Ashes and Treason

I pushed open the front door. The breath slammed out of my lungs. My father’s urn—the one we had buried deep in the ground—sat dead center on the living room table.

Clumps of fresh dirt still clung to the polished wood. My husband, Dominic, stood right next to it. His arm was wrapped tightly around Quinn’s waist.

Together, they were watching a hired occultist pour a thick, foulsmelling animal blood straight over the lid of the urn. "What the hell are you doing?!" The scream ripped out of my throat, harsh and broken.

I lunged for the table. A hand clamped around my wrist like a steel vise, jerking me to a dead halt.

Dominic stared down at me. "Quinn has been having nightmares about your father," Dominic said.

His voice was flat, stripped of warmth. "He keeps telling her she needs to pay with her life. The psychic says it’s a malicious haunting.

We have to seal the urn." Chapter 1 I stared at the wooden box holding my father's ashes.

Three months ago, Vincent was framed, thrown into federal prison, and died of a sudden heart attack.

He went from a ruthless corporate titan who controlled the city to a cold corpse in a matter of days. My perfect life shattered right along with him.

Back then, Dominic swore it didn't matter. He promised to protect me for the rest of my life. But that vow evaporated the second Quinn stepped back into the country.

She crashed my father's funeral. Quinn, the woman who had been abroad for years, stood by his fresh grave and sobbed for three hours straight. She claimed she hadn't left by choice.

According to her, my father had her kidnapped and trafficked overseas. Tossed into a redlight district, locked in a living hell for eight miserable years.

She called my dad a monster. Said he built her personal purgatory, and she would hate him until her dying breath.

I had stood there, listening to her tear my father's legacy apart, the blood draining from my fingertips. The man she described wasn't the father who raised me.

Dominic listened to her every word, his eyes red. And he believed her. Just like that, I became the sinner, doomed to pay for my father's alleged crimes.

When Quinn purposely knocked a bowl of scalding soup onto my lap, Dominic ignored the blistering red burns spreading across my skin. Give her some grace, he told me.

When Quinn shattered the antique vase my mother left me, Dominic stood over me as I knelt in the shards, picking up the broken porcelain. She needs an outlet.

When Quinn stood in the middle of a crowded gala and branded me the daughter of a criminal, Dominic just watched in dead silence as the room turned on me.

Later, he only offered one excuse: "Genevieve, you are paying a debt." I had swallowed it all. Every humiliation, every slight.

But now they were touching my father's ashes. "No." I thrashed against Dominic's grip. "Dominic, that is my dad!

He is already dead!" "Which is exactly why he's haunting me." Quinn pressed her face against Dominic's chest. "Genevieve, I just want a good night's sleep." The hired psychic raised the heavy ceramic bowl.

Adrenaline spiked. I ripped my wrist free from Dominic's grasp and threw my body over the altar. The thick animal blood rained down. It hit my spine with a heavy, wet slap.

The foul, coppery stench flooded my nose. Viscous liquid soaked through my sweater and dripped from the ends of my hair onto the hardwood floor. I looked up at Dominic.

Then at Quinn. My knees hit the floor. "Quinn. Please." My jaw trembled so hard my teeth clicked. "He is gone. Leave him alone.

If you want blood, take mine." Dominic's jaw tightened. A muscle feathered in his cheek as he stared down at my huddled form.

Quinn shifted closer to him, her fingers curling into his shirt. "The ritual can stop," she murmured. "But every single thing in this house connected to your father has to go.

All of it. Otherwise, I'll never sleep." Dominic let the silence drag for two seconds.

He gave a sharp nod. "Whatever you need." I sat slumped in the puddle of blood, the fight drained from my bones.

Chapter 2 For the next three hours, I stood in the corner of the living room like a forgotten piece of furniture. A puppet with its strings cut.

I watched the house I grew up in get systematically gutted. Movers rolled up my mother’s vintage Persian rug and tossed it into the back of a moving truck.

They shoved Vincent’s antique paintings and rare manuscripts into cardboard boxes without a second glance. Then came the backyard.

