Betrayed I Upgraded to His Billionaire Brother novel Chapter 43

Chapter 43

I closed the app, the image burning behind my eyes.

The cake in my fridge now felt less like a kindness and more like a consolation prize–or a cruel joke.

I tossed my phone onto the duvet as if it had burned me, the sleek device landing with a soft thud before I collapsed beside it, the fight seeping out of

1. me.

My thoughts, like vultures circling carrion, would not be diverted; they swept back, relentless and grim, to the impending Windsor family dinner. It was more than an event; it was a trial, a meticulously staged performance where I was both the unwilling star and the designated scapegoat.

That familiar, heavy sense of dread began to coil in my stomach, a living thing that tightened with each remembered slight, each condescending smile.

It was a physical weight, this anticipation of facing them all again–Margaret’s cold scrutiny, the aunts‘ thinly veiled disdain, and the fresh hell that Theodore’s return promised.

The opulent dining room, with its crystal chandeliers and ancestral portraits staring down in judgment, felt less like a home and more like a beautifully appointed battlefield.

If I had to credit Margaret with one thing… a single, solitary act to balance the scales of her coldness, it was that she had saved me once. She had plucked me from an abyss.

The two months I spent in the orphanage at age five, after the vibrant world of my parents was snuffed out, were not just sad; they were dark, a deep. grimy grey that stained the soul. The place smelled of stale cabbage and despair, a scent I can sometimes still catch in my nightmares.

There was a girl there, just a year older, with sharp eyes and a cruel mouth, who basically ruled the place through fear and cunning. She was a queen in a kingdom of the forgotten, and she took one look at my clean clothes and the lingering shock in my eyes–the last vestiges of a loved child–and decided she hated me with a pure, unadulterated passion. No one was allowed to play with me. Isolation was her first weapon.

campaign was creative in its meanness. She would take the little dresses my mother had bought me, the soft cottons and pretty prints that were Last tangible connection to a lost life, and cut them into ragged strips with a pair of blunt scissors she’d stolen.

She hid thumbtacks in my shoes, the sharp points pressing into my tender feet until I learned to shake them out every morning. She would hold me down and scribble on my face with waxy crayons, declaring me a ‘dirty, ugly liar‘ to anyone who glanced our way. But the final, most profound violation was when she stole the delicate silver necklace I’d worn since birth, the one my father had clasped around my tiny neck. It was as if she was trying to systematically erase who I was, piece by piece.

I told the teachers, my voice small and hopeful. But every child, terrified of becoming her next target, parroted her lies and said I was making it all up. Of course, the overworked, weary adults didn’t believe the new, quiet girl. My truth became just another inconvenient fiction in a place full of sad

stories.

I remember finally curling up in a dusty corner of the backyard, my body spent, my eyes swollen nearly shut from crying. The ache of missing my mom and dad was a physical pain, a hollowed–out space in my chest that felt like it would never be filled.

It was a depth of loneliness I was too young to fathom, a feeling that I had simply ceased to matter in the world. That’s when Margaret appeared, a tall, severe silhouette against the weak sun. She looked down at me, not with warmth, but with a calculating interest, as if assessing a piece of damaged goods.

If she hadn’t taken me to the Windsor family… If Gavin, in his own enigmatic way, hadn’t brought me into his home and offered a different, harder kind of education… I might not have survived. The weak don’t last long in any jungle, be it an orphanage or a gilded mansion.

Little Elara was so obedient back then. So naive, almost foolish, trusting that goodness would be met with goodness. It took someone nine years to sand that naivete away, to teach me how to be clever, how to read the subtle shifts in power, how to fight back not with tears, but with silence, strategy, and a well–placed strike. The lesson was brutal, but it stuck.

I looked up at the ceiling, the pristine white expanse offering no answers. The light was too bright, harsh and glaring, exposing every flaw and every memory I wished would stay hidden.

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Betrayed? I Upgraded to His Billionaire Brother

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Chapter 43

Just as I was about to surrender to the numb embrace of sleep, my phone lit up the darkness, casting a blueish glow across the sheets. A text from Zane materialized: My dear, see you tomorrow. I bought you the latest limited edition LV bag. I’m sure you’ll love it.

I couldn’t help but laugh, a dry, hollow sound that echoed strangely in the quiet room. Zane was always like this–whenever his conscience pricked him, whenever he had transgressed too blatantly, he overcompensated with extravagance. A bag for a broken promise. A trinket to buy back a slice of my silence.

I could vividly picture him right now, likely tangled up in the sheets with Amelia, his brother’s widow, his mind so clouded with guilt and desire that he thought a handbag could act as an eraser.

The thought was nauseating, but I noted, with a sense of distant triumph, that it no longer carried the sharp, gut–wrenching sting it once did. The nerve was finally dead.

A small, wicked impulse took hold. With a cold smile that didn’t touch my eyes. I tapped the video call button-

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