His for a year. - Chapter 30: Chapter 30

Anna: Come to the main building. Now. It’s a family meeting.
My chest tightened. No context. No hint of what was waiting. Just an order — sharp, urgent, and terrifying.
I walked down the hallway, the echo of my footsteps taunted me. As I got to the door of the living room, the air was thick — everyone was there.
Eloise stood at the center like a judge at court. Zade's Uncle beside her, arms folded. Zara lounged on the velvet couch with a champagne glass in her hand, looking mildly amused. Leo leaned against the fireplace, looking confused but tense.
Zade sat apart, at the edge of the long glass table. His eyes were hard, fixed on the floor.
Something was wrong, very wrong.
I stepped in, confused, my feet dragging slightly.
"What’s going on?" I asked carefully. My voice cracked.
"Don't pretend you don't know," Zara scoffed. "You're not that good an actress."
"I—" I started, but the words never finished. Eloise marched forward and slapped me across the face — hard, loud, final. The sting seared across my cheek, I staggered back a step, the sting spread across my cheek like fire. My hand instinctively rose to hold it, but my eyes didn’t blink. They welled, shimmered — but no tears fell.
"You disgusting little liar," Eloise spat. "I knew there was something about you — something cheap."
I turned my eyes toward Zade immediately but he wasn’t looking at me.
Zara’s smile widened. “Finally, some entertainment.”
Anna stepped forward, her expression cruelly calm. “We just received a message from an anonymous source. A very… illuminating one. Pictures and videos included.”
My breath hitched.
Anna continued. “It claimed you used to work in an underground club. As a masked stripper.” She paced slowly, deliberately. “But that’s not the scandal. The scandal is the man who died at your feet. Apparently, you killed him. Accident or not—well, it’s quite the headline, isn’t it?”
Silence grew in the room.
I swayed. The room spun. My stomach dropped. My knees became wobbly.
No one should’ve known.
Only Amanda knew. Only Amanda.
My voice was stuck in my throat.
Anna gave a mock-sad smile. “I had no choice but to buy the information completely. We cannot have this—” she gestured vaguely at me— “staining the Avner name. Not during our mother’s birthday week.”
Eloise’s voice came next, shrill with rage. “You let this murderer into our home, Zade. You disgraced this family, just like your father did.”
Zara crossed her arms, disgust curling her lips. “We were right about her.”
She’s not who we think she is,” Anna added with a gleam in her eye. “She’s a liar, a killer, a seductress. She trapped you Zade. She trapped all of us.”
“That’s enough—” Leo tried to talk but Eloise shut him up.
“No, it’s not!” she screamed. “I begged you to be careful, Zade! I begged you! But no — you brought a stripper into our home. Into our family. Do you even care about our name? Our legacy?”
Zade still said nothing. His face was stone.
Zara stood, slowly, her voice dripping with venom. “And to think I tried to be polite to you. I even got slapped because of you. But you—you’re worse than embarrassing. You’re a disgrace.”
“Zara—”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “I knew something was off. The way you looked at everything like you didn’t belong. You didn’t. You don’t. You never will.”
Anna turned to Zade now. “I told you from the start. She was nothing but a distraction. A desperate little girl playing dress-up.”
Zade's uncle muttered, “This is a new low, even for you, Zade.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” I whispered.
But Zade didn’t respond. His fists were clenched on his lap, knuckles white. His jaw ticked, his chest heaved, but he said nothing.
Then, slowly, he stood.
He looked at me once — only once — and then turned and walked out.
The sound of his footsteps disappearing broke me more than the slap. The silence he left behind was louder than any scream.
“Spare us the performance,” Zara said. “You’re done here.”
Then they all left. One by one. Throwing looks, insults, disgust.
I didn’t defend myself. I couldn’t.
I stood, my cheeks burning, feeling smaller than I ever had in my life, and a silence so loud it screamed.
My legs barely held me as I reached the door of my room. The second it clicked shut behind me, I collapsed against it and slid to the floor, my breath hitching, chest rising and falling too fast.
They knew.
They all knew now.
The Avners. Zade. Eloise. Zara. Everyone.
The slap still burned on my cheek, but what hurt more was the weight in my chest — the betrayal, the shame, the loss of control over a past I buried with blood, sweat, and broken bones.
And just like that, the memories came rushing out of the door I locked them in.
They called me “light.”
I was the girl with the slow hips, the red velvet mask, and curves that made men forget their wives.
After dad vanished and mom became an addict, our lives turned completely around. We could barely feed and always got harassed by our landlord. Until a neighbour reached out to me, Lara, a sweet 25 year old, she told me about her job and how it'll quickly change my life.
