Chapter 3

"Fine. In addition to the three percent in shares, I want to buy a manor villa—paid in full."

I stopped the hysterics. Instead, my composed resignation seemed to move them.

My father agreed immediately and approved a forty-million-dollar budget for the property. My brother messaged to say he'd cover all the interior design and renovation costs. He even praised my generosity.

"Cathy destroyed Mom's things. I really lost my temper with her. I've let her get away with too much. To think she'd dare to trash your room…"

I smiled—coldly—and went to Grandma to plead for leniency.

She felt for me and quietly signed over a small, profitable subsidiary to my control.

"With your own income, you won't have to take so much disrespect. Your father's lost all perspective! Who knows where the family assets will end up?"

Quietly, I expedited the property purchase.

On the day I signed the final papers, my cousin flooded my phone with family photos.

Cathy: [Uncle said the torn pictures don't matter. We can take new ones. You're not upset, right, Audrey? They say four's a crowd—three makes for a perfect family portrait.]

Me: [Okay. Add a little more blush—it'll photograph better. Peach tones suit you, they brighten your complexion. Take another set.]

Cathy: [Nick insisted on taking the whole family on a two-week tour of Aerope to make it up to me. I thought it was just one of those fake Aeropean villages back home. This is just to cheer me up. It's not that we purposely left you out.]

I let out a cold laugh. Two lifetimes, and she was still running the same playbook.

She played the "small-town cousin," all wide-eyed innocence, while flaunting her importance right in my face.

The moment I showed a flicker of anger, she'd turn on the waterworks—sobbing, wailing, acting like she'd been orphaned all over again.

Casually, I used an app to generate a detailed, day-by-day luxury travel itinerary.

Me: [These spots are stunning. Make sure Dad takes you.]

After sending it, I turned off my phone.

Cathy didn't reply again.

That feeling of punching cotton—hitting nothing, no matter how hard you swing—probably left her with nowhere to put her fury.

I'd known that hollowness ever since the accident that shattered her family.

That year, my father and brother were inspecting a high-rise construction site. A falling steel girder nearly killed them both.

It was Cathy's father who shoved them aside and took the full impact.

Her mother, eight months pregnant, couldn't withstand the shock. She went into early labor and hemorrhaged on the table.

In a matter of days, Cathy lost both parents and fell gravely ill herself.

My father, drowning in guilt, took her in and funded every specialist and treatment.

Back then, she was two years my senior—my elder cousin.

It was my father who said the older sibling should watch over the younger, so we swapped what we called each other.

Later, as Cathy's PTSD worsened, she'd have violent episodes. In her rages, she'd scream at me like I was the one who'd stolen everything from her.

The doctors said we needed separation for her recovery. So my father sent me to live with distant relatives out in the countryside.

"An education is an education anywhere," he'd said. "We all owe Cathy a life! If it weren't for her father, you'd be an orphan! You can go keep an eye on your uncle's grave."

I kept watch in the countryside for three years until Cathy was finally declared stable.

Father sent for me then—but I'd become the permanent outsider in my own home.

My brother called her sis. My father called her sweetheart.

In their mouths, I became "her."

But her father died, and Cathy received a million-dollar settlement. And we had cared for Cathy, body and soul, for thirteen years.

All this time, my father neglected my own maternal grandparents' needs. Instead, he supported her paternal grandparents in full comfort until they wanted for nothing.

Relatives from her mother's side—my father found them jobs, too. Anyone even tangentially connected to her family could come to ours for a handout.

My father never complained. He only said we owed them a life.

He'd even earmarked two percent of the family company shares, waiting to transfer them to Cathy when she turned twenty-five.

But that day, four people had been walking together. With a steel beam that size coming down, her father couldn't have outrun it.

Besides, my own mother had died under that same beam. She had shoved Nick to safety with her last breath.

So why does everyone talk about "her father's sacrifice" and never speak of my mother's?

Her father has been thanked for years, showered with posthumous glory and generational wealth.

As for him, I feel no debt.

I even believe that if he hadn't called in a favor to get his friend that construction contract—a friend who cut corners—there would have been no faulty operations.