Chapter 8: Cracks in the Past

Seven nights after the Board of Directors seized control of the company, Ava returned alone to the small, dilapidated apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.

Her mother, Nora, was still in the VIP wing of St. Luke’s Hospital, the latest batch of experimental targeted drugs—secured only after Ava had leveraged two hundred million dollars—holding the grim reaper at bay, for now. A doctor had confided in her privately, a cold whisper of prognosis: “She’ll hold on for another six months to a year, no problem. But after that… unless a miracle happens.” Ava slept at the hospital every night, only returning here during the day for a change of clothes and, occasionally, to handle things that couldn't see the light of day. Tonight, however, she was here to retrieve the ‘key’ her mother had left her all those years ago.

In the corner of the living room, a section of the wall bore a grayish-white paint color almost identical to the rest of the room. Ava’s fingernail scraped through the thin layer of paint, revealing an old-fashioned Yale safe, perfectly embedded, looking as if it had never existed. Countless times as a child, she had traced its outline with curious fingers, only to have Nora smack her hand away. “Only open this,” her mother had warned, “the day you can take down the Rosier family by yourself.”

Now, she could.

Using the small brass key Nora had pressed into her palm a lifetime ago, Ava twisted the lock with a sharp click. The moment the door sprang open, a rush of damp, heavy camphor scent assaulted her, like the sudden exposure of a twenty-two-year-old tomb.

Inside, there were only three items, quiet but holding the tension of three live, imminent bombs.

The First Item was a DNA identification report dated 2009. The A4 paper was already yellowed, its folds etched so deep they looked like surgical cuts. The results were chillingly clear: “Sample A (Ava Rosier) and Sample B (Alexander Rosier) paternity established, probability 99.9999%.” But at the very bottom of the page, there was a small line scrawled by Nora in red lipstick—a crooked, searing annotation: “The second sample is from S.R., matching probability 99.9999%.”

S.R.—Sebastian Rosier, the eldest legitimate son of the Rosier first house, the child of Alexander and his legal wife, Marguerite. Ava’s nominal ‘big brother.’

The Second Item was a blood-stained bullet casing. The date was meticulously carved into the brass shell: 2009.12.25. That was Christmas Eve when she was twelve years old, the exact day she and her mother were mercilessly banished from the Rosier dynasty.

The Third Item was an antique DV videotape. The label, written in her mother’s elegant handwriting, read: “To my Ava, when you’re strong enough to burn them all.” Beside the note, a small black rose was delicately drawn.

Ava fed the tape into the vintage player her mother had kept. The screen sputtered and flashed with static, like the twenty-two-year-old nightmare was being forcefully dragged into the present.

When the footage finally stabilized, her twelfth Christmas Eve returned like a blunt knife, carving through her heart one frame at a time.

The camera showed a younger Nora, seven months pregnant, wearing a cheap red dress, kneeling before the massive Rosier Christmas tree, sobbing as she begged Alexander to give the unborn child a legal name. Alexander sat on a leather sofa, lazily drawing on a cigar, his lips curled into a cold sneer: “You think a little bastard daughter can threaten me?”

Then he raised his hand. The gunshot echoed. The bullet slammed into the carpet near Nora’s feet, the brass casing bouncing and rolling right up to the lens. Nora screamed, clutching her belly. Blood immediately began to flood out from beneath her dress, staining the entire white wool rug a sickening crimson.

Alexander lowered himself, using the gun barrel to tilt Nora’s chin up, his voice a venomous hiss: “Dare to show your face—or hers—in front of me again, and I’ll make sure both mother and daughter vanish forever.”

The picture abruptly cut, skipping to another scene—later that same night, in the delivery room of a Brooklyn public hospital. Nora lay in a pool of blood; the doctor’s muffled voice confirmed premature labor, oxygen deprivation, and the child possibly dying in utero at any moment.

From outside the frame, a tall, masked youth walked in. His voice was deliberately distorted, yet it carried the clean, sharp clarity characteristic of a young man: “I’ll sign the papers.”

“I am her brother.”

Ava slammed the pause button, her fingers trembling violently.

