He Chose My Sister, So I Chose Myself

Tanith

The front door of Rourke House closed with a heavy thud that sent a sharp spike of pain into my lower abdomen.

I stood in the foyer, breath hitching, waiting for the spasm to pass. The air smelled of cold marble, lilies, and rain. Under my trench coat, three fresh surgical incisions pulled against the gauze taped across my pelvis. Every step from the taxi had felt like walking on broken glass—a reminder of the emergency surgery that had taken a ruptured ovarian cyst, two liters of blood, and five hours of my life.

My left wrist still felt heavy. I looked down at the hospital ID bracelet. TANITH ROURKE. ROOM 408. EMERGENCY ADMIT. I had stared at that strip for twelve hours in recovery, unable to cut it off. Proof I had been torn open and sewn back together while the world kept turning.

I had called him seven times before they wheeled me into the operating room. When my blood pressure plummeted and nurses ran with bags of plasma, the head nurse took my phone and called him three more times.

He never picked up.

I leaned against the wainscoting, took a shallow breath, and shuffled toward the living room. I had expected a silent, darkened house. I had expected to drag myself upstairs to the guest room, crawl under a blanket, and bleed in peace.

Instead, the amber glow of a lamp spilled into the hallway, carrying the low murmur of voices.

I stopped at the arched doorway, hand clinging to the frame.

Caspian sat on the sofa, jacket off, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, dark hair tousled. He wasn’t alone. Curled into his side was Vesper. His arm wrapped around her shoulders, palm rubbing circles into her back while she wept into his neck.

On Vesper’s right wrist, a white bandage showed beneath her sleeve—the mark of the “accident” at the gallery that afternoon. The incident that had sent Caspian rushing out of his board meeting, ignoring my calls as my abdomen filled with blood.

I stood frozen.

Then Caspian looked up.

No jolt of recognition. No relief. Only irritation.

“What are you doing up?” His voice was sharp. “The doctor told you to rest. You’re supposed to be in bed. Why are you dragging yourself around like a martyr?”

I stared at him. The word doctor echoed. He knew. He had spoken to the hospital. He knew I had undergone surgery—and he hadn’t come.

“You knew,” I whispered, voice raw from the tube that had been down my throat hours earlier. “You spoke to the doctor.”

Caspian shifted, arm still locked around Vesper. “I spoke to the chief of staff an hour ago to make sure you weren’t in immediate danger. I told them I was handling a crisis here.”

“A crisis?” My hands tightened into fists. The bracelet bit into my wrist. I took a step forward, voice rising despite the pain in my stitches. “I was in the OR, Caspian. I lost two liters of blood. They were prepping me for a transfusion while I begged the head nurse to find my husband. And you abandoned me for a bandage?”

Vesper flinched. She pulled away from his chest, tear-brimmed eyes snapping to me.

“Oh God, Tanith, please don’t,” she sobbed. She held her bandaged hand close to her heart. “Please don’t yell at him. It’s my fault. I didn’t know it was that serious. I swear I didn’t.”

She slid off the sofa onto her knees.

“When Caspian came to the gallery, I thought you were just having those stomach pains again. You always get those terrible cramps. I didn’t realize it was real this time. If I had known, I would have begged him to leave me at the clinic alone. He shouldn’t have stayed with me all night. I feel sick for disrupting your marriage. Please, Caspian, go to her. I’ll leave. I’ll pack my things—”

“Vesper, sit back up here,” Caspian said, tone softening as he caught her by the waist and pulled her onto the cushions.

Every word out of her mouth was misdirection. She was apologizing for a crime I hadn’t voiced, painting herself as the selfless sister while branding me the overdramatic complainer who cried wolf.

Nausea washed over me—not from the anesthesia, but from the predictability of it.

“Stop it,” I spat. My knees buckled. “Stop acting like a victim. I didn’t say a word about you disrupting my marriage. I asked my husband why he wasn’t at the hospital while I was bleeding out.”

“That is enough, Tanith!” Caspian snapped, standing. “Look at her. She’s hyperventilating. She nearly severed a tendon on shattered glass, she’s traumatized, and you walk in throwing a fit.”

“She cut her wrist on a display case!” I screamed. “I was bleeding internally. I was dying on an operating table while you held her hand!”

“She is your sister!” he roared, stepping toward me. His eyes blazed. He looked down at my pale face, my trembling hands, my hunched posture, and his lip curled.

“Look at you,” he said. “You’re standing here, aren’t you? Clearly you weren’t dying.”

The world shrank.

Something deep inside me—the thread that had held me together through five years of quiet sacrifices and endless excuses—finally snapped. It dissolved into ash.

I looked at Caspian. At the man I had loved, the man I had molded my life around. The veil lifted. I saw him for what he was: a hollow vessel, empty of warmth for me. There was nothing left to rebuild. Nothing left to save.

A strange calm settled over me. The pain locked away behind ice.

I lifted my chin and met his eyes.

“I want a divorce.”

The words hung in the air, irreversible.

Caspian froze, staring as if I had spoken in a dead language. His frown faltered into blankness.

On the sofa, Vesper’s whimpers stopped. Her fingers tightened on the blanket, knuckles white.

And for one brief second, before she bowed her head and slipped back into her delicate facade, I caught the expression raw on my sister’s face.

It wasn’t horror.

It wasn’t sorrow.

It was absolute, gleaming satisfaction.