06

   BELLY

Three Days Later.

"Welcome, ma'am."

"Glad to have you back." 

The maids chorused the greetings at Belladonna and me as we stepped out of the car, their faces bright with smiles that looked too warm for the cold mess sitting inside my chest.

The afternoon air was calm, carrying the faint scent of flowers, trimmed grass and something expensive I could not name. The mansion rose before me like something pulled out of a royal dream with clean white walls, wide glass windows and balconies lined with crawling green vines. Trees stood around the property while bright flowers softened the edges of everything, making the whole place look natural and untouchable at the same time.

Even with my mind frayed and barely stitched together, I could not help being taken aback by the beauty of it.

The place was like a city on its own.

The main house stood on the right while the smaller house Belladonna and I were heading toward sat a little apart from it. Smaller, yes, but still beautiful in a way that made my throat tighten. It had belonged to my sister before she passed.

Donna led me inside and the moment I stepped into the living room, my heart dropped so fast it felt like it had missed every rib on the way down.

The walls were covered with framed portraits of Isabelle. We might've shared the same features, but somehow, she looked nothing like me. Or maybe she looked like everything I had never been allowed to become. 

She had my face, yes, but where I had been a shadow, she had been sunlight poured into human form.

In some of the pictures, she looked like a foreign model, dressed in expensive gowns with glittering jewelry resting on her throat and wrists. In others, she was dressed simply, her hair loose, her smile soft, yet she still looked exquisite.

I had never looked like that in my life. Well, except for that day at the hospital, when I had dressed up and convinced myself Kage would come to see me.

My fingers lifted, trailing along one of the frames where Isabelle stood in a beach dress, the wind catching the fabric around her legs. She looked free. Happy. Alive.

"She was so beautiful." A tear slipped down my cheek.

Behind me, Donna answered. "Isabelle was the most perfect girl I'd ever seen. She was my blessing." 

Her voice was soaked in so much emotion, it made the room feel heavier.

Another tear joined the first on my cheek. I blinked, but it only made more gather. I wished we had gotten to spend more time together. I wished I had known her laughter, her habits, the way she owned a room.

Thanks to Annalise, I could count the memories I had of my sister on one hand and still have fingers left.

Like me, Isabelle had been down with a terminal illness. Hers had affected her brain, and there had been no way around it. Knowing she was going to die, she had decided to donate her heart to me.

My sister died giving me a second chance at life.

The thought folded me in half from the inside.

I clutched my chest, feeling her heart beating inside me.

"I don't think I'm worth it," I sniffled, my fingers tightening over my chest as though I could hold the heart in place. "This should have been given to someone stronger. Someone more deserving. I'm..." My gaze dropped to the floor, shame burning behind my eyes. "I've always been weak. I don't even know what to do with my life right now."

Donna walked up to me, gripped my shoulders and forced me to face her. There was fire in her eyes. The kind that could drag a drowning person out of the sea by sheer will alone.

"You know what to do, girl. Isabelle came into my life when I badly needed a child. Even when we got to find her foster family, she insisted on sticking to me. She was my everything, and the fact that you have her heart in your chest right now makes you important to me."

Her voice trembled at the edges, but she did not let it break. Her eyes shone with tears she was too proud to release, and somehow, that hurt more than if she had cried.

She released my shoulders, but her gaze stayed locked on mine. "I understand you had a rough life growing up, but from the moment my daughter handed her heart to you, you stopped being Annabelle Birkhead and became Isabelle Voss. So, you'll have to grow a spine and act like her."

I wanted to do it. Didn't want to disappoint Donna or my sister. But standing there, surrounded by Isabelle's beautiful face and the life she had left behind, I was terrified that I did not have the spine for it.

For the next three days, Belladonna devoted herself to teaching me the core things about Isabelle—her signature, her posture, the way she spoke and reasoned, the way she carried herself around people who either respected her, feared her, or wanted something from her.

It turned out my sister had been a no-nonsense woman. Isabelle Voss did not ask twice. She did not soften instructions with nervous smiles. She handled the staff with an iron fist wrapped in silk, and from what I gathered, every maid, driver and cook in that house knew better than to test her patience.

With me, it was different. Painfully different.

I did not even know how to tell the cook she had made my eggs the wrong way. I would not have been surprised if Donna noticed my weakness, because she usually stared at me whenever I quietly ate something I had not exactly ordered, as if my inability to complain was personally insulting to her.

Fortunately for us, my new father, Valentin, was away on a long trip, which gave me enough time to settle into Isabelle’s life before his return.

Donna had already made one thing clear: her husband could never know this secret. Never.

Before her death, Isabelle had explained the family situation to me. Belladonna could not have children. Years before Isabelle was adopted, her best friend had gotten pregnant by her husband. Donna had been shattered by the betrayal, not only because her husband had cheated, but because the woman who had betrayed her had been someone she had trusted enough to call family.

The woman gave birth to a boy who, unfortunately, grew up to become a wolf-junkie. He had been sent to rehab, and I was told he had been clean for three years.

Unfortunately for him, Isabelle had grown into their father’s favorite. She was the one Valentin intended to hand the family business to. But with Isabelle dead, everything would eventually pass to his son, and that was something Belladonna refused to allow.

She had sworn that neither her ex-best friend nor her stepson would take anything from her husband.

That was the reason I was here. To become Isabelle's replacement and handle the business. But how could I handle anything when I've been a mess my whole life?

"Can I see my daughter?" I asked Donna one evening after taking a shower and changing into a sleeping robe.

My damp hair rested against my back, and the room smelled of lavender, bath soap and that loneliness that always came for me after sunset.

Donna was leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed over her chest. She had not changed out of her elegant day dress yet. 

"Your daughter is far from you, with Alpha Kage, who believes you're dead." Her voice was calm, but cold enough to bruise. "How can you possibly see her?"