Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 160

Elara’s POV

I reached for the emergency call rune under the counter. My fingers barely grazed it before his hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of my shirt collar.

"You broke it," he hissed, yanking me forward. The counter’s edge dug into my ribs. His breath reeked of stale ale. "You and your worthless machine."

My pulse spiked. Every survival instinct in my body screamed at once.

I seized his wrist with both hands and twisted—hard—rotating his arm against the joint. A sharp, controlled motion. Nothing fancy. Just leverage and speed.

He yelped and released me, stumbling backward. His boots crunched over the magic shards scattered across the floor.

"Don’t touch me," I said. My voice came out low and steady, though my heart hammered against my bruised ribs. I kept the counter between us.

He cradled his wrist, face contorting from pain into theatrical outrage. The shift was instant—calculated. His eyes darted to the security mirror mounted on the ceiling, then back to me. A nasty smile crept across his face.

"You—" He cradled his wrist against his chest like it was shattered. "You attacked me. You saw that," he announced loudly to the remaining customers. A few looked away. One woman hurried toward the exit. "I’m reporting this to the City Hall trade guild! Assault by your employee!"

"You grabbed me first—"

"Gary!" he bellowed toward the back. "GARY!"

The stockroom door burst open. Gary stumbled out, his crooked bow tie askew, sweat patches darkening his collar. His gaze swept the scene—the smashed checkout crystal, the scattered shards, the enormous man clutching his wrist like a wounded animal—and then landed on me.

I opened my mouth.

"Shut up," Gary snapped at me. He didn’t even look in my direction. He was already rushing toward the customer, hands raised in a gesture of surrender. "Sir—sir, I am so sorry. Please, let’s step over here. Can I get you something? On the house, absolutely."

What followed was excruciating.

I stood behind my broken register and watched Gary grovel. He guided the man to a bench near the entrance, brought him a cold compress for his supposedly injured wrist, poured him a free tankard of premium ale from the display case, and then—when the man demanded more—fetched him a second tankard and a handful of lottery tickets.

The whole performance took a long while. An eternity of "Yes, sir" and "Absolutely, sir" and "We value your patronage deeply, sir."

I cleaned up the magic shards while it happened. Got on my hands and knees with a dustpan, picking up razor-edged fragments of enchanted crystal. One sliced my thumb. I wrapped it in my apron and kept sweeping.

When the man finally lumbered out the front door—free ale in hand, lottery tickets stuffed in his pocket—Gary turned on his heel and marched toward me.

"Office. Now."

I followed him. The stockroom smelled like dust and stale air. His office was barely bigger than a closet—just a desk, a chair, and stacks of inventory ledgers piled so high they blocked the single window.

He shut the door.

"Do you have any idea what you just did?"

"He grabbed me, Gary. He ripped the checkout crystal off the counter and then put his hands on me—"

"And you twisted his wrist." Gary jabbed a finger in my direction. His face was blotchy with stress. "If he files a complaint with the trade guild, that’s an inspection. That’s fines. That’s my neck on the line."

"I was defending myself."

"I don’t care what you were doing! You don’t touch the customers. Ever. You smile, you apologize, and you call me. That’s the procedure."

"I tried to call for you or the guards. He grabbed me before I could reach the rune."

Gary wasn’t listening. He’d already pulled out a ledger and was scratching numbers onto a slip of parchment.

"The replacement checkout crystal and the compensation goods for the customer..." He looked up. "That’s three hundred gold total. It’s coming out of your wages."

The number hit me like a physical blow.

Three hundred gold.

That was more than I earned in a month. That was rent. That was food. That was everything.

"Gary, I cant afford that," I said. My voice cracked despite every effort to keep it level. "I wasn’t even supposed to be at register three tonight. I was covering for Mia. She didn’t show up for her shift—"

"Mia’s schedule is Mia’s problem. You were behind that register when the crystal got destroyed. That makes it your responsibility."

"That’s not fair."

"Fair?" He laughed. A short, ugly sound. "You want fair? Fair is me firing you right now and billing you for the full amount anyway. Is that what you want?"

Silence. The fluorescent rune on the ceiling buzzed and flickered.

I stared at him. At his crooked bow tie and his sweating temples and his petty, cowardly authority. I thought about all the things I could say. All the things I wanted to say.

But three hundred gold in debt was survivable.

Unemployment was not.

"No," I said quietly.

"Good. Then get back out there and finish your shift."

I walked out of his office and back onto the floor. The shards were cleaned up, but register three was dead—just a dark, empty gap in the counter where the checkout crystal used to sit. I moved to another register and finished the remaining customers in silence.

My hands processed items. My mouth said "thank you" and "have a good evening." My body performed its function.

Inside, I felt nothing.

Nothing but the heavy, suffocating weight of injustice I couldn’t fight. Not because I lacked the strength. But because strength didn’t matter when you were this poor. When your entire existence depended on the mercy of men like Gary, who would always choose the path of least resistance, and that path always ran straight through the people who couldn’t afford to push back.

I thought about Mia. About her empty register sitting dark all evening while she ran off with whoever had caught her eye this week. She’d skipped her shift at register three, and because of that, I’d been standing in her place when a drunk man decided to destroy store property and assault the nearest target.

Three hundred gold.

Because of Mia.

The anger sat low in my stomach, cold and hard. I let it stay there. Anger was better than despair. Easier to carry.

The clock above the exit signaled late evening.

I clocked out at the back, hung up my apron, grabbed my jacket from the hook by the stockroom door, and walked toward the employee exit. My body ached from scalp to sole. My sliced thumb throbbed inside the makeshift bandage. All I wanted in the world was to crawl into bed and disappear for a long time.

I pushed through the heavy back door and stepped into the parking lot.

The night air hit me—cold, sharp, carrying the distant smell of rain. The lot was nearly empty. Just a few wagons belonging to the overnight stock crew and the pale glow of a street lantern casting weak circles of light across the cracked stone ground.

I pulled my jacket tighter and started walking.

Then I heard the footsteps. Fast. Uneven. Someone running.

"Ela!"

I turned.

Mia came sprinting out of the shadows between two parked wagons. Her cotton-candy-pink hair—usually styled in bouncy curls—hung in a wild, tangled mess, half-escaped from a lopsided ponytail. Her makeup was smeared down her cheeks in dark streaks. Mascara and tears. Her blouse was torn at one shoulder.

She looked like she’d been thrown into a blender.

She slammed into me at full speed, her hands fisting the front of my jacket so hard her knuckles went white.

"Ela, please—" Her voice was raw. Broken. Her whole body was shaking. "You have to help me. Please. I didn’t know who else to go to."