Helena's Version of Love
Chapter 07 - Helena's Version of Love
Helena Ashborne had never loved quietly.
She loved like ownership, like signatures, like rooms arranged exactly as she wanted them. She loved Daniel by choosing his schools, his friends, his suits, his future wife. She loved Richard by guarding his image, his money, his name. She loved the mansion by ensuring nothing inside it moved without her approval.
And she loved Noah because he was the last living key to all of it.
After Daniel died, the Ashborne trust became unstable. Richard’s shares remained secure, but Daniel’s portion would pass to his legal child. Without a recognized heir, Helena could petition to direct certain charitable foundations and family assets through her own board. With a child under her control, she could become guardian of the future.
Then Clara became a problem with a heartbeat.
At first, Helena had planned to remove her quietly. A severance payment. A threat. A rumor about theft. But Daniel’s child complicated everything. The baby connected Clara to the one part of the family name Helena could not counterfeit.
So she changed the story.
Clara became unstable. Daniel became generous but foolish. The marriage became impossible. The pregnancy became scandal. Noah became a baby Helena had “rescued” from a confused servant too fragile to raise him.
The lie worked because the world liked polished women more than broken ones.
Now Richard had ruined that story in front of staff.
Helena retreated to her bedroom suite and called everyone she had ever controlled: attorneys, board members, a private doctor, a judge’s wife, an editor at a society magazine. Some answered warmly. Others hesitated. News moved fast inside wealthy circles, especially when it carried the scent of scandal.
Her lead attorney, Malcolm Price, arrived before midnight.
He found Helena pacing in her sitting room, still in the satin gown, champagne untouched on the table.
“Tell me Richard is emotional and misinformed,” Malcolm said.
“He has papers.”
“What papers?”
“A letter. A DNA report. Something from the hospital.”
Malcolm’s face tightened. “Helena.”
“Don’t use that tone.”
“If the hospital footage exists, we have exposure.”
“We paid to bury it.”
“Apparently not deeply enough.”
Helena turned on him. “Then bury Clara.”
Malcolm went silent.
She understood his hesitation and despised it. Men like Malcolm loved dirty work only when they could bill it as strategy.
“I don’t mean physically,” she snapped. “I mean publicly. She’s young, poor, alone. There must be something. An old boyfriend. Debt. A mental health note. Anything.”
Malcolm removed his glasses. “Richard has already frozen access to family communications. He called an emergency trust review. If he proves you interfered with custody, medical records, and inheritance—”
“He proves nothing if Clara breaks.”
There it was. The old plan, refined by panic.
Make Clara look greedy. Make her look unstable. Make her look unfit. The world did not need to believe Helena was innocent; it only needed to doubt Clara was safe.
Across the hall, Noah cried.
Helena stopped pacing.
For one brief second, something like longing crossed her face. Not tenderness, exactly, but need. She had built a life around being chosen by powerful men, and now a child too small to speak had chosen another woman simply by quieting in her arms.
Helena’s expression hardened.
“File for emergency guardianship,” she told Malcolm. “By morning, I want Clara Bennett treated as a threat to the heir.”
Malcolm looked toward the door, where Richard’s guards now stood in the corridor.
“And if Richard opposes it?”
May you like
Helena smiled.
“Then we remind the world that Richard Ashborne’s grief made him vulnerable to a maid’s fraud.”
