MISFIT

In a house where love came with conditions, Elora Béllerose was not a daughter so much as a product-the sole heir of the CEO of Béllerose Logistics Limited, and the puppet of a mother who mistook control for devotion.

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I was raised to believe love was something you earned or lost.

My mother's affection arrived in measured doses: warm when I performed correctly and vanishing the moment I failed. My father, the founder of Béllerose Logistics Limited, folded in her presence.

He watched. He agreed.

I was expected to do the same.

Disappointment was quieter than violence when I defied them, but it lingered longer-torture disguised as discipline. So I learned to study their moods, to anticipate reactions, to edit myself, to accept that care could disappear without warning.

I learned when silence was safest.

I obeyed.

And obedience made me observant. I memorized preferences, cataloged tells, and learned how to be tolerable. I designed myself to avoid rejection.

Then, the night of the home invasion broke our house open and tore my family apart. Sirens replaced silence. Blood erased routine. And, in the wreckage, I lost the only version of love I had ever known. The façade collapsed. What followed was chaos and the slow, sickening realization that my parents had been hiding things I was never meant to understand.

The worst of them built our fortune.

My memories began to shift. Truths blurred. My father unraveled-paranoia, guilt, rage-until all that remained was the sense that something had always been wrong.

I thought love was something you survived. I was wrong.