There was a custom playground out there—a gift Vincent built for my tenth birthday. Now, the carousel was reduced to a heap of scrap metal.

The swing set was ripped out by the roots, the thick ropes severed into frayed, pathetic pieces.

A sickening pressure built in my chest, expanding until my ribs felt like they would snap. The edges of my vision bled to black.

The last thing I heard was Dominic's voice, laced with a sudden, sharp panic. "Genevieve—" I woke up to the biting stench of clinical bleach. A private hospital room. Empty.

The chair beside my bed sat vacant. The doctor walked in, a medical chart gripped in his hand. "Genevieve, you're pregnant. About six weeks." My breath caught.

My hand drifted down, pressing flat against my stomach. "But you know the condition of your heart," the doctor said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "If you carry to term, the late stages of pregnancy and delivery… your heart might not handle the strain.

The risk is incredibly high. My recommendation is—" "I'm keeping it." I cut him off. The doctor frowned. "This is your life we're talking about." "Please." I looked up at him.

Tears burned the back of my eyes, but my voice didn't waver. "Don't tell anyone. Especially not my husband.

I am having this baby." He studied my pale, set face for a long moment before letting out a heavy sigh. "I'll keep it off the official records for now.

But you have to come in for regular monitoring." "If you show any danger signs, we terminate immediately." The heavy door clicked shut behind him. Dead silence filled the room.

My hand stayed pressed to my lower belly. There was a tiny life growing right there. It came to me right after the world took everything else away. Vincent was dead.

My childhood home was gutted. My husband belonged to someone else. But I had this baby. I couldn't survive like a ghost in my own life anymore.

The thought sliced through three months of suffocating numbness with razorsharp clarity. I had to leave Dominic. I had to get as far away from Quinn as humanly possible.

I had to vanish from this place that had no room left for me. Outside the window, the night sky was an endless, suffocating black.

I wiped the wetness from my cheeks. "Theo," I whispered to the empty room. "Mommy is going to take you away." The second I got discharged and walked through the front door, I hunted Quinn down. "My father's ashes." My throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. "Give them back." Quinn casually flipped a page of her hardcover book.

She didn't even blink. "Quinn." My fingernails dug into my palms until the skin gave way. "The ritual was canceled. Everything is gone.

You promised—" "I changed my mind." Quinn snapped the book shut and finally looked up at me. "I had the staff bury it in the woods out back yesterday.

I can't remember exactly where." I lunged forward. My hands clamped onto her shoulders. "You lied!

You said if I cleared the house—" "I said I changed my mind." Quinn didn't even try to pull away.

The corner of her mouth ticked up into a cold smirk. "Genevieve, does a man like your father really deserve a proper grave?

Tossing him out back for the stray dogs feels a lot more fitting." A violent tremor racked my entire body. I stared at Quinn's perfectly calm face.

At the casual, sickening cruelty in her eyes.

Three months of suffocating submission, of chewing on glass and swallowing my own blood, rushed straight to my head in a blinding flash. I don't remember moving.

I just remember the violent, physical shove. When my vision finally cleared, Quinn was already tumbling down the steep wooden staircase.

Chapter 3 Quinn crumpled at the bottom landing with a heavy, sickening thud. I stood at the top of the stairs.

My hands froze in midair, the tips of my fingers numb and drained of blood. "Quinn!" Dominic's voice tore through the front hall. My neck cracked as I turned.

He blurred past me, his shoulder clipping mine as he took the stairs two at a time.

He dropped to his knees, his hands hovering frantically over her shoulders. "Where does it hurt?" Quinn lifted her head.

A jagged cut split her temple, and a thick line of red slid down her cheek. Her eyes locked onto mine.

Something dark and calculated flashed in her pupils, vanishing just as fast. "I'm fine…" Her fingers curled weakly into Dominic's sleeve. "Don't blame Genevieve.

She was just… so angry." Dominic's head snapped up.

His eyes cut into me like physical blades. "Genevieve." He chewed on my name like it was poison. "I never knew you could be this vicious." I opened my mouth.

