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🍊 CHAPTER ONE. TO HAVE IT ALL 🍊
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Covering your tracks was a hard thing to do, especially when they cost a marriage, a family's honor, and a fortune.
Anastasia Cortez had not long ago been engaged to a reputable Lord of Spain. It took her calamitous nature for the wedding to be revoked. The reason for it: she wouldn't settle for any man, only for someone that would worship her, entirely devoting himself to her, but he was to be no dull man either, she needed an interesting man that would challenge her, and if she was to die a maiden without ever finding him, then so be it. Freshly eighteen then, but not short of conniving or intelligent, Anastasia was sent off to marry after her mother had claimed to find a great—not ideal—but a great man for Anastasia. Lord Severin of Valencia came from money, had a title and was chivalrous enough, but he had a knack for mistresses—or maybe, it was his garlic-stinking breath—but Anastasia couldn't take it, so she concocted a plan to be rid of him. Albeit, she had him get rid of her.
Her nineteenth name day came, and she found her returned maidenhood to be the greatest present she could receive. Her mother had been fuming by then, ready to disown her, but her love her for her was what stopped her from doing so—or maybe, it was Anastasia's craftiness that took the idea out of her head. Either way, Anastasia had freed herself of a dreadfully dull man and was back to basking in her freedom.
The sitting room of her new home was quiet, a serene ambient that made it easy for Anastasia to ignore her mother's scolding. Just a few minutes ago, Anastasia had been spending time by herself, thinking about everything and nothing in particular, till her mother had to come down the stairs to the main doorway, promised that the dress she had made for her other daughter—Penelope—will be arriving at this time of day. Unfortunately, the sitting room was right next to the main doors, so Anastasia had no other choice but to endure her mother's bitter remarks about how she had not yet a life of her own.
