Hidden Heiress: The Maid You Betrayed

For five years, I was the invisible glue holding Damien Crawford together. I was the one who pulled him from a burning car until the skin melted off my back, and I was the one who donated bone marrow when he was on death's door. I even gave up a full-ride scholarship to MIT just to be his nurse.

Yet, he believed his mistress, Hadley, was his savior. To him, I was just the maid's daughter who changed his bedpans-a piece of furniture he could abuse while he planned his wedding to another woman.

But his cruelty didn't stop at verbal abuse. When my father suffered a massive heart attack, Damien refused to let me use the car, choosing to comfort Hadley over a fake panic attack instead.

His mother even slashed the tires to ensure I couldn't leave.

While my father died cold and alone, Damien stabbed a needle into my hand just to teach me a lesson about "respect," oblivious to the fact that the scars on my skin were the receipt for his life.

He didn't know he was torturing the only person who had ever truly loved him. But the girl who begged for crumbs of affection died along with her father that day.

I picked up my phone and dialed the number saved simply as a dot.

"He's dead," I whispered to the man on the other end-Anderson Morrison, the city's most feared Don and my sworn protector.

"I'm coming," he replied, his voice lethal. "And I'm bringing the army."

It was time to show Damien that he hadn't just mistreated a maid; he had declared war on a Queen.

Chapter 1

Aliana POV

I was standing on the wind-swept steps of City Hall, clutching a marriage license application for the ninety-ninth time, when a photo of my fiancé's hand sliding up another woman's skirt lit up my phone screen.

The timestamp was two minutes ago.

The caption, sent from a burner number, was simple: *He's busy.*

I stared at the image. The grainy resolution didn't matter; that hand belonged to Damien Crawford. I knew that hand better than I knew my own face. I knew the jagged white scar on his knuckle-a souvenir from the time he'd punched a mirror three years ago because his soup was cold.

I knew the way his fingers curled, heavy with the intent of possessing something he thought he owned.

And I knew the woman attached to the skirt. Hadley Stuart. The woman who had abandoned him when he was paralyzed, only to return the second he could walk again.

The wind whipped around the limestone pillars of City Hall, biting through my thin coat. I looked down at the paper in my trembling hand. *Application for Marriage License: Damien Crawford and Aliana Rodriguez.*

It was wrinkled. It was the ninety-ninth copy.

For five years, I had been the invisible glue holding Damien Crawford together. I was the one who pulled his broken body from the burning wreckage of his McLaren when the car bomb went off. My skin had bubbled and melted off my back while I dragged him to safety, but I never screamed.

I was the one who donated bone marrow when the infection nearly took him. I had lain in a hospital bed next to his while he slept in a coma, stealing my own recovery time just to sit by his side and hold his hand.

He didn't know.

His mother, Cecil, had told him Hadley saved him. She told him I was just the maid's daughter who changed his bedpans. And I let them lie. I let them lie because I was eighteen, stupid, and desperately in love with a boy who looked at me like I was furniture.

I looked down at the shoes on my feet. They were designer heels Damien had bought me. They were two sizes too small.

"Wear them, Ali," he had commanded this morning, shoving the box into my chest. "I like the way your calves flex when you struggle to walk."

I wiggled my toes. They were slick with blood.

My phone buzzed again. It wasn't the anonymous number this time. It was *Him*.

The contact name was just a period. A dot.

I answered.

"You are standing on the steps," the voice said. It was deep, like gravel wrapped in velvet. It was a voice that commanded armies, a voice that brought grown men to their knees.

Anderson Morrison. The Reaper. The Don of the rival family that controlled the port, the guns, and half the politicians in the state.

"I am," I whispered.

"He isn't coming, *Tesoro*."

"I know."

"He is at the bistro on 5th. With her." Anderson's voice was devoid of pity. He didn't do pity. He dealt in facts and violence. "Say the word, Aliana. Say the word, and I burn the bistro to the ground with them inside."

I looked at the marriage license.

I thought about the acceptance letter to MIT I had hidden under my mattress five years ago. The full-ride scholarship I had turned down to wipe Damien's brow and take his verbal abuse while he learned to walk again. I thought about the scars on my back that looked like melted wax, the ones I hid under high-necked shirts so he wouldn't be disgusted by the sacrifice I made for him.

I had given him my future. My skin. My marrow.

And he gave me shoes that made me bleed and a wedding date he never intended to keep.

"No," I said into the phone. "Don't burn it down."

"You are mercy, Aliana. It is your weakness."

"I am not mercy," I said, my voice cracking before hardening into something new. "I just don't want you to waste the gasoline."

I took the marriage license in both hands. The paper was thick, expensive. Just like everything in the Crawford world-pretty, heavy, and ultimately flammable.

I ripped it.

One tear down the middle. Then another. I shredded it until it was nothing but white confetti raining from my hands.

I opened my palms and let the wind take it. The pieces swirled around me, dancing like snow, before falling into the dirty gutter water at the bottom of the stairs.

"I'm done, Anderson," I said. "I'm taking my father. We're leaving tonight."

There was a pause on the line. A heavy silence that felt like a blood oath.

"I will have a convoy ready," he promised. "If anyone tries to stop you, they die."

"Just get me out."

I hung up. I kicked off the heels.

My bare feet hit the cold concrete. The pain was sharp, immediate, and grounding. I left the thousand-dollar shoes on the steps of City Hall, right next to the gutter where my dreams were dissolving in the mud.

I walked to the curb to hail a cab. I wasn't going to the bistro to scream. I wasn't going to cry.

I was going back to the Crawford estate to pack my father's medicine and watch their empire crumble in my rearview mirror.