---- Chapter 13 Celesta-or Celia, as she was now called by the staff-did not take her fall from grace well. Locked in the damp, windowless storage room in the basement, her world shrank to four concrete walls and the single, bare bulb that hummed overhead. Her elaborate gowns were replaced with the same coarse gray uniform Ellen had been forced to wear. Her gourmet meals were replaced with the leftover scraps from the staff's dinner, shoved through a slot in the door on a plastic tray. At first, she screamed. She raged. She hurled threats and curses, promising cosmic retribution on Blake and everyone in the mansion. She tried to starve herself, believing her dramatic decline would surely move Blake to pity. It didn't. Her tantrums were met with silence. Her hunger strike was met with the simple removal of her food tray. After three days, her gnawing hunger won out over her pride, and she devoured the cold, congealed food like a ravenous animal. The staff, who had lived in fear of her for months, now took their own quiet revenge. They "forgot" her water. They gave her the stalest bread. They would stand outside her door and whisper loudly about the beautiful weather, the delicious dinner they were about to have, the simple freedoms she no ---- longer possessed. Her spirit, which was built on a foundation of narcissism and the adoration of others, began to crumble in the solitary confinement. The silence and the darkness gnawed at her. There were no mirrors to reflect her beauty, no followers to admire her wisdom, no wealthy patron to cater to her every whim. There was only Celia Norman from Ohio, a failed con artist locked in a basement. The realization broke her. Her screams turned to sobs, her threats to pleas. But Blake never came. He never even asked about her. To him, she had ceased to exist. Upstairs, Blake was living in his own prison. The small servant's room was his cell. The hard bed was his rack. The memories were his torturers. He established a rigid, punishing routine. He would wake before dawn, work for exactly eight hours on the core business of his empire and the administration of Ellen' s foundation, and then his penance would begin. He would spend hours at the cemetery, kneeling before two graves. One was the empty plot where Douglas Strong' s desecrated remains should have been. The other was a memorial he had erected for Ellen, a simple marble stone engraved with her name and the words, "Beloved Wife. Forgive Me." ---- He would kneel there in all weather, the sun beating down on him, the rain soaking him, the snow piling up around him, until his legs were numb and his body was shaking with cold. He spoke to them, his voice a low, constant murmur of apology, confessing his sins over and over to the silent stones. Then he would go to the track and drive until pain and exhaustion blurred his vision. Or he would go through his physical therapy, pushing his damaged hand until sweat poured down his face and a white-hot agony shot up his arm. Pain was his only companion. Guilt was his only nourishment. He commissioned a life-sized portrait of Ellen from her favorite photograph, a candid shot from a vacation they had taken long ago. She was laughing, her head thrown back, her eyes sparkling with a joy he had personally extinguished. He hung it in the grand foyer, so it was the first thing he saw when he entered the house and the last thing he saw when he left. It was a constant, beautiful, agonizing reminder of what he had lost. One evening, his friend dragged him to a psychologist, one of the best in the country. Blake sat on the plush leather sofa in the quiet, elegant office, his body rigid, his eyes fixed on a point on the far wall. He looked like a man made of stone. The doctor, a kind-faced woman with gentle eyes, tried to draw him out. "Mr. Wallace," she said softly. "This self-imposed ---- punishment... it's not sustainable. You need to find a way to forgive yourself." Blake's head snapped toward her, his eyes, for the first time, showing a flicker of life. It was a cold, dead fire. "Forgive myself?" he rasped, his voice a dry rustle of leaves. "Doctor, you don't understand. | don't want to be healed." He leaned forward, his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles were white. "This pain," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "this guilt... it's all | have left of her. It's the only connection | have to her now. If you take that away, if you 'cure' me... then she'll be truly gone. | will have nothing. Do you understand? | will have nothing left." The doctor stared at him, her professional composure shaken. She saw a man who was not just grieving, but aman who was actively clinging to his own hell because the thought of leaving it was more terrifying than the flames themselves. For in that hell, at least, the ghost of his love still remained.