I was just 17 with no idea how the world looked like. I agreed. Only if they'd allow me hide my face. She helped with a fake ID and my masks.
The first night I danced, I cried in the bathroom stall after my set — twenty minutes of forced seduction, one thousand three hundred and twenty-five dollars in tips.
That money paid our rent for the month.
That night, Aliyah ate a warm dinner.
And I went back the next night.
It became a pattern. Stripping wasn’t just survival — it was a sacrifice. I stripped so Aliyah could stay in school. So I could buy soap, textbooks, food. So our landlord would stop threatening to throw our mattress on the street. Every night, I wrapped my shame in fishnets and glitter, and every morning, I peeled it off in silence before school.
Four years.
I danced for four years, never missing a class, never letting Aliyah suspect. The mask was more than just protection — it was a wall between the girl I was and the thing I had to become.
There were creepy men. Grabby hands. One tried to follow me home once, but I’d gotten good at slipping away, fast and quiet.
But he… he was different.
I remember the night like a wound. The club smelled of stale smoke and expensive whiskey. He sat near the stage in a grey suit, tossing bills without blinking. When my set ended, he handed me a thick wad of cash.
“Two grand,” he said. “Just for being beautiful.”
I didn’t want to take it. Something in his smile felt wrong — too sharp, too certain. But the voice in my head whispered, Aliyah needs shoes. I need my tuition fee. Rent’s late. I took it, thanked him, left quickly.
That was my mistake.
He followed me. I didn’t notice until I reached the alley behind my street. The next thing I knew, he was behind me — drunk, high, mumbling about how I “owed” him.
I screamed but it was too late into the night for anyone to hear me. He pushed me against the wall, his hands all over me, pinning me down. I kicked, scratched, bit. He slapped me hard — my mask fell. In a panic, I reached for anything and punched him. Hard. The side of his head cracked against the pavement.
He slumped.
And never moved again.
I stood over him, shaking, heart racing. My hands were stained. My breath ragged. I didn’t mean to kill him — I just wanted to escape.
Four other girls from the club had followed the scene. They screamed. One of them yelled, “She killed him!” Another took a photo. I was going to jail. Or worse.
But then he showed up — my boss, Hector. A gruff man with a soft spot for me. He took one look at the body and said, “Go home, Olive. I’ll take care of it.”
I didn’t ask how. I didn’t want to know.
He paid off the girls. The photo disappeared.
And just like that, the man was erased.
But not from me.
His ghost followed me in every mirror. Every man’s breath on my neck. Every dark street. I carried him with me, like a punishment I had to bear in silence. Even when I stopped dancing. Even when I started drop shipping as a new source of income.
Amanda… she was the only one I told. I trusted her. God, I trusted her.
And now…
She’d given it away.
To Anna.
And Anna had weaponized it.
My hands trembled as I grabbed my phone and dialed the only person I could think of.
“Amanda…” I could barely say her name through the sob rising in my throat.
“Hey babe,” she answered sweetly. “You okay?”
My voice cracked. “Why did you tell them? Why did you tell her?”
A pause.
“Tell who what?”
“Don’t play with me, Amanda!” My voice shook, louder now, filled with rage and devastation. “Why did you leak my secret?”
“What are you talking about?” she said, trying to laugh like it was a joke. “Babe, you’re scaring me—”
“You’re the only one I told about the club!” I shouted. “In person! It wasn’t a text. I never wrote it down. Just you. You looked me in the eye and swore you’d take it to your grave!”
Another pause. Too long. Too fake.
“I… I don’t know. Maybe my phone got hacked,” Amanda offered, voice low.
I stood, breath trembling, eyes wet but still no tears falling. “It was a year ago, Amanda. I told you in person, not on text, not on call. So how would a hacker know?”
“I wrote it in my digital diary,” she mumbled suddenly.
My heart cracked.
I felt something inside me shut down — a numbness replacing the ache. That kind of lie? So lazy. So weak. For the third time. From her?
“Right,” I said coldly. “Your digital diary.”
“Olive, please—”
I ended the call.
Silence fell over the room again, heavy and suffocating. My chest heaved as the storm I’d been holding finally burst. I screamed into my pillow. I screamed until my throat burned. Until my soul cracked. Until I couldn’t hear myself anymore.
I had tried so hard. To become someone new. Someone worthy. Someone clean.
But the world didn’t care about redemption. It only cared about exposure. About what I had done.
I was that seventeen-year-old girl again — alone, exhausted, bleeding from battles no one else could see.
And this time, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.