Chapter 9 The Sister Pact

The rain had come suddenly that afternoon.

Isabella, just eight years old, had huddled beneath the stone gazebo, clutching her soaked cardigan tighter around her small shoulders. Her curls clung to her cheeks. The marble beneath her feet was slick, and her lip trembled-not from the cold, but from the sting of humiliation.

Celeste had left her behind. Again.

It was supposed to have been a simple game-hide and seek in the garden maze. But when Isabella hid too well, Celeste had grown bored. Or cruel. She went back inside without a word, leaving her sister to wait under the darkening sky for what felt like hours.

She had almost believed no one would come.

Then, through the wall of rain, she heard footsteps. Fast and purposeful. Celeste appeared with a towel in her arms and a guilty frown on her face.

"You weren't supposed to stay hidden that long," she said, kneeling beside her.

Isabella glared at her. "You forgot me."

"I didn't." Celeste hesitated. "I just... got distracted."

"You lied."

Celeste wrapped the towel around her. "I wouldn't lie to you."

Isabella looked up at her, shivering. "Promise?"

Celeste's eyes were soft, younger then. Kinder. She reached for Isabella's pinky.

"I promise," she said, their fingers hooking.

> "Sisters never lie to each other. No matter what."

---

The present-day warmth of the study shattered the memory.

Isabella sat at the same desk, now decades older, reading the transcript Damien had printed from the flash drive. Every word of it made her skin crawl.

Board transactions. Unauthorized asset transfers. Celeste's name signed off on entries two days before Harold Vaughn's death. Dates that didn't match public records. Names that didn't belong.

"She was laundering control through the board," Damien said, pacing slowly behind her. "Quietly shifting power before the will was even public."

Isabella's hands curled into fists. "She was planning this long before he died."

"She knew you'd come back eventually. The foundation gala, the media splash... it wasn't about family. It was a message."

"I see that now."

Damien set the last page on the desk. "And yet she's careful. No smoking gun. Just misaligned dots that only someone like you-or your father-would've noticed."

"She knew what she was doing," Isabella whispered. "She learned from him."

"She learned how to bury things deeper," he said. "He just taught her where to dig."

Silence settled again.

Then Isabella opened the drawer of the desk, pulled out a faded photograph-the one from the broken frame-and slid it in front of him.

"You ever wonder what made her change?" she asked. "We were close once. We had a pact."

Damien studied the image. "What happened?"

Isabella exhaled. "Life. Power. Pressure. Dad always said Celeste had the brains, and I had the heart. Guess we both believed him."

He didn't respond to that.

She stood slowly and moved to the window. The garden outside looked peaceful again. Trimmed. Pruned. Controlled.

She hated how perfect it was.

"She forgot me once," Isabella murmured. "In the rain. I waited for hours. Thought she'd left me there for good."

"And now?"

"She still has," Isabella said. "Just in a different way."

Damien walked over and stood beside her.

"She doesn't know what we've found," he said. "Yet. That gives us time."

"Time for what?"

"To finish what your father started. And to decide what kind of woman you want to become."

Isabella didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on the past.

But deep in her chest, something old cracked-and something new took shape beneath it.

Not revenge.

Not grief.

Resolve.