Valentine
I want to leave. I've had enough of this theatre of the damned.
My voice echoes off the soft yellow-and-gold painted walls of my mother's room as I slam the door shut behind me. It doesn't even feel like mine—the voice, the room, this life. It all belongs to someone else. A girl who died in a fire ten years ago and never really came back.
"Valentine!" My mother—Krystal Danbury—abandons her wardrobe and marches toward me, arms folded tight across her over-enhanced chest. Her voice is as vicious as her silhouette in the chandelier's golden gleam.
"You can't just leave," she snaps, her heels clicking on the marble. "You don't get to act like Keira."
Her tone when she says my sister's name drips venom. Keira King. My cousin. My only real family. The girl who inherited a business empire at the age of two because her parents died in a 'tragic car accident.'
"She's not even your real sister," my mother hisses, reading my silence. "You should thank God you're not like her."
"Stop belittling her," I snap, my voice rising before I can stop it. "At least she gives a damn about me."
Krystal's eyes flash like polished steel. "Watch your tone, Valentine Danbury. You forget who raised you."
Raised me?
I scoff. No one raised me. They reconstructed me—like a broken doll glued back together with money and manipulation.
"I want out of this goddamn golden cage," I mutter and storm away before she can throw another insult, her perfume and presence clinging to the walls like poison.
The house is quiet. Too quiet. Rich houses always are. Silence is the most expensive sound.
I walk toward Father's study at the end of the corridor. The chandeliers hang like threats above me, casting long shadows on royal blue walls decorated with paintings I don't care about.
I knock once and peek in.
The smell of cigars and leather-bound lies greets me first.
He's there. Sitting behind his desk, looking every inch the powerful man he pretends to be. Eden Danbury. Not a father. A CEO in a tailored suit. A man who can ruin companies over breakfast and still find time to ignore his daughter before lunch.
"I want to leave," I say coldly.
He looks up from his laptop, pinching the bridge of his nose like I'm the problem.
"What is it this time?" he sighs. "Another tantrum?"
"I'm done being part of your illusion. I want a life, not a prison sentence."
He laughs.
He laughs.
"Are you spending time with Keira again?"
The name is a warning, not a question.
"I'm spending time with reality. Something this family avoids like the plague."
He returns to his screen, unbothered.
"You're just like your mother," I bite out. "Tangled in affairs and lies. Maybe if you spent more time being a husband instead of parading your assistant around—"
"Enough," he says without raising his voice. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know Melinda's more than an assistant. I know Mom's not faithful either. You both play house while your daughter drowns in a lie. And guess what? I'm not drowning anymore."
A muscle twitches in his jaw. For a second, I think he'll explode.
But he only says, "You're just like her."
I know what he means.Her.My real mother.
The flames rise in my memory, uninvited.
Screaming.A woman sobbing.Locked doors.Me, banging on glass, choking, coughing.Smoke curling into a spiral around a broken chandelier.And someone—someone I trusted—walking away.Leaving me to burn.
I stagger back from the desk like the floor tilted beneath me.
"Valentine?"
I don't answer. I can't.
Because I can smell the fire again. I can hear it crackle. I can feel my seven-year-old self pounding on the door that never opened.
And I remember the whisper, barely audible through the flames:
"This wasn't supposed to happen…"
Back in my room, I shut the door and slide down against it, letting the silence consume me.
That's when Melinda barges in.
"You little brat!" she screeches. "If your last name wasn't Danbury, I'd have snapped you like a twig."
I look at her, blankly. I should care. I should react. But I've already walked through hell. What's another demon?
"Valentine," she continues, "you think this world owes you something. It doesn't. You were an accident. A charity case. Your parents died because they were careless, and now you want sympathy?"
I slap her. Hard. The crack echoes like a gunshot.
She clutches her cheek. "You psycho—"
"Try me again," I say calmly, grabbing her wrist mid-swing and twisting it until she yelps.
"You're nothing but a pretty whore my father keeps around for his needs. Try acting like something more than that, Melinda."
That's when Eden storms in. Of course. Timing is his talent.
"She hit me!" Melinda cries dramatically, running into his arms like a wounded dove.
"You hit her?" he yells.
"She provoked me," I snap. "She called me a mistake."
Eden doesn't even look at me. Just smooths Melinda's hair like she's the one who needs comfort.
"You're not getting your trust fund, Valentine," he says coldly. "Do whatever you want. But this stunt ends here."
"You never raised me. You just made me survive."
Later, I call Keira.
"I need out," I whisper into the phone. "Birmingham's choking me."
"We'll get into Kingston," she says without hesitation. "Or Oxford. Hell, maybe even an Ivy. We'll find a way."
"I don't know if I can handle another institution."
"Then we burn it down, sis," she jokes.
I shiver.
Because burning things down is where this all began.
That night, I try to sleep. But the dreams come back.
Screams.My mother's necklace in the ash.A shadowy figure standing in the doorway.Watching.Not saving.
I wake with my sheets soaked, my throat raw, my heart a battlefield.
Someday I'll remember everything.
And when I do—
Someone will burn for it