Chapter 8: The Drain of Color
The cruel woman in the emerald green dress suddenly went deathly pale.
All the arrogant, aristocratic life drained from Eleanor’s face in a single, terrifying instant, leaving her skin looking like curdled milk against the vibrant green of her expensive silk gown. Her hands dropped from her chest, her fingers losing their grip on her pearls as the catastrophic magnitude of the mistake she had just made settled into her brain.
The girl she had been treating like subhuman dirt for months... The girl she had forced to clean the toilets with her bare hands... The girl she had just physically assaulted and called "cheap trash" in front of the entire manor staff...
Wasn't a nobody. She wasn't an expendable charity case from the gutter.
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She was the legitimate bloodline of the family. She was the co-heiress to the entire Bellevue fortune, the rightful owner of the very roof over Eleanor's head, and the long-lost sister of the most powerful man in the city.
Eleanor’s knees began to shake violently, the heavy silk fabric of her dress rustling in a frantic, panicked rhythm. She took a step back, her mind desperately racing to find a way to rewrite the last ten minutes of history, to manufacture a lie, to construct an apology. But she knew, with a sudden, sickening dread, that some sins are too visible to ever be covered up.
