Chapter 10: The Decree of Finality
Eleanor fell back against a marble column, the very structure of the house offering her no protection from her husband’s wrath. "Maximilian, please! We are an alliance! Your family needs my father's corporate backing! You cannot do this over a maid—over a girl who has been living in the gutter!"
"She is not a maid. She is a Bellevue," Maximilian stated, his voice ringing through the grand corridor with a terrifying, unyielding finality.
He stood at his full height, looking down at the shivering woman in the emerald gown with absolute, unadulterated disgust. The political alliances didn't matter. The corporate stocks didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was the girl in the faded red dress who was currently staring at her broken pearls.
"You have worn your title as mistress of this house for the last time," Maximilian said, his words slicing through Eleanor's remaining defenses. "You have degraded my bloodline, you have assaulted my family, and you have proven yourself entirely unworthy of the name you carry."
Eleanor began to weep—not the beautiful, practiced tears of her socialite circles, but the ugly, panicked sobs of a woman who had just realized she had thrown away her entire kingdom for a moment of petty malice.
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"Maximilian, please... give me a chance to make it right! I will apologize to her! I will buy her a thousand new necklaces!"
"You cannot buy back what you broke today," he replied, turning his back on her. "Your authority in this manor is officially stripped. Your access to the family accounts is frozen."