A wall of sand shoved its way down my throat, choking off every word. "Somebody get in here!" Dominic ordered, scooping Quinn off the floor.

He didn't spare me another glance. "Take my wife to her room.

If she steps one foot outside that door without my permission, you're fired." Two maids flanked me, their hands locking around my biceps. I didn't fight.

I let them drag my dead weight down the hall and shove me into the master bedroom. The heavy lock clicked from the outside.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, watching the grey sky bleed into black. Dominic didn't come upstairs. Someone left a dinner tray outside the door, but I didn't touch it.

Hours later, the crunch of tires on gravel drifted up through the glass. He was back.

The low, muffled hum of his voice talking to the estate manager floated through the floorboards. Then, an engine revved, and the car sped off again. Corporate fires to put out.

The massive mess Vincent left behind would keep him chained to his desk for months. I waited for him to storm upstairs. To yell. To do something. Nothing.

At exactly ten o'clock, every single light in the mansion died. I froze on the mattress. My heart slammed against my ribs. Thud. Thud. Thud.

The silence in the room stretched out, suffocating and thick. Ever since I was a kid, the dark had paralyzed me. I needed the lights blazing just to close my eyes.

Dominic used to know that. He used to make sure the lamps were never fully dimmed. Now, pitch black. I scrambled off the bed. My knees hit the floorboards.

I threw myself at the heavy oak door, my palms slapping flat against the wood. "Open it! Dominic! Open the door!" My voice shook, thin and brittle. "I'm scared. Turn them on.

Please, turn them on…" The darkness collapsed inward. Heavy. Physical. It crushed the oxygen straight out of the room. My pulse roared in my ears. I couldn't drag air into my lungs.

My spine slid down the doorframe. Wet heat spilled down my cheeks. I pulled my knees tight to my chest, burying my face in my arms, shaking violently in the dead quiet.

A lifetime passed. Then, the scuff of footsteps outside. The lights snapped on. Blinding white.

I was curled in the corner, my clothes soaked in cold sweat, wet hair plastered to my cheekbones. The doorknob clicked. Quinn stood in the doorway.

She wore a pristine silk robe, a glass of water balanced loosely in her hand. "You're so loud," she said. I lifted my head.

My eyes were burning and swollen. "You did this on purpose." "So what if I did?" Quinn stepped into the room. The glass hit the nightstand with a sharp clink. "Dominic isn't here.

I run this house now." "What do you want?" My vocal cords felt like shredded glass. "What do I want?" She repeated the words, dropping into a crouch until we were eyelevel. "I want my life back.

I was supposed to graduate." "I was supposed to marry Dominic. I was supposed to have a normal life. Your father destroyed every single piece of that.

And you—" Chapter 4 Quinn reached out. Her freezing fingertips grazed my cheek. "You're his daughter." "You spent your whole life soaking up the luxury he bought with my blood.

Tell me, Genevieve.

Don't I have the right to hate you?" "I didn't know." The words scraped against my raw throat. "I swear to God, I didn't know a thing." "That's the only reason you're still breathing." Quinn pulled her hand back.

She stood up, her shadow stretching over me in the dim light. "I was going to make Dominic divorce you. But then I realized something disgusting.

He actually fell for you." "So, change of plans. I don't want the divorce anymore." "I am going to hollow out every last ounce of affection he has for you, piece by bloody piece.

I want to drag this out and torture you for a very long time." A violent shudder ripped through my spine. Quinn turned toward the hallway.

She paused right in the doorframe and threw a glance over her shoulder. "Right now, he still thinks you're completely innocent because he assumes you were in the dark." Her voice dropped to a soft, lethal whisper. "But what happens when he finds out you were in on it?

How do you think he'll look at you then?" The corner of her mouth ticked up. "Your hell is just getting started." The door clicked shut.

I sat in the suffocating dark, my blood running icecold. The following afternoon, heavy tires crunched in the driveway. Dominic was back.

