Chapter 4

I must have cried myself to sleep on the floor of my ruined room.

I woke to the sounds of laughter. Bright, happy laughter drifting up from the first floor. It was a sound that hadn't been heard in this house for years.

My body ached all over. My ankle was swollen and purple, and a dull, constant headache pulsed behind my eyes. I slowly, painfully, pulled myself to my feet. The room was clean. Mrs. Gable must have finished while I was unconscious. The only evidence of last night' s violence was the deep crater in the wall next to my head.

Driven by a morbid curiosity, I limped out of my room and down the stairs.

The scene in the living room stopped me cold.

There she was. Sophia.

She looked almost exactly as she had ten years ago, impossibly beautiful and radiant. She was sitting on the sofa, holding a cup of tea, looking like a queen holding court.

My parents were on either side of her, beaming, hanging on her every word. Mia was curled up at her feet, her head resting on Sophia' s lap, looking up at her with pure adoration.

And Mark... Mark was kneeling on the floor in front of her, his expression one of such raw, unguarded love that it stole the breath from my lungs. It was a look he had never, not once in ten years, given me.

In that moment, I was completely invisible. A ghost in my own home.

My mind flashed back to that horrible day ten years ago. My parents, their faces pale with panic, bursting into my room. "Sophia's gone! You have to do this, Olivia! You have to marry Mark! You have to save this family!" They had stripped me of my own simple dress and forced me into Sophia's extravagant wedding gown, which hung loosely on my frame. They had pushed me down the aisle toward a man whose eyes were blank with shock and grief. My sacrifice hadn't been a choice; it had been a command.

"We have to celebrate!" Mark' s voice, filled with a joy I didn't recognize, pulled me back to the present. "I' ll have the staff arrange a party tonight. A welcome home party for Sophia!"

Sophia laughed, a light, musical sound that grated on my nerves. "Oh, Mark, you don' t have to."

"I do," he insisted, his eyes never leaving her face. "We have ten years of lost time to make up for."

Then, Sophia' s gaze drifted past him and landed on me, standing on the bottom step of the staircase. Her perfect smile widened.

"Olivia, darling," she said, her voice like honey laced with poison. "It' s so good to see you. You look... well."

Before I could form a response, Mia shot up from the floor, pointing a finger at me.

"Don' t talk to her, Mommy!" she cried, her voice shrill. "She' s evil! She tried to ruin our family! She said she was going to divorce Daddy so you couldn' t come home!"

Sophia' s expression shifted to one of deep, theatrical sadness. She looked at our parents, her lower lip trembling. "Mom, Dad... I have to confess something."

All eyes turned to her.

"The reason I stayed away so long... it was Olivia," she said, a tear rolling artfully down her cheek. "She wrote to me. Horrible letters, for years. She told me to never come back. She said Mark hated me and that Mia wanted nothing to do with me. She threatened to ruin my life if I ever tried to contact my own daughter."

The lie was so audacious, so completely fabricated, that I could only stare at her in stunned silence.

My mother, however, swallowed it whole. She shot to her feet, her face contorted with a righteous fury that was terrifying to behold. She marched over to me, her eyes blazing.

"You wicked, wicked girl," she spat, her voice low and shaking with rage. She raised her hand, and this time, the slap was even harder than the one before. It sent me stumbling back against the newel post, my cheek burning, the taste of blood in my mouth.

"How could you be so cruel to your own sister?" she shrieked. "We gave you everything! A life of luxury, a powerful husband! And this is how you repay us? By tormenting the sister you were always so jealous of?"

I looked past her, at the faces in the living room. My father, shaking his head in disgust. Mark, his face a mask of cold fury, believing every word. Mia, smirking with vindictive pleasure. And Sophia, watching it all, a faint, victorious smile playing on her lips.

They were a perfect family unit. A tableau of lies and betrayal. And I was the outsider, the villain, the convenient scapegoat for all their sins.

Something inside me went very, very still. The pain vanished, replaced by a profound, chilling emptiness. There was nothing left to fight for. Nothing left to say.

Without a word, I straightened up. I looked at each of them one last time, memorizing their faces-the faces of the people who had systematically destroyed me.

Then, I turned my back on them. I opened the front door, walked out into the cold morning air, and didn't look back.