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She was telling the truth. She was, truly! She didn’t take that necklace. She didn’t even know what it looked like until her brother took it out of her room. Where it shouldn’t have been. Because she didn’t take it. She had tried telling them, but they didn’t let her even speak. Eventually she had just gone numb. She let them scold and lecture her. No tears fell down her face. She was simply empty. She felt a sting across her face. She didn’t look up. She didn’t touch it.
She had thought that when she took the Duke’s hand, things would be… different. The Duke had lost a daughter, and she had lost her parents. She didn’t expect to be a replacement, or to take over her sister’s Ivonne’s place. She had just wanted a family. She would have done anything for her family. And so she did. She endured the occasional yet painful pricks in her body. She had endured the rotten food, worse than what she ate on the streets. She had endured the insults, not even spoken behind her back, but right in front of her. She had endured. And what did that get her? Her brothers differed in opinion, but both hated her. Reynold was the most vocal, whenever she tried to bond with him, or to eat with him, or even to just talk to him, it would always end up with him screaming about how she would never replace Ivonne she never wanted to , and how once Ivonne was found she would be abandoned to the streets again, or sold to a brothel.
Derrick only intervened when he was disturbed. Every time he would send her to her room. And every time, she listened and went, wondering and hoping when her brothers would accept her. The Duke was a busy man, far too busy to check in on her. When she first came to the manor, she had waited by his office door everyday, waiting to enter. She had skipped meals, and had gained bruises from when she fell asleep next to the door.
Somedays she wanted to join her mother. Somedays she tried to.
This time she promised to herself to stop enduring all of this for brothers who hated her, and a father who didn’t care.
(She broke that promise the very next day)