The livestream was a glittering storm of hearts and emojis, comments scrolling faster than Kiara could pretend to read them.
A single line cut through the chaos.
"The shoes I bought from you fell apart yesterday 🤧😭"
Kiara didn't miss a beat. She leaned into the camera, lashes heavy with filter, voice honeyed and bored.
"Well, what can I say, babe? Your legs must be… really leg."
The chat detonated. LOLs, fire emojis, crying laughing faces. To ten million followers, it was signature Kiara—savage, funny, untouchable. To her, it was survival. The shoes were fake, obviously. Rent was not. Her penthouse loomed above the city like a diamond cage, bleeding her dry every thirty days.
She was beautiful. That was the product. Flawless skin, waist snatched by corset-level Spanx, lips painted the exact shade of "expensive." The rest—her so-called humor—was just honesty wearing lipstick. Money didn't rain from the sky. She made it fall.
She was mid-sentence, ready to drop another line, when the cough hit.
It started small. Then it clawed its way up her throat like broken glass. Her chest convulsed. She tried to turn it into a laugh—cute, performative—but the sound that came out was wet and ugly. Her hand flew to her mouth. The chat flooded with concern.
Then the world tilted, and everything went black.
She woke up to a cracked ceiling and the smell of dust and old wood.
Not velvet. Not Dior sheets. Just rough linen and the faint stink of mildew.
Kiara sat up so fast her head spun. The dress she was wearing—her favorite blood-red bodycon—was gone. In its place, coarse brown fabric scratched against skin that felt… wrong. Too small. Too pale.
She scrambled out of the narrow bed and nearly tripped over her own feet. A crooked mirror leaned against the far wall like it had given up on life. She lunged for it.
The girl staring back was pretty in a quiet, forgotten way—long black hair, black eyes, cheeks naturally flushed. But it wasn't her face.
And then she saw the hands.
Nails chipped, uneven, short. The kind of nails that scrubbed floors, not the kind that held diamond rings in sponsored photoshoots.
Kiara's scream ricocheted off the walls.
"No. No no no—not this! Anything but this!" She slammed her palms against the glass. "These are servant hands! I had a nail tech on speed dial!"
She stumbled out of the room still half-screaming, until the hallway opened into a dining hall so lavish it looked photoshopped. Gold chandeliers dripped crystals. Velvet drapes pooled on marble floors. A banquet table stretched forever, piled with food that smelled like money.
Three people sat at the far end.
An older man—ugly in the way only money and bad decisions could make someone: thinning blond hair streaked gray, face carved deep with permanent displeasure.
A girl—maybe sixteen—curled golden hair, delicate features, the kind of beauty that came with pedigree.
And a woman—brown hair pinned tight, average face sharpened by years of practiced cruelty.
They all stared at her like she was a cockroach that had learned to walk upright.
Kiara's stomach growled so loudly the crystal glasses trembled.
She shrugged, walked straight to the table, and sat down like she owned the place. She tore into a buttery pastry with her bare, tragic hands.
The three froze mid-bite.
The man's spoon clattered against porcelain. "Have you lost your mind?" His voice rolled like thunder. "How dare you sit at this table without permission, Adonis!"
Adonis.
The name hit her like a truck.
She knew that name. She'd read it once, bored at 3 a.m., scrolling through a trashy web novel called Sadistic Adonis. The illegitimate daughter of Count Donalbeth. Born from a mistress. Treated worse than the servants. Raised on her mother's poison until cruelty became the only language she spoke. In the end, the whole family burned—executed for treason and embezzlement.
And now she was wearing the villainess like a cheap coat.
Kiara—Adonis—slowly set the pastry down. Her chipped nails left crumbs on the tablecloth.
The countess's voice sliced through the silence, shrill and venomous. "How disgusting. You are nothing but a maid. The spawn of a whore."
Adonis tilted her head. A slow, dangerous smile curved lips that had never smiled like that before.
"Shut up, hag. You're too loud. Just because you're one foot in the grave doesn't mean you have to drag the rest of us down with your screeching."
The room went deathly still.
The count rose, face purple with rage. He crossed the distance in three strides and backhanded her so hard her head snapped sideways.
The slap echoed like a gunshot.
Adonis tasted blood. Then something hotter. Fury.
Her hand moved before her brain caught up. She slapped him back—once, twice—left cheek, right cheek. The sound cracked through the hall like whip strikes.
Gasps ricocheted off the gold-leaf walls.
The count staggered, stunned. No one had ever dared.
Adonis wiped her split lip with the back of her ruined hand and stared at the damage. Those ugly, pathetic nails. Not a single acrylic in sight.
Her influencer empire—gone. Her perfect body—gone. Her life—replaced by a tragic, sadistic maid who was destined to die screaming.
She looked up at the three horrified faces and let out a low, broken laugh that didn't sound like hers at all.
"Well," she whispered, voice shaking with something between hysteria and delight, "this is going to be fun."