Escaping the Hamilton Mansion

The small cupcake sat on my nightstand like a monument to my own foolishness. Thirty candles would have been too much for the tiny space of my room—the servant's quarters tucked away in the mansion's forgotten corner—so I'd settled for a single white candle, unlit and mocking in the dim evening light.

I'd bought it myself during my weekly grocery run, slipping it into the cart alongside Aidan's favorite cereal and Bryson's imported coffee. The cashier had smiled when she saw it. "Someone's birthday?" she'd asked. "Mine," I'd whispered, and the word had felt foreign on my tongue.

My fingers traced the pendant at my throat, the small silver locket containing my mother's photo—the only witness to this pathetic celebration. Six years. Six birthdays in this house, and not once had anyone remembered. Not Bryson, who barely acknowledged my existence except to issue curt instructions. Not Aidan, who I'd raised from infancy but who looked through me as if I were furniture. Not even Mrs. Hamilton, who kept meticulous records of every household detail except the humanity of the woman who'd borne her grandson.

I glanced at my phone for the fifteenth time in an hour. No messages. No missed calls. The screen showed 8:47 PM, and Bryson still wasn't home. He'd left that morning without his usual goodbye to Aidan—not that he ever said goodbye to me—mentioning something about an important meeting that would run late.

The sound of voices drifted up from the kitchen below, and I pressed my ear to the floor, a habit I'd developed over the years. The household staff often knew more about the family's movements than I did.

"...personally went to collect her," Maria's voice carried through the ventilation. "Canceled the board meeting and everything. Haven't seen Mr. Hamilton this excited in years."

"Miss Silva's back?" That was James, the groundskeeper. "After all this time?"

"Flew in from Milan this afternoon. He's been counting down the days since she called last month."

My chest tightened. Renata Silva. I'd heard whispers of her name over the years—Bryson's first love, the woman who'd supposedly saved his life during some accident abroad. The woman whose photograph I'd glimpsed once in his study, quickly hidden when I'd entered to bring him coffee.

I sank onto my narrow bed, the cupcake forgotten. Of course. On my birthday, the day that marked thirty years of my existence, twenty-four hours that should have held some small significance in the universe, Bryson was at the airport collecting the woman who actually mattered to him.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Six years ago, I'd agreed to Mrs. Hamilton's proposition to save my dying mother. Bear a child for her son, she'd said. Help continue the Hamilton line. My mother had needed surgery we couldn't afford, and I'd been desperate enough to sign away my future for hers.

But my mother had died anyway, three years later, and I'd been left with nothing but ashes in an urn and a child who'd