Fast, hard footsteps hammered up the stairs. The bedroom door flew open with a violent crash. Dominic filled the doorframe, his fist clamped around a crumpled stack of papers.

Thick red veins branched across the whites of his eyes. "Genevieve." He stepped inside and shoved the door shut behind him. "I am going to ask you this exactly one time." He crossed the room in three massive strides.

He leaned over the mattress, planting a hand on either side of my hips, trapping me instantly against the headboard.

He had quit smoking years ago because my heart couldn't take the secondhand smoke.

Now, the sharp, bitter stench of cheap tobacco rolled heavily off his clothes. "Eight years ago." His voice was pitched dangerously low, every syllable grinding through his teeth. "Did you know?" I froze. "Know what?" "That your father was going to abduct Quinn!

That he was going to destroy her life!" His fingers clamped around my wrist.

The pressure spiked, grinding my bones together until whitehot pain shot up my arm. "Did you know from the very beginning?

Have you just been playing the victim this whole time?!" "No!" I thrashed against his grip. "Dominic, let go of me!

I didn't know—" "I have the proof!" He let go of my wrist just to rip a paper from the stack and whip it directly across my face. The page fluttered down onto the sheets.

It was a photocopy of a journal. The messy, looped handwriting belonged to a teenager. It was my exact handwriting from high school. March 12, 2015.

Dad asked me today if I was really in love with Dominic. I told him yes. He said he would make Quinn disappear.

I told him that was a bad idea, but he just laughed and called me silly. He said he'd do anything for my happiness. April 3, 2015. Quinn is actually gone.

Dominic has been tearing the city apart looking for her. He's a wreck. I feel a little guilty about it, but Dad is right. Love is selfish.

Once I'm Dominic's girlfriend, I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to him. My trembling fingers flipped to the next page. And the next.

Every single entry painted the exact same sickening picture. The pages claimed I knew my father was going to kidnap Quinn. That I didn't stop it. That I gave him the green light.

Chapter 5 A violent tremor seized my hands. "It's fake!" I screamed. "Quinn forged this! She stood in this exact room last night and told me—" "Enough!" Dominic cut me off.

The temperature in his eyes flatlined. "Genevieve, I never realized how truly vicious you could be. Eight years.

Quinn was locked in a cage for eight years, and you just played dumb?" "You slept beside me every night without a shred of guilt?" His fingers dug into my shoulders, bruising the muscle. "Do you have any idea what she went through?

How she survived those years?" "And you? You soaked up everything. Me. The Vincent empire. And even now—" He stopped.

His voice dropped to a lethal whisper. "Even now, you're still trying to destroy her." I shook my head so hard my neck ached. "I didn't push her! She threw away my father's ashes!

She told me—" "She told you what? That she threw the ashes away?" A harsh, scraping laugh tore from Dominic's throat. "The estate staff found the urn this morning, Genevieve.

It was buried out back in a freshly dug grave. You can't even lie right." The air emptied from my lungs. A highpitched ringing started in my ears. "Quinn didn't want you to grieve.

She hired people to pick a proper spot. She even had a simple headstone made." Dominic released his grip and straightened up, towering over me. "And how do you repay her?

You shove her down a flight of stairs." He turned his back to me. I threw myself off the mattress.

My fingers hooked violently into his sleeve. "Dominic, please, just believe me this once! Just once! The journal is fake! She told me—" He ripped his arm away.

The sheer force sent me reeling backward. My feet tangled in the heavy rug. My temple cracked against the sharp, wooden corner of the nightstand. Thud.

Whitehot agony exploded behind my eyes. The room tilted into darkness. A thick, hot liquid immediately welled up, sliding down the side of my face. Dominic’s heavy boots stopped.

He glanced over his shoulder. His eyes tracked the blood dripping from my hairline. His jaw flexed.

He looked like he was going to say something, but the muscle just feathered under his skin. "Think about what you've done." He walked out. The heavy oak door clicked shut.

I stayed slumped on the floorboards. My trembling fingers brushed my temple. They came away slick and crimson. Quinn's cold whisper echoed in my ears.

