The evening was supposed to be a celebration, but it turned into a nightmare of psychological torment.

Kyrie, my husband, smiled arrogantly as he filled his new CEO’s glass with yet another round of expensive cognac. I was invisible to him as I moved around the table, silently serving the guests, tears silently blurring my vision. It had been just hours since I had lost my mother—and yet here I was, forced to act as though nothing had happened.

“Serve my guests, not your emotions,” Kyrie sneered, kicking me hard under the table when I leaned in too close. The pain in my ankle was nothing compared to the ache in my heart.

His boss, Thaddius Vance, barely glanced at me when Kyrie mocked my mourning, calling my tears “sentimental” and laughing about a “dead stray cat” I had seen earlier that day. But Thaddius was not laughing. He was watching me with a piercing gaze, his curiosity growing.

"More wine, sir?" I asked, my voice shaking from suppressing the sobs I could no longer hold back. As I reached forward with the bottle, my sleeve slid down, exposing a silver locket I’d worn since childhood—one that had belonged to my mother. The locket, engraved with a phoenix and crossed keys, glinted in the light.

Thaddius’s eyes locked onto it instantly. His hand shot out, gripping my wrist with alarming strength. The wine bottle slipped from my hand, shattering on the floor. Kyrie jumped up, furious over the spilled wine, but Thaddius was not concerned with the mess. His focus was on the locket.

“Where did you get this?” Thaddius demanded, his voice hoarse. His eyes were wild with something—recognition, maybe?

“T-this… this is my mother’s,” I stammered, confused and terrified. “She... she told me never to take it off.”

Thaddius’s expression shifted dramatically as he looked at me, his face paling with disbelief. “What was your mother’s name?” he whispered.

“Eta… Eta Griggs,” I said, feeling like I was about to collapse under the weight of the moment.

Thaddius’s grip on my wrist tightened, and tears began to well in his eyes. His face, once cold and authoritative, crumbled as if shattered by the revelation. “Eta…” he whispered again, his voice cracking. “I’ve been looking for her for thirty years.”

My mind spun. My mother had never mentioned a lost family member, a man who had been searching for her. What was happening?

Thaddius slowly turned his gaze toward Kyrie, and the tension in the room thickened. His grief transformed into fury.

“You told me your wife was crying over a stray cat?” Thaddius’s voice was low but filled with a terrible fury. “When her own mother died today? You force my own niece to serve you like a slave on the day of her greatest loss?”

Kyrie went pale. “N-niece? But her mother was just a seamstress—”

Thaddius slammed his heavy cane on the floor, cutting Kyrie’s words off. The sound echoed in the room like a shot fired in the silence.

Everything changed.