Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 162

Elara’s POV

The alarm shrieked at six in the morning.

I slapped it silent and lay there, staring at the water-stained ceiling. The cracks in the plaster branched out like veins across a dying leaf. My body felt hollowed out. I’d barely slept. Every time I’d closed my eyes, I saw Mia’s face, the memory of her taking my money, and her sudden disappearance into the night.

Forty-three gold. Every coin I had in the world, riding in the pocket of a girl with a one-way ticket.

I dragged myself upright. The floorboards groaned under my bare feet. Cold seeped through the thin soles of my stockings as I dressed in the gray half-light, pulling on the same wrinkled blouse from yesterday. The mirror above the washbasin showed bruised shadows under my eyes. I looked away.

No time for that.

I locked the apartment door behind me and descended three flights of narrow stairs. The hallway smelled like mildew and boiled cabbage. Someone’s baby was crying behind a thin wall. The sound followed me out into the street like a ghost.

I made it to the shop exactly two minutes early, at 7:58. Gary was already at the front counter, his bald head shining under the overhead enchantment lamps. His face was the color of raw meat—permanently flushed, permanently angry.

"You." He jabbed a thick finger at me. "Mia called in. Family emergency. She’s out for a few days."

My stomach tightened. "How many days?"

"However many it takes. Not my problem." He crossed his arms over his barrel chest. "You’re covering register two and three today."

"Both registers? That’s—"

"Did I stutter?"

I pressed my lips together. "Will there be overtime compensation for covering two stations?"

Gary laughed. It was a short, ugly bark. "Overtime? You want overtime?" He leaned forward, planting both meaty palms on the counter. "Let me remind you of something, Sarah. You still owe three hundred gold for that little incident where you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself. That’s coming straight out of your wages. You should be thanking me for letting you keep this job at all."

The incident. A customer had knocked a display of enchanted goods off the shelf. I had been standing a short distance away. Gary had blamed me anyway. Docked the full replacement cost from my pay without blinking.

I swallowed. "I understand."

"Register two. Now. Move."

I moved.

The next two days blurred together in a haze of broken checkout crystals and endless lines of impatient customers. The register malfunctioned constantly—the scanning crystal was cracked down the middle, and many items required a manual override. My fingers ached from tapping the rune pad. My back screamed from standing for hours without a break.

Mia didn’t come in. Not the next day. Not the day after.

By Friday afternoon, I had tried reaching her through the communication stone for the tenth time this week. Each attempt met the same result: silence, then the cheerful chime of her recorded message.

"Hey! It’s Mia! Leave me something fun and I’ll get back to you!"

Fun. Right.

I pressed the stone to my forehead and closed my eyes. Then I spoke. Slowly. Carefully. Like someone defusing a trap.

"Mia. It’s me again. I need to hear from you. The rent—I need that money. Please. Please just let me know you’re okay."

Silence.

I ended the connection and stared at the stone in my palm. It sat there, warm and useless.

When I finally left the shop at six o’clock that evening, the sun was already sinking behind the rooftops. Orange light spilled across the cobblestones like something bleeding out. I walked home with lead in my legs and dread coiling tighter with every step.

I smelled it before I saw it.

The stairwell reeked of cheap pipe tobacco and something sour—old cooking oil, maybe, or unwashed fabric. I climbed to the third floor and stopped dead.

A bright pink notice was tacked to my door.

I didn’t need to read it. I already knew. But I peeled it off anyway, my fingers numb, and held it up to the flickering hallway lantern.

NOTICE OF EVICTION. Tenant is hereby required to remit the full outstanding balance of 450.00 gold for the month of October no later than Sunday, October 27th. Failure to comply will result in immediate removal of tenant and belongings.

I read it twice. Then a third time, as though the numbers might rearrange themselves into something survivable.

Inside, I sat on the edge of my mattress and activated the banking token. The crystal display glowed pale blue in the dark apartment.

Balance: 47 gold, 33 copper.

I stared at it until the display dimmed itself to sleep.

---

Saturday morning. I stood in front of Gary’s office door and knocked. My palms were damp. My pride was already on the floor. I just needed the rest of me to follow.

"What?" he barked from inside.

I pushed the door open. He was hunched over a ledger, a half-eaten pastry shedding crumbs across the pages. He didn’t look up.

"Gary, I—I need to ask you something."

"Make it quick, Sarah."

Sarah. He’d been calling me the wrong name since the day I started. I’d corrected him twice. Then I stopped bothering.

"I need an advance on my wages. Just two or three hundred gold. I’ll work it off. Double shifts, weekends—whatever you need."

He finally looked up. His small eyes traveled over my face with the detached curiosity of someone examining an insect.

"An advance."

"Yes. Please. I’m about to lose my apartment. I just need—"

"Guild policy." He bit into the pastry. Chewed. Swallowed. "No advances. No exceptions."

"Gary, I’m begging you. I have nowhere—"

"Not my problem." He turned back to the ledger. "Close the door on your way out, Sarah."

I stood there for three more heartbeats. He didn’t look up again. I closed the door.

---

Sunday night.

The knock came later that evening. I knew who it was before I opened it.

Mr. Petersen filled my doorframe like a toad squatting on a rock. Short. Thick. Greasy hair combed over a spotted scalp. The smell hit me first—stale tobacco layered over cheap cologne, the kind that burned the inside of your nose. His small wet eyes swept past me into the apartment.

"Evening, sweetheart."

"Mr. Petersen, I know why you’re here, and I just need a little more time—"

"Time’s up." He held up a pudgy hand. His fingernails were yellow. "I gave you the notice. Very clear. Very fair."

"Please. I have most of it. I just need a few more days to—"

"You have most of it?" He cocked his head, a thin smile spreading across his face. "How much is most?"

I couldn’t say forty-seven gold and thirty-three copper out loud. The number was too humiliating. Too final.

"I can get the rest by—"

"Sweetheart." He said it the way someone talks to a slow child. "I’ve heard this song before. Every tenant who falls behind sings the same tune. ’Just a few more days.’ ’Just a little more time.’ And then it’s another month, and another, and suddenly I’m running a charity."

"I’m not asking for charity. I’m asking for—"

"What you’re asking for is irrelevant, dear." His smile didn’t waver. "You have until noon tomorrow. Pack your things and be out. If you’re still here when I come back with the city guard, it won’t be a conversation. It’ll be a removal."

He gave my apartment one more lingering look—the bare walls, the single lantern, the mattress on the floor—and something flickered across his face. Not pity. Satisfaction.

"Noon," he repeated. Then he turned and waddled back down the hallway, trailing tobacco smoke behind him like a foul ghost.

I closed the door. Locked it. Pressed my back against it and slid to the floor.

Mia was gone. The money was gone. Forty-three gold, vanished into the night along with a promise.

I didn’t cry. I was past crying. The tears had been wrung out of me days ago, squeezed dry by the mechanical cruelty of registers and ledgers and pink eviction notices. What replaced them was something heavier. Something flat and gray and suffocating, like a stone slab laid over my chest.

I crawled to the mattress and collapsed face-down. The pillow smelled like dust and old fabric softener. I pressed my face into it and tried to breathe.

My hand slid across the rough cotton, brushing against something sharp. A small white card was peeking out from under the pillow. I pulled it out and held it up to the faint moonlight leaking through the window.

Crisp, expensive stock. Black ink in clean, angular script.

Zane Thorne. Talent Acquisition.