has the answers to my ruined life? No. And whatever you think it is you can keep it."
I turned to leave, clutching the strap of my duffel like it was the only thing still mine. My shoes splashed in the rain, my chest tight with anger and humiliation.
Vivienne's voice followed, calm but cutting. "Walk away if you want. But when your mother's eviction notice comes,and your sister can't afford another treatment… remember that I was the only one who offered you a choice."
Her words froze me mid-step. The rain pelted harder, or maybe it was just the sound of my pulse in my ears but my pride screamed at me to keep walking. But my family's faces my mother's tired eyes and Daniella's desperate text were louder,so I made my decision at that moment.
I slid into the back of the car, soaked and unsure. The seat was too soft and the silence too heavy. But I sat still, letting the unfamiliar warmth sink into my skin. We drove for what felt like forever, until the gates finally opened and we arrived at an estate.
The estate looked like it belonged in a gothic novel towering marble walls, iron fences, gardens trimmed with surgical precision. Even the air smelt different here, I mean it was cleaner, colder, filled with the scent of old money and silence. Inside, it was quiet,Rich,clean and too perfect.
Vivienne turned to me, her expression a mix of triumph and something unreadable. "You'll meet him tomorrow. For now, rest."
I didn't argue as i didn't have the energy. Her grandson, man whose life was somehow tied to mine. Gosh
Although it sounded insane But insanity still beat invisibility.