1
HELENA
The nightmare never changes.
It always starts the moment I close my eyes.
In the dream, I’m twenty years old again. The phone rings in the hallway, cutting through the quiet afternoon. I answer it. The voice on the other end is cold. It’s a police officer. He sounds tired, reading from a script he has used a thousand times.
He talks about the rain. He talks about the slick road on the coast. He tells me that my father lost control of the Mercedes, and it spun twice before tearing through the guardrail.
Then he delivers the words that stop my world.
"Mr. Blackwood is being treated for minor injuries, but I’m sorry... your mother didn't survive the impact."
I scream for her, but no sound comes out.
The worst part isn’t the crash. It’s the silence that follows. The silence of the house and of my father sitting in his armchair days later, staring at his hands, the hands that were on the wheel, while a glass of whiskey trembles in his grip.
I wake with a gasp, my lungs seizing as if I’ve been held underwater.
For a moment, I don’t know where I am. The room is dark, with the heavy curtains pulled tight, blocking out the morning sun. I lie there, my heart hammering against my ribs, waiting for the panic to pass.
The dream, the waking, the crushing weight of reality pressing on my chest before I even place a foot on the floor, happens almost every day.
It has been five years, but the wreckage is still here. It just looks different now.
My father didn't die in that car, but the man he used to be did. The smart owner of the Blackwood empire and the loving husband was buried with my mother. The man who walked away from the crash is a stranger. He’s empty, eaten alive by guilt.
He started drinking to stop the noise in his head. He started gambling to feel something other than pain. He has spent every day of the last five years trying to punish himself, and he’s dragging the family empire down with him.
I’m the one who has to fix it.
For five years, I’ve been the one running the show. I beg the banks for more time. I apologize to the clients he ignores. I work until my eyes burn to keep the business alive. He’s digging a grave for this company, and I’m desperately trying to pull us out of it.
I throw off the silk duvet and sit up, shivering. The Blackwood Estate is always cold. It’s a massive gray stone fortress sitting on the cliffs above the Atlantic Ocean. My father built it twenty years ago to prove to the world that he was powerful. Now, with the heating broken in half the rooms and most of the staff gone, the house is less like a mansion and more like a tomb.
I walk across the room. My bare feet sink into the carpet, but the floorboards beneath creak. The house isn't strong anymore.It settles into the cliffs a little more every year, as if the ocean is trying to drag it down.
I pass the wardrobe. It’s filled with designer coats I haven't worn in three years. I pass where a bottle of Chanel perfume sits gathering dust. I don't wear it anymore.
I turn to the nightstand.
It’s the first thing I do every morning. Before I check my phone or the shipping reports, I check on her.
The frame is silver, tarnished slightly at the edges where my thumbs have rubbed it for five years. Inside, my mother, Eleanor, is laughing. She’s standing on the deck of a ship, wind in her hair, holding a glass of champagne. She looks radiant, like a woman who has forever left to live.
I pick up the frame and trace her smile with my finger. "Good morning, Mom," I whisper.
I don't pray. I stopped believing in God at her funeral, but I believe in her.
This photo is the only real thing in this house. It’s my strength. When the banks call, I look at her. When my father stumbles in at 3:00 AM after losing a huge sum in a bet and reeking of alcohol, I look at her. I promise her, every single day, that I won't let him destroy what she helped build.
I could’ve left years ago. I could’ve let the bank take the house and walked away. But this company was her dream as much as his. Leaving it would feel like killing her all over again.
I’m trying, Mom. I swear, I’m trying.
I set the frame back down, angling it perfectly so she’s watching me. It’s a superstition, maybe, but it feels like as long as she’s watching, the walls won't collapse.
