The Heir's Ruthless Obsession

The black car had been idling outside the iron gates for three hours. No one at Saint Brigitte's owned anything that shiny. Most visitors arrived either in rusted-out trucks or rattling taxis, looking for a way out or a place to leave a mistake. This car just sat there, the engine a low, expensive hum against the gravel.

I watched it from the laundry room window, biting the inside of my cheeks until I tasted copper.

"Isabelle! The linens aren't going to scrub themselves."

Claire's voice hit me like a slap. She was only eighteen but the orphanage had already squeezed the girlhood out of her, leaving behind something sharp and bitter. She shoved a basket of wet sheets into my chest. The weight was sudden and heavy, the cold water soaking into my apron immediately. The room was thick with the smell of cheap soap and the kind of humid heat that made your skin feel permanently tacky and leave your hair frizzy.

"I'm on it," I muttered. I reached up, tugging my hood further over my brow until the world was just a narrow slit of gray stone and floorboards.

"Still wearing that rag?" She liked to crowd people, a habit she'd picked up from the older girls. She was the kind of person you don't want to see first thing in the morning. "You look like a monk. Or a coward."

Before I could pull away, she reached out. Her fingers caught the edge of the wool and yanked.

The hood fell back, and for a second, the room felt too quiet. My hair didn't just sit there. It seemed to scream against the dull backdrop of the laundry. It was a deep, bruised red, the color of a fresh wound. In a place where everything was bleached by lye or faded by the sun, my hair felt like a violation.

"Sister Marianne says the cold triggers my nerves," I lied. My voice sounded thin, even to my own ears.

"Sister Marianne is a fool for you," Claire spat. She leaned in, her eyes tracing the line of my scalp with something that looked like hunger. "She thinks that hair makes you a miracle. I think it makes you a target. You look like one of those weeping statues in the basement, Isabelle. You know what they do to the pretty ones? They break them first."

She gave me a hard shove. I tripped over the edge of the stone basin, the wet sheets sprawling across the floor like a heap of dead skin. I couldn't fight back. I know better than to create a scene. I just stayed there on the grit, my palms stinging, listening to the girls' muffled snickers as they walked away.

"Fix yourself," Claire hissed over her shoulder. The heavy oak doors at the end of the hall groaned on their hinges. "Someone's coming. And they aren't here for charity cases."

I scrambled up, frantically stuffing the red strands back into the