Chapter 2

I took a cab back to the villa.

The moment I got out, I saw a crew cutting down the chestnut tree in the yard.

Selena saw me and hid behind Elliot, frightened.

"Ms. Nightingale, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for them to cut down your chestnut tree. Elliot promised me a bed of camellias."

I stood there and watched that heavy trunk come down.

That tree had grown up alongside us, with our names cut into the trunk, the birdhouse Elliot and I built in its branches, and the swing Matthew hung for me.

The dust came up and pulled the tears out of my eyes.

But Elliot and Matthew watched me with contempt on their faces.

As though they were laughing at me for being small about it.

Matthew said, "Sophia, you're unbelievably petty. It's one tree, and you're standing there like somebody hurt you."

He worked the lighter in his hand and sneered, "I gave you that tree. I can do what I want with it."

Something in my chest went tight.

For no reason, my mind went back to the day I first met them.

Matthew had taken my hand and put a piece of chocolate to my mouth.

"Poor little princess. Don't be afraid. Nothing gets to you here."

Elliot showed me the pink room he had put together for me, right next to his.

And however my room got redecorated after that, it never moved.

He made it plain to everyone that I was the one he favored and that from then on I was the woman who would stand level with him.

If a maid hadn't run off with a man that day and left an opening, Selena would never have gotten into that house.

All she ever did was play sweet in front of Elliot and Matthew, or slip things I reacted to into my food.

At first I took it for carelessness and let it go.

So she pushed further and knocked over the pasta I had worked on for Elliot.

I hit my limit and threw the plate at her, and Elliot shoved me off.

His blue eyes were full of disapproval. "Selena was only joking with you. Why would a girl in your position make life hard for her?"

Matthew chimed in, "She's younger than you. Can't you give a little? Why are you so petty?"

I looked at the pasta all over the floor, and for the first time I had no idea what to do.

Elliot had told me my pasta would put a smile back on his face.

My pasta was his favorite food.

I watched him step through it on his way out as though it were nothing, and the tears came.

Elliot was a liar.

Everything changed after that.

Their eyes stopped landing on me.

Selena took over their line of sight a piece at a time, and I became the corner they couldn't see.

The satisfaction in her look said the spot was hers.

I put my eyes down and went straight to my room.

The room had been done over in the purple I hated most, and my things were stacked in the hallway in a heap.

Elliot had an arm around Selena and looked down at me. "Sophia, this is Selena's room now. You're moving to the maid's room downstairs. In this house, you are the princess because I hold you up.

"Starting today, you work for her. Fix that temper, and if you do it well, I'll give you your place back."

Matthew added, "And remember, from now on, you'll address her as Ms. Baker."

His foot came down hard on the only photo I had of my parents.

"If you don't keep Selena happy, I won't let it go."

The old me would have cried the whole night over words like that.

But I was leaving, so nothing they said could reach me.

I nodded. "Yes, sir. Yes, Ms. Baker.

"I'll pack and leave today."

Elliot sneered, "Leave? Where do you think you're going? The Nightfall Syndicate is barely hanging on, and your mother dumped you here. What princess act are you putting on now?

"Look at who you're talking to. Don't stop her. Let her go. She'll come crawling back in less than two hours."

I walked past him and said, "I'm not coming back."

I used to imagine that I would have a warm home in the place where I grew up, and they had cured me of it.

This place wasn't my home.

*****

There wasn't much worth taking anyway.

My jewelry was scattered across the floor.

I liked making things, and Elliot used to bring me stones in every color and sit and string bracelets with me.

Back then, he would say, "Sophia is a bird that wants to be free. But once she wears a bracelet I made, she won't fly off."

But now, every stone we had strung together was smashed into colored glass.

And I had gone from the bird he couldn't stand to release to a bad-tempered, petty leech.

Next to the jewelry were the paper stars, crushed flat.

Whenever Matthew made me cry, he would fold me a paper star and say that ninety-nine of them would buy me one wish. And ninety-eight of them were flattened or soaked through with dirty water.

I said nothing and put them all in the trash.

Every promise we had ever made went in with them.

Elliot came down the stairs with Selena and caught me at it.

He reached out as though to take something, and then he pulled his hand back.

He sneered, "What a wasteful princess."

He used to throw a fortune at me, and with the favor withdrawn, he had turned into stone.

"Never mind. Clean it up. That's your job now."

Selena tucked herself into Elliot's arms and made herself look small.

She said, "Elliot, we're going to Eternal Bakery. I can't wait to taste what you make."

My feet stopped without my telling them to.

The Eternal Bakery she was talking about was a gift Elliot had given me.

Back then, Aurora was buried in the business, so she had Elliot, five years older than me, look after me.

There was a stretch when I loved baking, and my allergies kept me out of most of it, so my cakes came out hard and awful.

I was still frustrated about it when Elliot took me to Eternal Bakery.

He said it had been designed off my sketchbook.

What surprised me even more was that he made a cake for me that avoided all my allergens.

That day, he looked at me with his whole heart in it. "Eternal is ours, and it stands for a sweetness that doesn't end. I want you to think of it and feel that."

Every year, he made me a cake at Eternal Bakery.

Every year, I tasted how much care and love he had put in it.

So between the two brothers, Elliot was the one I cared about more.

But every time I made up my mind to choose him, Matthew stepped in and turned the conversation, and nothing ever came of it.

But now, things were different.

They had a new white camellia, and the girl who used to swing under the chestnut tree was long gone from their heads.

I told myself it was all right.

It was over, and I wasn't choosing either of them.