"Alex!!!"
"You bastard of a child!"
"Come down here this instant!"
The voice thundered through the Miller household, heavy with rage, shaking the walls and stabbing through the silence like a jagged blade.
"Yes, ma!" Alex shouted back, sprinting down the stairs as if his life depended on it.
He burst into the living room—a sixteen-year-old boy with unkempt black hair, sunken gray eyes, and a body too thin for his age. His shirt was faded and oversized, the right sleeve torn, and his pants clung to his narrow waist with a belt on its last hole.
Standing in the center of the room was his stepmother, Lily Miller, her arms folded and her eyes blazing.
"What took you so long?!" she snapped. "Do you know how many times I called you?! My voice is gone hoarse because of you!"
Without waiting for a reply, her hand flew out and slapped him hard across the face.
Alex winced but didn't flinch. Pain stung his cheek like fire, but he said nothing. He knew the rules. In this house, silence was survival.
"Seriously," she hissed, glaring at him with pure contempt, "if you had never been born, your father would still be alive."
Alex didn't reply. He only lowered his gaze to the floor and waited—waited for whatever task or insult would follow.
In the Miller household, Alex was more of a slave than an individual.
Lucien and Amelia—Lily's biological children—ate at the dinner table. Alex cleaned it.
They had clean clothes. Alex wore what no one wanted.
He was always "the bastard." Never "my son." Never even "Alex"—just a reminder of betrayal.
It wasn't always like this.
Nine years ago, Lily had been a different woman.
She was warm. Full of life. A woman who had waited six long years before finally hearing a child call her "Mommy."
She and William, her husband, had once been inseparable. Their love was strong, even without children—until the pressure started to build. From relatives. From society. From within.
When Lucien was born, she had cried tears of joy.
When Amelia followed, she felt whole
One month after Amelia was born—while Lily was still weak from childbirth and nursing her infant daughter—William came home with another woman... and a child.
The woman was beautiful, young, and carried herself with quiet confidence. In her arms rested a baby boy, barely three weeks old.
"This is Isabella," William had said, not even able to meet Lily's eyes. "My... secretary. And this is our son."
The words had hit Lily like a dagger through the chest.
A year. That was how long it had been going on behind her back—while she carried his child, while she stayed up at night praying for a safe delivery, while she fought through the pain of pregnancy.
It wasn't just the betrayal that shattered her. It was the realization that the woman standing in front of her had given her husband a child effortlessly, in a matter of months. Lily had waited six agonizing years before Lucien was born. Six years of failed tests, doctor visits, and silent tears in the night. Six years of feeling like she wasn't enough.
Now here was this woman—Isabella—young, radiant, and already a mother to William's child. Her child. A child that looked just like him.
Lily didn't scream. She didn't cry. She simply stood there, holding her newborn Amelia tightly to her chest, her entire world collapsing around her.
William moved Isabella into the house two weeks later.
That was the beginning of Lily's descent.