Bullied Cinderella - Hollie Hutchins Page 0,18
midair, staring at me with wide and startled eyes.
“Get back to work!” I ordered him with a vicious growl.
6
Lucia
As I smoothed my hands across my custom made dress and studied my reflection, it was hard to believe just how far I had come from the hideous brown uniform I was used to wearing every day at the Valencia estate. My sisters and I were getting ready for the monthly high society party that was thrown to welcome new landowners, and we were the guests of honor.
I was left speechless after Jada explained everything that had happened since I left. Our estranged American father was ill and wanted to meet us before he died. Elaina went to the states with them, and they stayed with him until he passed away. I was heartbroken that I didn’t have the chance to meet him and make my peace with his absence from our lives before then.
It only made my hatred for Leonardo and his cousins burn deeper. Elaina was allowed to write letters home and take phone calls. We were meant to be employees, not slaves. In addition to everything else they had done to me, I now had my missed opportunity to meet my father to add to my list of reasons for despising them.
The only thing that soothed my passionate disgust for them was knowing that in just a few hours, I could begin the quest of vengeance I had vowed to carry out against them.
Apparently, Elaina had found more than just money at her placement as a veterinarian on a horse ranch. She had fallen in love with one of the brothers - Marco. Jada suspected she was also in love with the other brother, Felix. She thought perhaps the three of them had some kind of arrangement, but we didn’t dare bring it up and risk our mother hearing about anything like that.
Before he died, our father had purchased the property next to Marco and Felix’s. With the land she owned and the money we all inherited, Elaina had acquired the financial status she needed to marry Marco. They married very quickly because she was expecting. My heart ached even more to know I missed hearing the news of her pregnancy along with Jada and our mother, and that I missed her wedding on top of that. Each new bit of news about what I had missed just added salt to the wound, and that only motivated my vengeance more.
“You look beautiful,” Elaina gushed over my shoulder as she marveled at my dress in the mirror.
We had been closer than ever since I found them. After I was gone for so long, she had started to wonder if she would ever see me again. And her heart was plagued with guilt. She blamed herself for what I had experienced because of the lie she told in her letter about her placement not being so bad. Of course, hers ended up really not being bad at all. It led her to finding love. But she still hadn’t forgiven herself for feeling like me fleeing to the auction was all her fault.
Every time she looked at me, I could see the pain in her eyes...Like she didn’t think she would ever fully make it up to me. I squeezed her hands around my shoulders and smiled. She couldn’t fully know just how glorious I was about to feel.
I knew Leonardo, Jorge, and Dario would all be attending the landowners’ party. Their mother never let them miss the opportunity to meet a high-class woman with money who was suitable to marry one of them. None of them suspected that I would be the one strolling in as a guest of honor. I was one of them now, and I couldn’t wait to relish in how much they would hate that fact. The looks on their faces would only be the beginning. I had money and some status now, and I was going to use it to my advantage in getting back at them.
Our mother had been feeling much better after getting the best medical treatment we could now afford, and the fresh air of the countryside seemed to be good for her. But she still decided to stay home from the party.
“I’m much too old to be galavanting around at these things,” she told us with a flustered smile. “You girls go and have fun.”
Jada, Elaina, and I hugged her and exchanged a look. Oh, we were going to have fun alright.