Chapter 2
Nadia’s POV
The second we got home, Serena dropped the act.
She shoved my bedroom door open so hard it bounced off the wall. Then she kicked my wheelchair straight out from under me.
I hit the floor hard. Pain shot up through both knees like fire.
pressed my back against the wall and pushed myself upright, one slow inch at a time.
Serena looked down at me. “What are you plotting now?”
Nothing.” My voice came out steady. “I’m dying. What would be the point?”
She studied me for a long moment, head tilted, like she was trying to find the trap.
I don’t buy it,” she said finally. “Prove it. Give me the paintings.”
That was always what this came back to.
Growing up, I painted. It was the one thing that was mine. Serena watched, copied, traced over my work with her own name. But alent isn’t something you can steal stroke by stroke, and hers never came. So she stopped pretending to be inspired and started just aking.
She took so many that I put the brushes down for years. Let my family assume I was done.
They did.
Well? Serena crossed her arms. “Can’t let go?”
Take them,” I said. “All of them.”
The disbelief on her face was almost worth the floor.
she didn’t move until I laid them out in front of her. Then she laughed. Not a pretty laugh. The kind that twists a face wrong.
She grabbed a fistful of my hair and leaned down close. “You idiot. Without these, even if you somehow survived, you’d have nothing. You know that, right?”
Her grip tightened.
Did you think things were just going to go back to normal?” A smile curled across her mouth. “I am going to be Cole’s wife. I vorked for that. I am not giving it up.” She paused. “I’ll make sure I’m pregnant before the wedding night is over. Every last bit of hope you’re holding onto? Gone.”
From downstairs, Diane’s voice floated up. “Girls, dinner!”
Serena let go of my hair like it was nothing. Smoothed her expression back into something soft and lovely. Walked out like none of t had happened.
At the table, she pulled one of my canvases from behind her chair and set it against the wall.
My parents’ forks stopped moving.
Russell’s mouth fell open. “Serena, you painted this?”
Diane pressed both hands over her heart. “When did you get so talented?”
Derek leaned in, eyes already calculating. That piece would go for serious money.”
That night, Derek posted it on an online auction platform.
By morning, a collector had paid a number that made Derek bounce on his heels.
0.59
: Chapter 2
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Merai
by the next day, Serena’s name was everywhere. Major online forums. Art blogs. Trending feeds.
watched them celebrate from the edge of the room.
felt nothing.
had maybe a few days left before my heart stopped for good. I wondered if their smiles would still look like that when I was gone.
had a feeling they wouldn’t.
jerena’s rise hit fast and loud. Reporters camped outside the estate for days, all of them desperate to interview the prodigy artist who’d appeared out of nowhere.
Diane cried on camera. Actually cried.
Thank God it wasn’t Serena who got hurt in that accident,” she told a reporter, one hand pressed to her chest. “We would’ve lost a
rue genius.”
hen, right there in front of everyone, she unclasped Grandma’s necklace from around her own neck and fastened it around
¡erena’s.
hat necklace was supposed to be mine.
looked away.
reporter called out, asking about the inspiration behind the painting.
erena tilted her head like she was thinking. A small, pretty blush. “My fiance,” she said softly.
he crowd lit up. “Who’s your fiance? Is he in the art world too?”
Lussell didn’t even let her answer. He stepped forward and grabbed the microphone.
Her fiance,” he announced, his voice full of pride I had never once heard him use for me, “is the heir to Hartwell Group. Cole fartwell.”
The interview exploded online within the hour. High-society bride. Prodigy artist. The kind of headline that writes itself.
irant Hartwell showed up in person to confirm it. Confirmed Serena as the Hartwell family’s future daughter-in-law, right there
In the record.
erena found me afterward.
he looked at me the way you look at something you’ve already won. “Nadia. You really went too far this time, didn’t you? There’s o road back for you now. You know that.”
smiled. “I’m not looking for one. I hope you’re happy. I mean that.”
You-
Her hand came up.
Then she saw Cole in the doorway.
fer whole body shifted. “Cole, you’re here.”
She moved to take his arm. He stepped back, gentle but deliberate, and reached up to ruffle her hair.
Give us a minute,” he said quietly. “I need to talk to Nadia.”
Serena left. Slowly. She glanced back at me once from the door.
smiled at her.
Cole crossed the room and took my hand. His grip was tight. “Don’t read into any of this wrong. Dad pushed for it. He thinks Serena’s visibility is good for the company’s image. That’s all this is.”
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< Chapter 2
I pulled my hand back.
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“You don’t owe me an explanation,” I said. “The engagement is real. You didn’t do anything wrong.” I paused. “And I’ve known for a while anyway.”
His brow pulled together. “Known what?”
The jasmine perfume. It never fully washes out of your shirts.” I kept my voice even. “The lipstick I found in your car twice. The way your eyes track her whenever she walks into a room.” I looked at him. “I’ve known all of it.”
“Stop. The word came out sharp.
His face went tight with something between anger and shame. He left without another word, footsteps hard on the floor.
I turned back to the canvas.
Serena had been threatening me since her first painting sold. New work every three days, or she’d cut off my medication and make sure I never got better.
What she didn’t know was that I’d stopped needing the medication.
I agreed anyway. I only had two paintings left to finish before I died. Two more pieces. That was all.
They wouldn’t carry her forever. I was genuinely curious what would happen to her name once I wasn’t around to fill it anymore.
Derek walked in on me painting one afternoon.
He stood in the doorway and laughed.
‘Seriously?” He shook his head. “You paint for ten years, drop it the second Serena gets famous, and now you’re back at it? What, rying to copy her now?”
I didn’t answer.
Give it up,” he said. “You will never catch up to her. Not in this lifetime.”
He left.
set the brush down and stared at the wall.
thought about the day our family brought Serena home from the group home. Derek had stood in front of me, all twelve years old and serious, and told her: “If you ever bully my sister, I’ll send you right back.”
He’d meant it then.
believed him then.
But Serena figured out early that a heart condition could do more for her than talent ever could. She’d come in last at every competition, then grab her chest and sink to the floor. Every time she woke up in a hospital bed, she’d look around at our family with red-rimmed eyes and say, her voice barely a whisper: “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to leave you all.”
It worked every single time.
Our family folded around her like she was the center of something fragile. And I got pushed to the edges until I was barely visible.
I sat in the art studio for a long time after Derek left.
Then I picked up my phone.
‘Do you have results from the accident investigation?”
The P.I. went quiet for a second. When he spoke, his voice came out heavy and careful. “Ms. Calloway, the crash was not an accident.”
My stomach dropped.
0.58
Chapter 2
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The rear door latch had been tampered with beforehand. It was jammed completely. We pulled the traffic footage.” He paused. The vehicle that hit you adjusted its angle on purpose. The impact was aimed directly at your door.”
My knuckles went white around the phone.
Mens
Once the car flipped, the driver could get out fast. The passenger seat was pinned, but the pressure on that side was significantly ower than yours. Whoever was sitting there was easy to pull out.” Another pause. “Ms. Calloway, this was planned. Do you have omeone in mind?”
didn’t answer.
But I remembered. The end of the birthday party. The parking lot. Serena grabbing my arm before we got in, complaining about arsickness, insisting she needed the front seat.
That was why.
That was why she needed the front.
told the P.I. to compile everything and send it to my email. Then I set the phone down on the windowsill.
My hands were shaking.
pressed them flat against my thighs until they stopped.
He Lied About
or Dead So She loved him to ruin, but his bitter betrayal taught her to finally walk away.
He Lied About Our Dead Son
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