4. My sister

Zara's POV

My hand is still resting against the door when I hear Arabella laugh again.

I close my eyes.

That sound should mean nothing. She has laughed like that at hundreds of family dinners, parties, charity events, and gatherings where she played the perfect daughter and I played the difficult one but tonight it sounds different.

It sounds intimate and it sounds like she is comfortable with the man on the other side of the door with Victor, my former fiancé.

The man who was supposed to marry me today.

I pull my hand away from the door and stare at it for a moment.

I could leave.

I could walk back downstairs, find Damon, and pretend I never followed Victor here. I could tell myself that whatever is happening inside this room has nothing to do with me.

But I don't believe that, not anymore.

I heard Victor tell me he needed time to think. I watched the way he looked at Arabella downstairs. I saw the strange calmness in her face while everyone else was dealing with the disaster surrounding my wedding.

Something is wrong and I am done allowing other people to decide what I am allowed to know.

I turn the handle and te door opens. I step inside and for one second, my brain refuses to process what I am seeing.

Victor is standing beside the bed with his shirt off and his trousers undone. Arabella is pulling a robe around herself, her hair dishevelled and her dress lying on the floor.

Everything inside me goes still.

Victor's face changes immediately. "Zara."

I stare at him and then I look at Arabella. Neither of them moves. There is no explanation that can save this.

There is no innocent conversation between a woman and her sister's former fiancé that involves being half dressed beside a bed.

My eyes burn. I slowly close the door behind me. "I think you owe me an explanation."

Victor takes a step toward me. "Zara, please let me explain what happened."

I laugh. "What happened?"

My voice shakes with fury.

"You want to explain what happened? I followed you here because something about the way you looked at my sister downstairs made me suspicious, and now I walk into her private suite and find you both half naked."

I point toward the bed. "Tell me what part of this I'm supposed to misunderstand."

Victor opens his mouth but I don't let him speak. "You know what? Don't answer yet. I want to hear exactly how you managed to stand downstairs and tell me you didn't know what to believe while you were apparently sneaking off to sleep with my sister."

"Zara, it wasn't supposed to happen like this."

My eyes widen. "Wasn't supposed to happen like this?" I step toward him. "You mean you weren't supposed to get caught?"

"That's not what I meant."

"Then tell me what you meant."

He runs a hand through his hair. "I never wanted to hurt you."

I stare at him. "Then you shouldn't have slept with my sister."

Silence fills the room as I look at Arabella. She isn't crying, she isn't apologizing and she isn't even trying to hide what happened.

She simply stands there with the robe wrapped around her and looks at me as if I am the one who has interrupted something important.

That expression pushes me over the edge. I cross the room and slap her. The sound echoes through the suite. Arabella's head turns with the force of it and she slowly brings her hand to her cheek.

Victor immediately steps toward her. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I turn on him. "You want to defend her?"

"She is your sister."

"And you are my fucking former fiancé." My voice rises. "You were supposed to marry me today, Victor. Instead, I am married to Damon because my wedding was destroyed, and I find you half naked with my sister in her private suite."

I slap him too and he stares at me in disbelief.

"You don't get to stand there and act shocked because I hit you. You betrayed me."

"You don't know the whole story."

"Then tell me."

He says nothing and I point at him. "Tell me how long this has been happening."

Victor looks away and my stomach twists. "Look at me."

He slowly raises his eyes.

"How long?"

"Several months."

The words hit me harder than the slap I just gave him. Several months.

I swallow. "While I was engaged to you?"

"Yes."

"While I was planning our wedding?"

His jaw tightens. "Yes."

"While I was trusting you?"

He looks down. "Yes."

I laugh bitterly. "God, you really are a fucking coward."

"Zara, I know I handled this badly."

"Badly?" I step closer. "You didn't forget to return a phone call. You didn't make a mistake at dinner. You deliberately slept with my sister for months while I believed you were the man I was going to spend my life with."

Victor's face tightens. "I didn't know how to tell you."

"You didn't want to tell me." I asked with a snort.

"I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?" I chuckled, shaking my head.

He hesitates. "Losing you."

I stare at him. "You already lost me."

He looks at me.

"And you didn't even have the courage to be honest about it."

Arabella finally speaks. "Victor loves me."

I turn toward her. "Don't."

She lifts her chin. "I'm not going to apologize for loving someone."

"You aren't apologizing because you don't have the decency to understand what you did."

"I didn't steal him from you." She replied as if what they had done wasn't a sin.

My eyes narrow. "You fucked my fiancé."

"He wasn't yours."

The words make my entire body tense. "What did you just say?"

Arabella takes a step closer. "Victor was never meant to stay with you. You were always temporary."

I stare at my sister. "Temporary?"

"Yes."

"Then why did you let me believe otherwise?"

"Because it was convenient."

