Chapter 3: The Vow of the Wicked

Three days had passed since the scandal broke, and Seraphina had spent them in a kind of purgatory. The family's crisis management team had crafted a statement of contrition that made her sound like a repentant sinner begging for forgiveness. Her phone had been changed twice to stop the flood of hateful messages. The doorman had been instructed to turn away all reporters, which meant she was effectively under house arrest in her own home.

She'd read the statement they wanted her to deliver—a masterpiece of political doublespeak that managed to apologize for everything while admitting to nothing. It would be delivered at a carefully staged press conference, with her parents flanking her like disappointed but loving guardians, ready to guide their wayward daughter back to righteousness.

The very thought made her sick.

"Seraphina, darling, we need to discuss your appearance for tomorrow's press conference," her mother's voice drifted through the apartment as Victoria let herself in with the spare key. Of course she had a spare key. The apartment might be in Seraphina's name, but nothing in her life had ever truly belonged to her.

Victoria swept into the living room like a force of nature, her arms full of garment bags from the city's most exclusive boutiques. Behind her trailed two assistants, a makeup artist, and a stylist—an entire team assembled to transform Seraphina back into the perfect political daughter.

"I've brought several options," Victoria continued, hanging the bags with military precision. "We want something that says 'remorseful but dignified.' The navy Armani conveys appropriate solemnity, but the charcoal Oscar de la Renta might photograph better under the studio lights."

Seraphina watched this performance from her position on the sofa, still wearing the same silk pajamas she'd had on for two days. She hadn't bothered with makeup or fixing her hair. What was the point of maintaining appearances when your life had already been reduced to tabloid headlines?

"The key," Victoria was saying to the stylist, "is to make her look like the victim of poor judgment, not... well, not like whatever that video was supposed to represent."

"Mother." Seraphina's voice cut through the chatter like a blade.

Victoria paused, a burgundy dress half-emerged from its protective bag. "Yes?"

"I'm not doing it."

The room went silent. The assistants exchanged glances. The makeup artist suddenly found her phone very interesting.

"I'm sorry?" Victoria's tone was dangerously sweet.

"I'm not doing the press conference. I'm not reading your statement. I'm not apologizing for something I didn't do."

Victoria's laugh was brittle as winter ice. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course you are."

"No," Seraphina stood up, and she was surprised by how steady she felt. "I'm not."

"Seraphina Marianne Hawthorne, you will not—"

"What? I won't what? Embarrass the family further? Destroy Daddy's political career? Ruin the precious Hawthorne legacy?" Seraphina moved to the window, looking out at the city that had once felt like her playground and now felt like a prison. "It's too late for that, Mother. It was too late the moment that video went live."

Victoria dismissed the staff with a sharp gesture, waiting until they'd retreated to the hallway before speaking again. "You're being hysterical. This is exactly the kind of emotional response that got us into this mess in the first place."

"Emotional response?" Seraphina turned, and Victoria actually took a step back at whatever she saw in her daughter's face. "You mean my emotional response to being publicly humiliated based on a lie? My emotional response to watching my fiancé abandon me without even asking if it was real? My emotional response to discovering that my own parents care more about poll numbers than my well-being?"

"That's not fair, and you know it."

"Fair?" Seraphina laughed, and the sound was harsh even to her own ears. "Nothing about this is fair. Nothing about my entire life has been fair. I've been a performing monkey in a very expensive cage, and the moment I stopped being profitable, you all couldn't wait to throw me away."

Victoria's composure cracked slightly. "We're trying to save you."

"No, you're not. You're trying to save yourselves. You want me to grovel in public so that Daddy's precious infrastructure bill can pass and your social standing can be restored. Well, here's the thing, Mother—I'm done being your sacrificial lamb."

"What exactly do you think you're going to do? Walk away? With what money? What connections? What skills?" Victoria's voice grew sharper with each question. "You're nothing without this family, Seraphina. Nothing."

The words hung in the air like poison gas. Victoria immediately looked like she regretted them, but it was too late. The truth was finally out in the open.

"You're right," Seraphina said quietly. "I am nothing without this family. I have no skills, no real friends, no identity beyond being Senator Hawthorne's perfect daughter. Do you know what that means?"

Victoria shook her head mutely.

"It means I have nothing left to lose."

With that, Seraphina walked past her mother and into her bedroom, closing the door with a soft click that somehow felt more final than if she'd slammed it.

