Chapter 1

My sister had a crush on my fiancé. When the whole family shut her down, she left a note and jumped off a building.

After that, she lay in the ICU, unconscious, while I was the one left to suffer.

*****

As soon as I walked in, a vase shattered right in front of me.

It was a Mother's Day gift I made for my mom back in elementary school.

It used to sit in the most prominent spot in the house, but now it was scattered into pieces all over the floor. Some shards nicked my leg, and blood started running down.

My mom screamed, "Why couldn't it have been you instead?"

Her eyes were swollen, her hair a tangled mess, and she clutched an old journal as she screamed, "Lily is such a lovely girl. How could you drive her to this over a man?"

"I didn't—" I tried to protest, my voice trembling, but my dad suddenly appeared.

He held my mom back, gripping her tightly, and yelled at me, "Emma, your mom is falling apart. Just go back to your place."

My place? Wasn't this supposed to be my place?

I wanted to say something else, but he snapped, his patience gone. "You pushed Lily to this. Do you want to destroy your mother, too?"

His words froze me to the core. I barely knew what I was doing as I stumbled out the door, desperate to escape.

I never thought my own family would see me as the villain.

They seemed to forget that Lily fell in love with my fiancé.

My mom always said Lily and I were different.

To her, I was the perfect one, smart, mature, hardworking. Lily, however, was the one who was slow, gloomy, and never good enough.

I never saw it that way. To me, Lily was the most adorable girl in the world.

It didn't matter that our parents didn't love her. I would just love her a little more to make up for it.

Everything I had, Lily deserved it, too.

However, I never imagined that on the day I got engaged, Lily would actually beg me to let her have my fiancé.

She said, "You've always been their perfect child, and they never see anything good in me. Ryan is different. He remembers my birthday, and he helps me when everyone else overlooks me.

"Emma, you already have everything. Even without Ryan, you'll still have plenty of great guys after you. Please, let me have him."

Hearing those words from my dearest sister sent a chill straight to my heart.

Did she think Ryan was just some object I could pass around?

I said to Lily without hesitation, "Absolutely not."

Lily and I started from the same place.

When our parents were young, they were all about chasing their careers, so all they could offer us were material comforts.

They hired an etiquette teacher, but Lily always felt the teacher was picking on her, so she just wouldn't bother learning.

They brought in a piano teacher, too, but Lily couldn't understand a thing and quit pretty quickly.

And while I was up late studying, Lily was just snoozing away in bed.

None of that really mattered. As long as I was strong enough, I could take care of Lily for life.

However, that didn't mean I'd just blindly give up on my fiancé for her.

I honestly didn't see it coming. Not only did Lily jump off the building, but she even left a diary saying I'd bullied her and shut her out on purpose.

In her diary, she wrote that her bad grades were all because I kept her up every night, messing with her sleep until she was worn out and anxious.

She said she had no special skills because I was too selfish, taking all the family's resources for myself, so there was nothing left for her to pursue her own interests.

She claimed she had no friends because I always trashed her buddies right in front of her, so she had no choice but to stay away from them.

Basically, everything bad in her life was somehow my fault. She said I climbed to where I was by stepping on her.