The Price of Perfection

It was my birthday, marking ten silent years I' d lived inside Marcus Thorne' s gilded mansion. I was his late wife' s eerie look-alike, tasked with raising his son, Leo, in a life of unimaginable luxury and suffocating expectation. Then, a seemingly innocent smoothie led to a violent miscarriage, a tiny, unformed hope extinguished. The boy I' d nurtured for a decade delivered the first cruel blow, his voice devoid of warmth: "You' ll never be her. Stop trying." Marcus, the industrial titan who' d bought my resemblance, casually dismissed my profound loss, already planning his next merger and another child. My own mother defended him, her hand stinging across my face as she called me ungrateful for daring to question this "chance" at security. Leo, the boy I' d raised and loved like my own, unleashed a torrent of venom, accusing me of wanting his mother dead, twisting my decade of devotion into a greedy plot for their fortune. Every sacrifice, every ounce of love I' d given, felt corrupted, leaving me utterly alone in an opulent prison built on lies and echoes. As Marcus, his eyes alight with menace, picked up a heavy letter opener, threatening to mar the face that had been both my fortune and my curse, a terrifying clarity hit me. I seized the blade from him and, with agonizing precision, dragged it across my own cheeks. The incandescent pain was a primal scream of liberation. Bleeding and irrevocably scarred, I bolted from that house, finally, truly free.