Your hell is just getting started. I pressed my bloody palms flat against my eyes. A dry, scraping sound clawed its way up my throat.

It started as a laugh, jagged and broken, until it cracked into a violent, breathless sob. The cut on my head throbbed with a vicious, rhythmic pulse.

But it was absolutely nothing compared to the crushing, suffocating weight caving in my ribs. Dominic bought it. He bought every forged word.

He believed I was just as monstrous as Vincent. He believed my entire life with him was nothing but a calculated, sick performance.

After that, Dominic never stepped foot in the master bedroom again. I was put under a silent, absolute house arrest.

The staff slid meal trays through the door three times a day, but the heavy deadbolt stayed locked from the outside. Dominic vanished.

It was like he completely wiped my existence from the estate. Three days later, the first blizzard of the season hit.

Overnight, the sprawling estate grounds were buried under a foot of blinding white snow. The locks finally clicked open.

Quinn sent the maids to drag me down to the grand living room. She was lounging in an oversized velvet chair right in front of the roaring fireplace.

Between her manicured fingers, she twirled a simple, unadorned silver ring. "Dominic gave me this right before I was forced out of the country," Quinn said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. "It's a promise ring.

I accidentally dropped it out in the snow yesterday. Genevieve, be a dear and go find it for me, would you?" Before I could even blink, she flicked her wrist.

The silver band caught the firelight, arcing straight out the open French doors. It vanished instantly into the deep, freezing snowbanks.

My feet stayed rooted to the expensive hardwood. I didn't move a single muscle.

Right as the suffocating tension in the room hit its breaking point, the heavy front doors swung open. Dominic walked in. Chapter 6 Quinn immediately went to him.

Her voice cracked, perfectly pitched. "Dominic, I lost my ring.

The very first gift you ever gave me…" Dominic's eyes shifted to me. "Go find it." "It's snowing," I said. "And?" Dominic's tone was dead flat. "Quinn's immune system is compromised.

She can't be in the cold. You go." I stared into his eyes. I searched them for a long time, looking for a single ounce of the man I married. Nothing.

I turned and walked toward the heavy front doors. A thin layer of white already coated the ground. The backyard was massive, an endless stretch of blinding frost.

Finding a tiny silver band out here was mathematically impossible. I dropped to my knees in the snow. My bare hands dragged through the freezing slush, inch by agonizing inch.

Ice water soaked straight through my jeans. The cold drilled into my bones like physical needles.

Within minutes, my fingers turned a violent shade of red, then went completely numb. Two hours passed. Nothing. When I finally pushed myself upright, the world tilted into black.

My knees buckled. I slammed my shoulder against a thick tree trunk to stay standing. A dull, heavy ache twisted low in my abdomen. I dragged in a jagged breath.

My numb palm pressed flat against my stomach. Theo, I thought, hold on.

Behind the floortoceiling windows of the living room, Dominic and Quinn stood shouldertoshoulder, watching me.

Quinn pushed the glass open a crack. "Did you find it?" I shook my head. "Then keep looking," Quinn said. "Don't stop until you do." The window slid shut.

I stood frozen in the snow, staring at the glass. Snowflakes caught in my eyelashes, melting into freezing droplets that slid down my cheeks like tears.

The cramp in my lower belly sharpened into a vicious stab. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, tasted copper, and forced myself to stand straight.

I stumbled back toward the house. I shoved the heavy living room doors open.

Quinn was lounging on the sofa, sipping from a porcelain teacup. "Did I say you could come inside?" Quinn set the cup down. "I'm done." My teeth chattered so hard the words physically hurt. "Just kill me." Quinn's gaze locked onto my chalkwhite face.

Her eyes drifted down, landing on the hand I had pressed tightly against my stomach. Something shifted in her expression.

She stood up. "Forget it." The maids dragged me back to my room. That night, a severe fever hit.

By the time the estate doctor arrived, I was burning up, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Through the haze of my fever, the muffled voices outside my door bled into the room. "Mr.

