Chapter 3

3

Silas grabbed my wrist and yanked me back.

"Is there something else?" I asked, my voice like ice.

I ripped my arm away from his grip.

"Sienna, stop acting out. Just stay home. I'll make it up to you in three months."

"In what capacity? As your maid?"

Silas choked on his words. His face turned a deep shade of red.

"Silas," Sadie interrupted, "if she wants to leave, let her. But that bracelet she's wearing... Grandma had it blessed by a priest. Can I have it? Maybe it will help me live longer."

My eyes widened in shock.

When I was three, I had a fever that wouldn't break. The doctors gave up.

My grandmother, at seventy years old, climbed a mountain on foot to get that bracelet from a remote temple. She put it on my wrist and told everyone never to take it off.

Grandma was the only person who still loved me after Sadie arrived. That bracelet was the only thing I had left of her.

Fury bubbled up inside me like lava.

"Sadie, are you even human? You stole my husband, and now you want my grandmother's heirloom?!"

"Sienna, she's right," Silas said calmly. "It's just a piece of jewelry. It's useless to you. Just give it to her."

He knew how much that bracelet meant to me. He knew it was my soul. Yet he said it so casually.

"Never!"

I was shaking with rage. The word felt like it was carved out of my bones.

I tried to walk away, but Silas grabbed my arm again. He used his strength to force the bracelet off my wrist.

The metal dug into my skin. I felt like my bones were breaking.

As I struggled, the bracelet snapped. It flew out of his hand and shattered against the floor.

I looked at the broken pieces. My heart died right then and there. Tears mixed with the blood on my palm.

At that moment, I was finished with him.

I sat in a taxi, watching the city blur past. My phone rang twice before I realized it.

It was my friend from the hospital. I answered immediately.

"Sienna, I found the truth. It's bad. You need to be ready."

"Just tell me. I can take it," I said softly.

"We checked the records. Your parents and Sadie bribed a doctor to forge the diagnosis. Your sister doesn't have cancer. She's perfectly healthy."

The world collapsed around me.

I knew my parents favored Sadie, but this?

At fifteen, they gave her my first phone because she liked it.

At eighteen, they threw her a massive debutante ball and gave me nothing.

At twenty-three, they forced me to break up with my first love because Sadie said he was "annoying."

And now, at twenty-eight, they used a fake terminal illness to give her my fiancé.

They weren't just biased. They were monsters.

I didn't need this family. I didn't need this love.

I pulled out Liam Sterling's card and dialed the number.