For the first time in three days, she looked at herself in the mirror. Really looked. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, her hair a tangled mess. She looked like exactly what she was—a broken girl whose perfect life had been shattered by someone else's malice.

But as she stared at her reflection, something shifted. The devastation was still there, but underneath it, something else was growing. Something that felt dangerous and intoxicating and completely foreign.

Fury.

Not the polite indignation she'd been raised to express when things didn't go her way. Not the careful disappointment that well-bred ladies were allowed to display. This was rage, pure and cleansing and absolutely unacceptable for someone of her breeding.

And God, it felt good.

She pulled out her laptop and began typing. First, she accessed her trust fund—the one her father thought he controlled completely. What he didn't know was that her grandmother, his own mother, had set up a separate account when Seraphina turned eighteen. A small rebellion from a woman who had spent her own youth trapped in the same golden cage.

The account had been growing for six years, conservative investments overseen by a financial advisor who had been sworn to secrecy. It wasn't enough to live on forever, but it was enough to disappear for a while. Enough to figure out who she was when she wasn't being Seraphina Hawthorne, political princess.

Next, she began transferring money to a new account she opened under her full legal name—including the middle name her family never used because it sounded "too ethnic" for their carefully curated image. Seraphina Marianne Hawthorne became Sera Hawthorne, and somehow just that small change felt like shedding a skin that had never quite fit.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Chloe: "Babe, please call me back. I know you're hurting but we can get through this. The story will die down and everything will go back to normal."

Normal. As if normal hadn't been its own kind of prison.

Instead of responding, Sera began packing. Not the designer gowns and couture pieces that filled her walk-in closet—those belonged to the old Seraphina, the one who lived to be photographed and admired and approved of. She packed jeans she'd barely worn, simple sweaters, comfortable shoes. Clothes for living, not performing.

She packed the few pieces of jewelry that had been gifts rather than loans from the family collection. She packed books—real books, not the politically appropriate bestsellers that decorated her coffee table. She packed the leather journal her grandmother had given her years ago, still mostly empty because she'd never had anything real enough to write about.

As the sun set over Manhattan, painting her apartment in shades of gold and crimson, Sera made one final decision. She opened her laptop again and began typing a different kind of statement than the one her family's crisis team had prepared.

It wasn't an apology. It wasn't a denial. It was something else entirely.

She posted it to every social media platform simultaneously:

"To everyone who has judged me based on a fabricated video designed to destroy my reputation: you win. The Seraphina Hawthorne you thought you knew—the perfect political daughter, the obedient fiancée, the carefully curated princess—she's dead. You killed her with your assumptions and your cruelty and your eagerness to believe the worst.

But here's what you don't understand: I'm not sorry she's gone. She was a lie anyway, a performance I've been giving my entire life. So thank you for freeing me from the exhausting job of being perfect. Thank you for showing me that reputation is just another cage, and I'm done living in cages.

The woman I'm becoming doesn't need your approval or your forgiveness. She doesn't owe you explanations or apologies. She's going to live exactly as she chooses, and if that offends your delicate sensibilities, I suggest you look away.

Because if you think that video was scandalous, you haven't seen anything yet.

Sincerely, The woman you created when you destroyed Seraphina Hawthorne"

She hit 'post' before she could second-guess herself, then immediately turned off her phone.

The silence that followed was absolute. No buzzing notifications, no crisis management calls, no mother appearing with damage control strategies. Just her, standing in the ruins of her old life, finally free to build something new from the wreckage.

She ordered a car service—not the family's usual driver, but a anonymous black sedan that would take her into the city with no questions asked. As she waited, she caught sight of herself in the hallway mirror one last time.

The broken girl was still there, but now she stood straighter. Her eyes held something they'd never held before—not the careful sweetness of the perfect daughter, but the sharp glitter of a woman who had nothing left to lose and everything to gain.

By the time her phone started ringing again—undoubtedly her family having seen her post—she was already in the elevator, descending toward street level and whatever came next.

The exclusive underground bar she'd chosen was called "Obscura," and it was exactly the kind of place the old Seraphina would never have been caught dead in. Dark, intimate, filled with people who looked like they had their own secrets and weren't interested in judging anyone else's.

As she walked through the door, leaving behind the wreckage of her reputation and the suffocating expectations of her family, Sera felt something she'd never experienced before:

The intoxicating terror of absolute freedom.

And if the world wanted to call her wicked, she was more than ready to earn the title.