Dominic, were you aware your wife is pregnant?" The doctor's voice was grim. "What?" Dominic's single word snapped like a whip. "About eleven weeks," the doctor said. "But her body is failing.

The high fever and severe exposure to the cold have triggered signs of a threatened miscarriage." "And with her preexisting heart condition, carrying this child…" The doctor's voice dropped.

Dead silence swallowed the hallway. The heavy door pushed open. Dominic walked in. I lay flat on the mattress.

He stopped a few feet away, but the space between us felt like a bottomless fault line. "Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?" he asked.

His voice was completely stripped of emotion. "What difference would it make?" I forced my heavy eyelids open and met his gaze. "Would you be happy?

Or would it just give you another reason to hate me, knowing this baby has my blood in its veins?" Dominic's jaw tightened.

He didn't say a word. "The doctor said your heart can't take it. Giving birth is too dangerous." He finally broke the silence. "This child…" "I am having this baby." I cut him off.

My voice was raspy, but it didn't shake. "Dominic, you can hate me. You can think I'm a monster. But this child is mine. No one is touching him." Dominic stared down at me.

A muscle feathered in his cheek. His eyes were a dark, turbulent mess—heavy with rage, thick with suspicion, and laced with something else I couldn't read.

I didn't care enough to try. "Suit yourself." He turned on his heel and walked out. The heavy latch clicked shut.

I rested my trembling hand on my stomach. "Theo," I whispered into the empty room. "Your dad doesn't want you.

But I do." Chapter 7 After the pregnancy went public, Quinn stopped coming after me. But my life didn't improve.

Dominic had the estate staff bolt heavy iron bars over the master bedroom windows. He swapped the door locks; they only opened from the outside now.

I couldn't step a single foot out of the room without permission. Maids slid three meals a day through the door.

A driver and two armed guards flanked me for every single prenatal appointment. I was a caged bird, carefully kept alive for breeding. Dominic rarely showed his face.

When he did, he hovered in the doorway, his boots never crossing the threshold. He fired off a few clinical questions about my vitals and the baby’s heartbeat, then turned and left.

His eyes were always a tangled, turbulent mess. I didn't bother trying to untangle them anymore. I poured every ounce of my focus into the baby.

I forced food down my throat on a strict schedule. I slept. I counted the days between ultrasounds. As my stomach swelled, the faint, fluttering kicks started.

Every time a tiny foot nudged my ribs, my hand flattened over the spot. "Be good, Theo," I murmured. It was the only thing keeping blood pumping through my veins.

The estate doctor visited once a week.

Every time, the crease between his eyebrows dug a little deeper. "Genevieve, your heart function is actively dropping," he warned. "We have to schedule an early Csection.

If we don't, neither you nor the baby will survive." I shook my head. "Not yet." I needed time. I needed the baby to grow just a little stronger. I needed a window to run.

One afternoon, the guards granted me thirty minutes of strictly monitored yard time. I dragged my feet along the gravel garden path.

As I passed the groundfloor guest wing, I noticed a window cracked open. Quinn sat in a velvet armchair right by the glass.

Her eyes were completely glazed over, staring blankly at nothing. Her fingers were tightly coiled around a dark blue necktie. My boots ground to a dead halt on the gravel.

I knew that tie. It was Vincent's favorite—a handmade Italian silk piece, customstitched with a microscopic 'V' woven into the dark pattern.

After his death, I thought the movers had trashed it with the rest of his things. Why the hell did Quinn have it?

I opened my mouth, but the guard shoved my shoulder, forcing me down the path. I threw a look over my shoulder. Quinn hadn't twitched a single muscle.

She just sat there, frozen like a wax figure. That night, sleep wouldn't come. Sometime past midnight, I slipped out of bed for a glass of water.

As I crept past the heavy oak doors of the study, a low murmur leaked into the hallway. Dominic.

And Quinn. "The second the baby is born," Dominic's voice rumbled, pitched extremely low. "He goes straight to you." "I've already wired the funds for an estate in Europe.

You take him, relocate, and start fresh