Chapter 3Crown of Thorns

Caleb didn’t come back after that night.

Three days later, the frantic banging of our head butler on my bedroom door shattered the morning silence.

“Miss Sterling! It’s terrible! Mr. Caleb… he’s taken Miss Chloe to the Sterling archives on the top floor! He forced the door!”

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

The archives. The room where every surviving belonging of my parents was kept.

I sprinted up the stairs, my heart hammering against my ribs, and kicked open the partially ajar door.

The room was a wasteland.

My parents’ wedding portrait, shattered. My mother’s favorite porcelain vases, reduced to dust. My father’s calligraphy set, splintered and broken. Everything was destroyed.

In the center of the devastation sat Chloe, crying dramatically over a small scratch on her leg. And kneeling beside her, like a devoted servant, was Caleb, dabbing at the tiny wound with a handkerchief.

“Silly girl,” he murmured, his voice dripping with affection. “So reckless. I told you to take your time smashing things, didn't I?”

“CALEB!” The name tore from my throat. “What are you doing?!”

He looked up, his expression utterly untroubled. “Ava. You’re here. Perfect. Could you grab the first aid kit? Chloe scraped her knee on some glass.”

“I asked you,” I repeated, my voice shaking with a rage so profound it felt like it would split me in two, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

“Chloe said the light in here was good,” he replied, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes. “She thought it would make a nice nursery.”

He gestured impatiently. “Are you going to get the antiseptic or not? It’ll scar if we wait too long.”

“You BASTARDS!”

The scream was primal, ripping through me. The old wound on my hand, not yet fully healed, tore open again. Fresh blood dripped onto the floor.

Seeing me, Chloe seized her moment. She pressed herself deeper into Caleb’s arms, her eyes meeting mine with a triumphant glint. With a flick of her hand, she swept a small glass figurine of my parents from a nearby table. It shattered on the floor.

Caleb’s arms tightened around her protectively.

“Ava, what is your problem?!” he yelled. “You’re scaring her!”

“I’m scaring her?” My voice was raw with disbelief. “Caleb, did you ask my permission before you brought her up here?!”

He let out a short, contemptuous laugh. “This is Hawthorne property, Ava. Why would I need anyone’s permission to show my fiancée around?”

The words hit me like a physical blow. This room… this sacred space that the Old Man himself had promised would be mine, forever untouched.

“Ava, this is the last thing I can do for your father,” he had told me, his voice thick with grief all those years ago. “This room, and everything in it, is the Hawthorne family’s eternal promise to the Sterlings. Anyone who dares to touch a single thing in here is striking at the very root of our family.”

And now his own grandson, the heir he was so proud of, was digging up that root with his bare hands for a woman he’d met in a bar.

“Hawthorne property?” I repeated, my voice dangerously low. I took a step toward them, my finger shaking as I pointed at Chloe. “This property was bought with Sterling blood! What is she that she even deserves to breathe the air in this room?”

“Get out,” I snarled. “Get. Out. Now.”

I lunged, my hands reaching for Chloe’s hair.

Caleb moved faster than I thought possible. He twisted, shielding her completely with his body, taking the brunt of my attack on his back.

“Ava, have you lost your mind?!” he roared.

I froze, staring at him as he sheltered her.

That posture.

That broad, protective back.

When we were children, another boy had thrown a rock at me. Caleb had shielded me just like this, wrapping his arms around me, letting his own back take the blow.

That protection had once been mine alone.

Now, he was using it to defend someone else. From me.

My heart didn’t just break. It felt like it was being ripped from my chest by hand.

“It’s just a bunch of junk belonging to dead people!” he spat, his eyes blazing with a cold fury. “You’d attack a pregnant woman over this trash? Ava, I am so disappointed in you.”

Trash.

He called my parents’ memories trash.

The last thread of sanity inside me snapped. I turned and grabbed a heavy curtain rod from the floor.

“Then let’s all die together!”