After her father's tragic passing, Nora Davis is forced behind the scenes, nothing more than a stepping stone for others in their journey to stardom. When an opportunity presents itself, Nora, trapped under her stepmother's heel, takes it as her cha...
WARNING: This chapter may have slight triggers. Please take care as you read.
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The day after Nora's father committed suicide, the house was empty.
Mallory's parents were there to console their daughter and their grandchild—the four of them even disappearing for lunch.
Mallory had been a wreck. Until that point, Nora had never seen her stepmother cry. So when the paramedics came to take the body, she hadn't expected to hear such giant, gasping sobs from downstairs.
Nora hid in her room under her covers. She was just...numb. As if somehow her mind and heart disconnected and weren't on speaking terms. She knew she should be devastated. She even expected some type of heart-wrenching grief.
Only there was nothing.
At first, she couldn't process it. After a few hours of sitting there in an empty house under heavy covers, she finally thought everything through.
And then she couldn't breathe.
She was alone.
Mallory wasn't her mother. Nor did she care to be. Her father had had a somewhat platonic love with her stepmother. They'd been two lost souls swimming in a sea of grief after their respective mate's loss. And somehow they had found each other and kindled a type of acquaintance love. Their loss had been their bonding factor. The bond had been strong enough that her father felt he could marry Mallory and live together with her. Could start over.
Only he'd been wrong.
That had been two years ago, a week before Nora started her freshman year at Jostlin Academy. Mallory made her go to school regardless. Made her pretend nothing happened.
Three weeks after that, Mallory called Nora into her father's study. Her stepsister Felicity was there, sitting in her mother's favorite teal chair. When Nora slipped into the room, Felicity crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair.
Nora hated her father's study. The thought of it alone made her nauseous. She couldn't look at anything—especially not the wooden truss above the fireplace. Or the new white rug underneath it. It had been her father's favorite room. And the room where—
Mallory was still in the same perfectly pressed maroon pantsuit she'd worn to the office—her father's office. Upon his passing, the board granted Mallory the promotion and just like that, her father was replaced.
Not three weeks after his death.
The anger crawled carefully up Nora's spine just seeing Mallory in the pantsuit. Her father spent his life working on his company, Dream Records, building it from the ground up, making a name for himself. And in just three weeks, the board found someone they deemed sufficient enough to replace him.
