Arkitxt
She grows up poor. Quiet. Unclaimed.
Her mother died early, leaving behind nothing but the knowledge of how to stay small. Her father existed only as a hollow space in their lives. An absence that ate their food and sat between them at night. In their world of thin walls and counted coins, silence was the only thing that kept them alive.
On her nineteenth birthday, a door finally opens.
Her father takes her from a life of borrowed rooms and empty cupboards into a house built on marble and restraint. It is a place of locked wings and rules spoken without warmth. She is not a daughter here; she is the proof of a past mistake. She is the child who should have stayed invisible.
The woman who runs the house sees her too clearly. She meets the girl's presence with a resentment that cuts deeper than cruelty, a silence sharper than any scream. Every cold glance is a reminder: you are what he wants to forget.
This story is about what happens when poverty teaches you how to disappear. It is about the heavy, aching truth of living in a world where fairness was never promised.
And it is about the most dangerous thing of all: loving someone you know you cannot have. Not loudly. Not bravely. But carefully. In the tiny, jagged pieces you keep hidden beneath your skin.
If you have ever learned to survive by staying small, this story sees you.
If you have ever loved from a distance because wanting more felt like a threat, this story understands you.
The Mistress's Daughter is a dark, quiet novel about the cost of being born where you were never meant to belong and the strength it takes to exist anyway.