Chapter 2

I didn't sleep.

How could I? Every time I closed my eyes, I saw them—Dad's hands in Sherry's hair, their bodies pressed together in that dusty attic while my birthday party celebrated below. The image burned behind my eyelids like a brand, searing itself into my memory with cruel precision.

By dawn, my silk sheets were twisted around my legs like chains, and my pillow was damp with tears I hadn't realized I'd shed. The house felt different now—poisoned somehow, as if the very walls had absorbed the betrayal I'd witnessed.

I heard Dad's footsteps in the hallway around seven, his usual confident stride unchanged. How could he walk so normally? How could he shower and dress and go about his morning routine as if he hadn't just destroyed everything?

Mom's gentle voice drifted up from the kitchen, asking if I wanted breakfast. The thought of sitting across from Dad at our family table, pretending everything was fine while Mom's trusting smile beamed at us both, made my stomach revolt.

"I'm not hungry," I called down, my voice hoarse from crying. "I'll grab something at school."

I dressed mechanically—jeans, sweater, boots. My reflection in the mirror looked like a stranger: hollow-eyed, pale, aged years overnight. The diamond necklace from yesterday lay discarded on my dresser, catching the morning light like broken promises.

School felt surreal, like walking through a movie set of my own life. Students passed in the hallways, laughing and chatting about weekend plans, completely oblivious to the fact that my world had imploded twelve hours ago. Their normalcy felt alien, almost offensive.

I avoided the cafeteria, the student lounge, anywhere I might run into mutual friends who would ask about the party with bright, curious eyes. Instead, I found myself drawn to the library—that quiet sanctuary where serious students came to study, not socialize.

The library's back corner, nestled between towering shelves of dusty reference books, had always been our spot. Sherry and I used to meet here during lunch to gossip or complain about assignments, hidden away from the social pressures of the main campus.

Now I waited there alone, my heart hammering against my ribs as footsteps approached. I knew her walk—light, quick, with that little bounce she'd had since childhood. The sound that used to bring me comfort now made my skin crawl.

Sherry appeared around the corner of the stacks, and for a moment, we just stared at each other. She looked different somehow—not physically, but in the way she held herself. Gone was the slightly deferential posture she'd always maintained around me, the subtle acknowledgment of our different social positions. Instead, she stood straighter, chin lifted, eyes clear and unashamed.

"I wondered when you'd corner me," she said, her voice steady. No tremor of guilt, no rush to explain or apologize.

The casual tone hit me like a slap. "Corner you? Sherry, what the hell is going on? What I saw last night—"

"Was exactly what you think it was." She moved closer, settling into the chair across from me with infuriating calm. "Your father and I are together, Bellia. Have been for months."

The words hung in the air between us like poison gas. Months. Not a moment of weakness, not a terrible mistake—months of deliberate betrayal.

"How could you?" My voice cracked despite my efforts to stay strong. "He's my father. I'm your best friend. How could you do this to me? To my family?"

Sherry's laugh was soft and bitter. "Your family? Your perfect, wealthy, untouchable family?" She leaned forward, her green eyes glittering with something I'd never seen before—resentment, raw and ugly. "Do you have any idea what it's like, Bellia? Watching you float through life without a care, everything handed to you on a silver platter?"

"That's not—I never—"

"You never had to worry about college tuition. Never had to work summers to help pay rent. Never had to watch your mother cry over bills." Her voice grew sharper with each word. "Richard offers me something you could never understand—security, a future, a chance to matter."

The way she said his name—Richard, not Mr. Valentine—made my skin crawl. There was an intimacy there, a possessiveness that felt like fingernails on a chalkboard.

"You matter to me," I whispered, hating how pathetic I sounded. "You've always mattered. You're my sister, Sherry. I love you."

Something flickered across her face—a shadow of the girl I'd grown up with, the one who'd braided my hair and shared her secrets. But it vanished as quickly as it came.

"Love doesn't pay for designer clothes or fancy cars," she said coldly. "It doesn't guarantee a place at the country club or ensure your children will never want for anything."

Children. The word hit me like a physical blow.

"Sherry..." I started, but she wasn't finished.

She reached into her purse and pulled out something small and white—a pregnancy test. The positive result stared up at me like an accusation.

"I'm pregnant," she announced, her voice ringing with triumph. "And it's a boy."

The library spun around me. A boy. Dad's son. The heir he'd always wanted, the one he'd been disappointed not to get with me. The final piece of his perfect new family, built on the ruins of the old one.

"You can't be serious," I breathed. "My mother—her heart condition—this will kill her."

"That's not my problem anymore," Sherry said, tucking the test back into her purse with careful precision. "Richard and I have discussed it. We're going to start fresh, build something real together. Something that's ours."

The casual cruelty of it stole my breath. This girl I'd shared my deepest secrets with, who'd slept over at my house countless times, who'd been like family—she was talking about destroying my actual family as if it were a minor inconvenience.

I stood abruptly, my chair scraping against the floor. "I can't... I need to go."

"Bellia." Her voice stopped me at the edge of the stacks. When I turned back, her expression had softened slightly, but her eyes remained hard. "I'm sorry it had to be this way. But I'm not sorry it happened."

I fled the library, my vision blurred with tears I refused to let fall. Students moved around me in the hallways like water around a stone, their chatter and laughter a meaningless buzz in my ears.

By afternoon, the shock had crystallized into something sharper, more dangerous. Rage. Pure, white-hot fury that burned away the hurt and left only the need for confrontation.

I found her in the cafeteria during lunch, holding court at a table near the windows. She'd gathered a new group around her—girls who'd always been on the periphery of our social circle, eager to fill the void my absence had created. They hung on her every word, laughing at her jokes, completely unaware they were socializing with a home-wrecker.

The sight of her casual happiness, her easy smile as she entertained her new audience, snapped something inside me.

I walked across the cafeteria with purpose, my footsteps echoing in the sudden quiet that followed my movement. Conversations died as students sensed the tension radiating from me like heat.

Sherry looked up as I approached, her smile faltering slightly. "Bellia, what are you—"

My palm connected with her cheek with a sharp crack that echoed through the cafeteria like a gunshot. The force of it snapped her head to the side and sent her tumbling backward off her chair.

The entire room fell silent.

Sherry pressed her hand to her reddening cheek, staring up at me from the floor with wide, shocked eyes. Around us, students pulled out their phones with the practiced speed of a generation raised on social media drama.

"That's for my mother," I said, my voice carrying clearly in the stunned silence. "And for every lie you've ever told me."

I turned and walked away, leaving her sprawled on the cafeteria floor surrounded by scattered lunch trays and gaping faces. Behind me, I could hear the whispers starting, the excited buzz of gossip spreading like wildfire.

What I didn't see was Chloe Lancaster in the corner, her phone held high, a malicious grin spreading across her face as she captured every second of my public breakdown.