When I was born into this world, I was greeted with nothing but a soft pity from my father. My mother on the other hand welcomed me into the world with glee. Her sharp jaw, her piercing azure eyes looking down at me as a child. My mother had a beautiful body shape, many women envied her. Many men lusted over her maybe that's why my father violated her multiple times.

I looked at my mother with her haggard eyes, even in this state she was still beautiful. I remember this memory as clear as glass. My father had been arguing with my mother one day I didn't know why they were arguing. I was listening to them against the door when I heard a loud thump. I peeked into the room to see my father holding my mother by the neck to the ground. My mother was crying trying to gasp for air as she pleaded to my father to let her go. My father didn't care he was busy stripping her from her clothing. I made eye contact with my mother at that moment she gained enough strength to shove my father from her. Only that enraged him more and started beating her. That was enough to let me run over to my bedroom, I felt myself shaking I started sobbing ferociously no one there to comfort me.

As I was growing up day by day, I felt nauseas my body was always pale I refused to eat I was at the time five. My mother worried that I was sick she would always stay by my bedside at nights. One night I witnessed one of our male servants assaulting her my mother's sobs were muffled by his hand his disgusting smirk as he looked down at her. Later I found out my father had sent that servant to my mother as a punishment for not visiting him one night in his bedroom.

four years later I was dining with my mother her body was beaten and torn by father all these years and she still had the strength to sit upright at the table. Before I went to bed my mother kissed me on my forehead and told me how much she loved me, I thought nothing of it as I left to go to bed. After a while I had a nightmare that my mother had been killed by a monster, ran to my mother's room so that she could comfort me with her soft words and warm body. 

I opened the doors to find a body hanging from the celling a chair that had been tossed sat there on the floor. Her golden hair that was shined by the moonlight her once fair skin was now dusky. I remember seeing her eye move my way I don't know if it did or not maybe it did.

I screamed a blood chilling scream  

Just as I let out that scream my nanny had come bursting through the open door. She saw my mother than me, she picked me up as I screamed and cried, I wanted to hug my mother.

The last thing I saw before my nanny clasped her hand against my eyes were maids and servants including the one that assaulted my mother pull her down from the ceiling and detach the rope that was in her neck. 

My nanny finally detached her hand from my eyes when we were deep into the hallway, where I saw my father run to my mother's chamber. We made eye contact before he let out a curse.

I was tucked into my bed and told to go back to sleep by my nanny. I sat there in the dark void of my room sobbing no one there to comfort me again. I must have fell asleep while sobbing since I awakened with people talking outside my room and the sunlight flashing against My eyes. I got out of my bed and peeked out of my bedroom door. I saw my father's other wife jasmine talking to my nanny, she noticed me. She opened the door which caused me to fall she help my chin up with her hand and examined my face. She whispered to herself on how I had gotten my mothers and fathers eyes. 

She slapped me 

I didn't even get to react to it before she picked me up from my nightgown and told me that she was the new duchess of the house. MY mother was the duchess of the house before her since my father "loved" my mother more. After that day my mother's funeral came.

During the mourning of my mother my father started having relations with other women who looked like my mother, although no one came close to her beauty. while my father had been doing that jasmine was spending money everywhere. My older brother who my mother had given birth to before me was mourning as well but he was still assaulting maids and seeked comfort from his piano teacher he was after all a teenager. That left my younger sister Linena she didn't seem the least sympathetic I almost sensed she was happy because of our mother's death. 

I was the only one mourning the loss of my mother greatly.  I only mourned her for a week when my father wanted me to get engaged, I was eight at the time. My father wanted me to get married quickly he wanted me out the house. When I still kept refusing his demand, he got impatient and started beating me. I was yelling out for him to stop while his servants just stood by watching it happen that was the first time he had beaten me.

After more screaming more beatings and more blood stained in his fist I finally agreed. I remember that day as if it had just happened, I was outside in the garden of my home when my father and two other men stood by him. My father was gleefully talking to the older man when he looked at me. The man examined me it made me feel uneasy when he finally said to my father that I looked just like my mother.

That triggered my father and he looked at me with glaring eyes. On the night before I finally agreed to get engaged, I overheard jasmine say to my father to go a bit easy on me since I was only 8. He responded saying that I looked too much like my mother and said he might do something he will regret. The next morning I finally agreed to the marriage.

He brushed it off as a joke while still talking to the older man that's when my father finally introduced me to the other man. "This is your fiancé Eliot" he said while he grabbed him by the shoulder proudly. Eliot smiled at me I don't know why but I felt my heart beating fast he was fairly handsome he looked to be around the same age as my brother. 

finally, my father and the man I presumed to be Eliot's father left I felt at ease. He said to me "you must be elaine?". Something about him felt comforting I wanted more of him I wanted to get to know him I wanted him to know me I wanted him to love me.

Maybe that's how I became so fixated on him.

End of chapter one