The screen froze on the side profile of the boy—deep-set brow bones, a straight nose bridge, and a thin, sharp lip line. He was the spitting image of the vague, half-forgotten ‘big brother’ Sebastian Rosier from her fragmented memory.

The devastating realization hit her: that night, the one who had truly saved her life was not some miracle bought by her mother’s sacrifice, but Sebastian Rosier, her nominal ‘big brother.’

He had been only nineteen then, yet he’d signed all the surgical consent forms under his own name, and paid Nora’s initial astronomical medical bill. The next day, he had disappeared, his whereabouts unknown for a full decade.

Ava rewound the tape, watching it frame by agonizing frame, until she finally spotted a line of small script her mother had written in lipstick in the corner. The words were slightly smeared by blood, yet still agonizingly clear:

“Sebastian is not your father’s son. He is mine. He is the mistake I made with a British medical student one spring in Harvard. I placed him into Marguerite’s arms only so he could survive.

But he has only ever recognized one mother: me. And only ever recognized one sister: you.”

The truth detonated in her mind like a fragmentation grenade, leaving her ears ringing and her vision blurred.

Sebastian Rosier. On the surface, the eldest son of Alexander and his wife Marguerite, the Rosier family’s declared heir. In reality, he was the bastard son of Nora and some unknown British medical student, secretly switched by Nora into the wife’s arms, replacing the child who had truly been stillborn.

He and Ava were genuine, full-blooded half-siblings, born of the same mother.

And Alexander had been completely fooled, the unsuspecting victim of a masterful deception, from start to finish.

Ava sank onto the floor, leaning her back against the open safe. She started to laugh. It was a wrenching, breathless sound that lasted a full ten minutes, laughter that eventually turned into weeping, laughter that tore at her throat until she tasted blood.

It turned out the greatest weapon her mother had left her wasn't money, not documented evidence, not anything that could ever be brought to a boardroom table.

It was a blood brother—a man even more ruthless, more dangerous, and who loved her with a ferocity that eclipsed all reason.

A true older brother who had guarded her from the shadows for twenty-two years, yet had never been allowed to truly step into the light.

She remembered her childhood, the countless times her mother would cough until she passed out, and the first question she’d ask upon waking was always: “Seb… is he alright?” Back then, Ava thought her mother was delirious; now she understood it was the agonizing concern of a mother for her other child.

She remembered being sixteen, kneeling outside the Rosier mansion begging for money. When the butler tossed a five-hundred-thousand-dollar check at her, she heard a cold sneer from behind the column: “Filthy little tramp.” At the time, she’d assumed it was Victoria; now she knew that icy voice belonged to the young man perpetually standing in the shadows.

Ava carefully replaced all three items into the safe and locked it. Then, she picked up her phone and dialed the encrypted line for her mother’s hospital room.

“Mom.” Her voice was soft as a feather, yet laced with an unprecedented, ironclad certainty. “I found Sebastian.”

There was a long silence on the other end, so prolonged that Ava feared the line had dropped. Finally, Nora’s weak but smiling voice came through:

“Tell him… his mother is waiting for him to come home.”

Ava hung up and looked out the window. The New York night was a thick, inky stain, impossibly deep.

At that very moment, at John F. Kennedy Airport.

A Gulfstream G650, fresh from London, taxied to a smooth stop.

The cabin door opened, and a tall man descended. Black trench coat, piercing silver-gray eyes, deep-set brow, and a thin, razor-sharp lip line. He looked like a blade sheathed but ready.

Sebastian Rosier, returning after ten years of exile.

His first act on New York soil was to pull out his phone and dial an encrypted number.

The call connected. His mother’s voice, fragile yet imbued with a profound, aching tenderness, answered: “Seb… you’re finally back.”

“I’m back, Mother.” His voice was a low rumble, rough with the perpetual shade he'd lived in. “This time, no one will ever touch her again.”

He ended the call, lifting his gaze toward the distant skyline of Manhattan. In his silver-gray eyes, the possessiveness was deeper than the night itself.

Ava Rosier. His sister. His life.