Chapter 4

Estella Holloway POV:

For a moment, Jasper just stared, his eyes wide with something that looked like horror. He took a half-step towards me, his mouth opening as if to say my name.

Then he seemed to remember himself. He pulled off his suit jacket, not gently, but with a rough, impatient gesture, and threw it over my shivering shoulders. "Let's go," he muttered, grabbing my arm and steering me through the gawking crowd, away from the scene of my utter humiliation.

Back at the villa, he pushed me into a chair in the living room and retrieved the first-aid kit. He knelt before me, his touch surprisingly gentle as he began to dab at the cuts on my arms with an antiseptic wipe.

The sting of the alcohol was sharp, but it was the warmth of his fingers on my skin that made me flinch.

"Hold still," he murmured, his voice low. When a deeper cut on my forearm wouldn't stop bleeding, he instinctively brought it to his lips and blew on it softly, just like he used to do when I was a girl and would fall and scrape my knee.

The familiar, intimate gesture sent a traitorous shiver through me. A wave of confusion and a flicker of stupid, stubborn hope washed over me.

"Stel," he said, his eyes finally meeting mine. They were filled with a deep, weary sadness. "I know this is hard. Just... just give me one month. One month, and I swear, everything will go back to the way it was. It will be you and me again."

He leaned in, his face just inches from mine. His scent-sandalwood and bergamot, the scent of my home, my love, my life-filled my senses. He was going to kiss me. And the most pathetic part was, in that moment of weakness, I think I would have let him.

A piercing shriek echoed from upstairs.

"JASPER!"

Kimberley.

He froze, pulling back as if he'd been burned. The moment of connection shattered. He was on his feet in an instant, the gentle caretaker replaced by the frantic savior. "I'll be right back," he said, and then he was gone, taking the stairs two at a time.

My hand, which he had just been holding, felt suddenly cold. The fragile hope died, leaving behind a bitter, icy calm.

I heard her wailing from the master bedroom. "I'm useless! A broken, dying thing! You should just let me die, Jasper! Go back to her! I saw the way you looked at her!"

"Shh, shh," I heard him murmuring, his voice a soothing balm I hadn't heard directed at me in months. "It's not like that. You're not useless. I'm here."

"Do you still love her?" Kimberley demanded between sobs.

There was a pause. A heavy, damning silence.

"No," he said finally, his voice flat and unconvincing. "I'm going to marry you, Kimberley. That's a promise."

I heard one more demand from her, muffled and petulant. Then, Jasper came back downstairs, his face set in a grim, determined mask.

He wouldn't look at me.

"Kimberley feels... insecure," he said, staring at a spot on the wall over my head. "She wants you to be her personal maid for the remainder of her stay. To serve her. It would make her feel more secure in her position here."

I stared at him, speechless. The cruelty of the request was breathtaking.

"You'll also need to move your things into the servant's quarters in the basement," he added, as if discussing the weather. "It's for the best."

The days that followed were a special kind of hell. The small room in the basement was damp and had a single, tiny window that looked out onto a patch of dirt. The maids pitied me, leaving extra blankets and sneaking me snacks, but their kindness only highlighted the depths of my degradation.

Kimberley reveled in her new power.

"Estella, my coffee is cold. Make me another."

"Estella, my shoulders are sore. Knead them for me."

"Estella, the floor is dusty. I want you to scrub it. On your hands and knees."

Jasper watched it all, his face impassive. He told himself this was assuaging Kimberley's anxiety, that her condition was visibly improving under this new regime of torment. He saw her smiling more, and he called it healing. I called it victory.

At night, he made me sleep on a pallet on the floor of her room. "In case she has a nightmare," he'd explained.

One morning, Kimberley announced she wanted to go shopping for a wedding dress.

"And I want Estella to come with us," she'd added, her eyes glittering with malice. "To help me carry my things."

"I'm not going," I said, my voice quiet but firm.

Jasper's jaw tightened. "Yes, you are," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Don't make this difficult."

At the couture bridal salon, I stood in the corner like a ghost while Kimberley preened and pirouetted in gowns that cost more than most people's cars. Jasper watched her, a faint, sad smile on his face. I saw his gaze drift to me once or twice, a flicker of guilt in their depths, before he would quickly look away.

She chose the most ostentatious dress in the store, a behemoth of silk and lace with a twenty-foot train.

"Estella," she called out, her voice sickly sweet. "Come fix my train. It's all wrinkled."

Jasper nodded at me. "Go on, help her."

I walked over, my movements stiff. As I knelt on the floor to arrange the ridiculous cascade of fabric, I saw our reflection in the three-way mirror. Kimberley, radiant and triumphant, looking down her nose at me. And me, pale and hollow-eyed, her servant. Her subject.

It was in that moment that she made her move. She took a small, deliberate step back, her heel connecting with a glass of water a sales assistant had left on a small table.

The glass toppled. Kimberley let out a cry of pain as she fell, her leg landing right on the shattered remains.

"Ah! My leg!" she shrieked. A small cut, barely a scratch, was welling with a thin line of blood.

Jasper rushed to her side, his face a mask of fury.

"What did you do?" he snarled, glaring at me.

Kimberley, cradled in his arms, looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes. "She pushed me, Jasper," she whispered, a single tear rolling down her cheek. "I think... I think she's jealous."

The lie was so blatant, so absurd, but he bought it. I saw the belief dawn in his eyes, cementing into cold, hard rage.

"You're a monster, Estella," he spat at me.

"Jasper, I didn't-"

"Save it," he cut me off. He scooped Kimberley into his arms and turned to the stunned salon manager. "Call the police," he said, his voice like ice. "I want to press charges for assault."

I stood frozen as he carried her out. The last thing I saw was her face over his shoulder, a perfect, mocking smile of victory.

I was arrested in a couture bridal salon, kneeling in the wreckage of another woman's wedding dress fitting. It was, I thought with a detached sense of irony, a fittingly surreal end to my fairy tale.

In the small, cold holding cell, I was alone for only an hour before the door creaked open. Three large women with hard faces and mean eyes walked in. They looked me up and down, a slow, predatory appraisal.

"Well, well," the leader said, cracking her knuckles. "Look what we have here. You must have pissed off someone important."

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