He even let her desecrate my father's grave, pouring his ashes on the ground for her new puppy to lick.
The love I had for him died with my father, replaced by a cold, hard resolve. The hero who once saved me was gone, leaving a man who would threaten my father's grave to keep me in line.
So when Celesta handed me a plane ticket for a "pilgrimage," I saw my chance. I faked my own death. The world believes Ellen Strong died in a plane crash. Five years later, my billionaire ex-husband, consumed by guilt, finally discovered the truth. He found me.
Chapter 1
Blake Wallace was a hero in New York.
Everyone knew his name, not just because he was the sole heir to the Wallace real estate empire, but because he had been a motocross star, a daredevil who seemed to fly.
He gave all that up for me, Ellen Strong.
During his final race, a piece of equipment malfunctioned on the track, sending a metal shard flying toward the stands where I sat. Blake saw it. Without a thought, he swerved his bike, taking the impact himself. The crash was brutal. It ended his career and left him with a permanent injury in his right hand.
When reporters swarmed his hospital bed, asking if he regretted sacrificing his championship for a woman, he looked straight into the camera.
His voice was weak, but his words echoed across the city.
"I can lose a hundred championships," he said. "But I can't lose Ellen Strong once."
That declaration became the cornerstone of our marriage. I came from a simple, working-class family. My father, Douglas Strong, was a retired factory worker, a kind and devout man who couldn' t believe his daughter had married into such a world. But Blake' s love made me feel like I belonged. For years, I believed that love was indestructible, as solid as the skyscrapers his family built.
Then Celesta Norman entered our lives.
She was introduced at a charity gala, a woman with captivating eyes and a serene smile who claimed to be the last descendant of a forgotten European mystical lineage. She spoke of energies, auras, and purification. To me, and to everyone else, she sounded like a charlatan. A fraud.
But Blake was mesmerized.
His athletic career was gone, leaving a void that his business success could never fill. He was powerful, but he felt purposeless. Celesta saw that void and filled it with her nonsense. She told him he had a tarnished soul from the violence of his sport and that only she could cleanse him.
Blake didn' t just believe her; he worshipped her.
Celesta moved into our home, our lives, and our marriage. Blake gave her the master suite. I was moved to a guest room. He said it was necessary for his spiritual journey. Celesta became the queen of the Wallace mansion, and I, its original mistress, became her servant.
Her demands were absurd. Her food had to be prepared with water imported from a specific Swiss spring. Her bedsheets had to be hand-washed with soap made from olive oil blessed by moonlight. Her meditation chambers had to be kept at a precise temperature, and I was the one who had to monitor the thermostat day and night.
Blake forced me to comply. He told me serving Celesta was part of my own "purification." He said my humble origins made my soul heavy and that by catering to Celesta's enlightened needs, I could elevate myself.
I endured it because I loved him. I thought it was a phase, a strange obsession he would eventually get over. I clung to the memory of the man who had thrown away his future for me.
The illusion shattered the day my father came to visit.
Douglas was a simple man. He brought a homemade apple pie, his pride and joy. When he saw Celesta, he offered her a warm, simple greeting, the way he would greet anyone.
Celesta recoiled as if he were diseased.
"The aura of the common man is suffocating," she declared, her voice ringing with disgust. "It contaminates my sacred space."
She claimed my father' s presence had desecrated the mansion and demanded a "cleansing." Blake, my husband, the man who had once saved my life, did not defend my father. He agreed with her.
He stood by and watched as Celesta humiliated Douglas. She made him get on his hands and knees, ordering him to apologize to the "spirits of the house" for his intrusion. My father, a man of quiet dignity and deep faith, was confused and hurt. He looked at me, his eyes pleading for help.
I begged Blake to stop it. I screamed, I cried, I reminded him of who my father was.
Blake' s face was cold, a mask of indifference.
"Ellen, it's for his own good," he said. "Celesta is cleansing his soul of its ignorance."
Celesta then delivered her final, cruelest blow. She looked at the simple cross my father always wore around his neck, a gift from my late mother.
"That trinket represents a false, powerless god," she sneered. "It is an insult to the true cosmic order."
She ordered a bodyguard to rip it from his neck.
That was when my father collapsed.
His heart, already weak, gave out under the emotional brutality. He died on the cold marble floor of that mansion, clutching his chest, his last breath a gasp of pain and disbelief.
The love I had for Blake died with him.
In its place grew a cold, hard resolve. Blake offered me money-a vast sum-as compensation for my father's life. I knew then that the man I married was gone, replaced by a monster. The abuse didn't stop. It escalated. When Celesta was diagnosed with a kidney condition, Blake forced me to become her designated donor, keeping me on call like a living organ bank.
He allowed her to perform a "cleansing rite" where she burned all of my father's cherished possessions-his books, his worn-out armchair, the photos of my mother. I watched the smoke carry away the last physical traces of the man I loved most.
The final straw came during a fire alarm. The sirens blared, and the house filled with smoke. I was trapped on the second floor, my ankle twisted in the chaos. Blake ran past my room. Our eyes met. For a second, I saw a flicker of the old Blake. But then Celesta screamed from down the hall.
"Blake! The Celestial Orb! It will be destroyed!"
He didn't hesitate. He ran toward her room to save one of her worthless "sacred artifacts" and left me to die in the fire.
A firefighter pulled me from the flames. As I recovered, I found what I needed: proof. Celesta was a complete fraud, a con artist named Celia Norman from Ohio with a history of scams.
She had once given me a plane ticket for a "pilgrimage" she wanted me to take on her behalf-another one of her cruel errands. The flight was scheduled for the next week. I looked at that ticket, and I saw my escape.
I used a fake ID to buy a ticket on a different flight to a small town in Oregon. I left the ticket Celesta gave me on my empty bed.
The plane I was supposed to be on crashed into the ocean. There were no survivors.
Ellen Strong died that day.
From a distance, I read about the aftermath. Consumed by a guilt that finally broke through his delusion, Blake Wallace exposed Celesta. He used his immense power not just to imprison her but to ensure she would never see freedom again.
Then he disappeared from the world, punishing himself in a self-imposed exile of regret.
But I was free. And I would never go back.
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