Choice (4)

Minnie knew her father was always right with it not being the best idea to push Aurora as a member of this family. She did not have the prestigious Hamilton blood running through her veins. She was nothing more than a prisoner and not a friend. Minnie convinced herself of this from the moment she turned her back on Aurora when they were friends but watching Aurora grow from a child to exactly how she looked when Minnie was younger, started to make her feel guilty.

This new Aurora had trusted her thinking she was her granddaughter. Minnie loved watching her have fun in the garden once more and laughing along with Regina and Samuel. A face filled with tears was replaced with laughter in this lifetime but Minnie could rewrite Aurora's fate in this house. Aurora was the heart of their household in the fact that she was like a charm or a blessing. Having her around, their business would run into gold mines. And there was that rare moment where you could have her grant a wish your heart desires.

Minnie was patiently waiting to be able to make that wish and have the Hamiltons prosper for more generations. Aurora was too valuable for them to let go. She walked into this home by her own will and showed them what she was capable of. Minnie and her father's greed was not what her mother wanted but it was because of her mother that Aurora came here.

"That wolf has to be speaking to her again," Minnie said out loud, gripping the paper in her hand. It was a total surprise for her when she had seen Aurora once reaching out to something in the darkness of their garden. The glowing eyes of a beast stared right back at Minnie making her scream so loud she could alert the guards a monster was on the property and it was trying to lure Aurora away.

That night her father told her of a man who could shapeshift into an animal and also wanted Aurora for her power. To keep Aurora safe Minnie had tripled the amount of wolves bane around the property and had a field of them planted. Deep down, she knew it was her own family which Aurora needed saving from.

"Are you also upset with me for choosing my family first?" Minnie asked the man standing silently in the room. Her heart had always belonged to him when she was younger but he was not fit for the daughter of the Hamilton family so just like Aurora, she gave him up.

"No," the family butler Ducan bowed his head. He knew from the beginning they would never be together but because he loved her, he stayed as a butler by her side. Painfully watching through the years as he served her late husband.

"Sometimes it warms my heart thinking of how you stayed loyal by my side all these years and then I think how pathetic you are to stay by a woman who has not acknowledged you. Don't you feel angry when I call you just to use you?" Her marriage to her late husband was only for the benefit of the family and not once had she loved him even though her husband loved her dearly.

There were times where she would seek out Duncan and use his body for pleasure to wash away the fact she was married to a man she did not care for. She had an affair right under her husband's nose and she felt he knew but kept quiet.

"My husband was just like everyone else, trying to break up my friendship with Aurora. He had gotten too nosey and it so happened that I did not need him anymore. I had established myself in society as a woman not to be messed with and had all the housewives in the palm of my hand. How kind of you to poison him for me," Minnie looked down at young Aurora in the portrait and backed up to a mirror in the room. She raised her hand to run her fingers along the lines of her growing wrinkles. "I miss being young and beautiful. What a lovely gift she has to turn young again."

"Are you going to wish for youth?" Duncan asked as he knew many of the family secrets.

"I wanted to wish for the success of this household but I don't think it would run well without me. I'm tempted to wish for eternal youth." She missed how beautiful she used to look. Minnie still had a lot of beauty for her age but it wasn't how she wanted to be. It was why she detested the children calling her grandmother.

"People would be suspicious of you suddenly looking younger. They might think you're using witchcraft and you could be hanged. It's too risky," Duncan tried to discourage her. The last thing he wanted to see was her being hanged.

"How thoughtful of you but I am a smart woman. I wouldn't go back to being a young woman but just get rid of these wrinkles and claim it to be the power of a beauty product. I need you to make preparations for Aurora to go to sleep again. I won't make the same mistake of playing family with her. She is our captive and a captive needs to be locked up." She had been building a dungeon to keep Aurora locked up in as a backup plan. Now it would be put to some use.

"I want it to happen right after the harvest festival. Make no mistakes with any of the preparations Duncan."

He bowed, accepting the job, and turned to leave to give her some privacy in her room as it was becoming too late for a man to be seen in her room even if he was the butler.

"In another life, I'm sure you and I will meet again as lovers. Maybe I will be the one longing after you but in this life, please take all that you know to the grave Duncan," she spoke up right before he turned the doorknob. "I would hate to have to get rid of you too."