The pain in my chest becomes almost unbearable but I refuse to let it show. I have already lost enough today.

I am not going to stand in front of these two people and give them the satisfaction of watching me fall apart.

I look at Victor. "Did you ever love me?"

He remains silent.

"Answer me."

"I cared about you."

My jaw tightens. "That isn't what I asked."

He looks directly at me. "I never loved you the way you believed I did."

For a moment, I cannot speak. The affair hurts and the betrayal hurts but those words hurt somewhere deeper.

I had believed his love was real and I had believed the future we planned was real and I had believed that whatever happened, Victor would at least stand beside me.

Instead, he watched me marry another man and then walked straight into my sister's bedroom.

I swallow hard. "You should have told me before today." I finally speak.

"I know."

"You should have ended our engagement." I continued as I feel the anger burning inside my chest.

"I know."

"You should have had the courage to tell me that you wanted her."

"I know."

My voice becomes quieter. "But you didn't."

Victor looks away.l and Arabella watches me. I can see something almost satisfied in her expression.

That makes me angry all over again. "You knew I loved him."

"Yes."

"You knew we were supposed to get married." I continue but she just shrugs as if I was losing my mind. "You knew how much this wedding meant to me."

"Yes." She gave a small reply.

"And you still did this."

Her expression hardens, and for the first time I see something raw beneath all that confidence.

"You always had something I couldn't have."

I stare at her.

"Don't start pretending I was the favoured daughter, Arabella, because we both know that's bullshit. You were the one Mother and Father praised. You were the one they showed off to their friends. You were the one they trusted, protected, and treated like you could do no wrong. I was the difficult daughter, the embarrassment, the one they were always trying to control."

Her jaw tightens. "Yes, they loved me more. I'm not denying that."

"Then what the hell did you think I had that you wanted?"

She looks at me for several seconds before answering. "You had something they couldn't give me."

"What?"

"Freedom."

I almost laugh because the word sounds absurd coming from her.

"Freedom? You had everything. You had their approval, their money, their attention, and the life they wanted for you. You were never locked away and treated like a problem that needed to be hidden. You were never made to feel like you were a disappointment simply for being yourself."

Her expression flickers, but she refuses to back down.

"You could still walk away from them."

"So could you."

"I didn't want to walk away from my family."

"Then stop blaming me for the choices you made."

She steps closer, her eyes hard.

"I watched you do whatever you wanted while I had to be perfect. You could disappear, fight, make mistakes, anger our parents, and somehow you still had something I wanted."

I stare at her. "What could you possibly have wanted from me?"

Her gaze shifts toward the wedding ring on my finger.

"Victor."

I let out a bitter laugh. "That's what this was about?"

"He loved me."

"He was engaged to me."

"He should never have been."

"Then you should have had enough respect for me to stay away from him."

Her face remains cold. "I wanted him, and I was tired of watching you have him."

I shake my head slowly. "So you decided that because our parents loved you more, you were entitled to take the one thing I thought was mine?"

Her lips curl faintly. "I decided that for once, I wasn't going to be the sister who watched you walk away with something I wanted."

I look at her in disbelief.

"You didn't just take a man from me, Arabella. You stood beside me while you were doing it. You watched me plan my wedding while you were sleeping with my fiancé. That's not jealousy. That's calculated cruelty."

She doesn't answer and somehow, her silence hurts more than any excuse could.

"And you think that gives you the right to destroy me?"

"I think you finally needed to lose something."

My eyes sting but I refuse to cry. "You could have built your own life."

"I didn't want my own life." She looks directly at me. "I wanted yours."

I stare at her. There is something so cold about hearing my sister say that she didn't want happiness for herself.

She wanted mine.

Victor steps toward her. "Arabella, this isn't helping."

She turns toward him. "You don't get to tell me what to say now."

I almost laugh. "Look at the two of you."

They both turn toward me.

"You deserve each other."

Victor's expression changes. "Zara, please."

"No." I raise my hand. "Don't ask me for anything."

I walk toward the door. Behind me, Arabella speaks.

"You think this is the worst thing that has happened to you?"

I stop and slowly, I turn around. She is looking at me with a strange smile.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for you to lose everything."

The words settle between us as I stare at my sister. My heart is broken because my former fiancé has betrayed me, my sister has betrayed me, my wedding has been destroyed and I have just become the wife of a man I never intended to marry.

But I am still standing.

I wipe the corner of my eye before a tear can fall. "Then enjoy it while you can."

Arabella's smile fades slightly.

I open the door. "Because you made one very serious mistake."

She watches me. "What mistake?"

I meet her eyes. "You thought losing Victor would destroy me." I step into the hallway. "You forgot who I am."

I close the door behind me and for the first time since I walked into that room, I allow myself to breathe.

Not because I am okay because I am nowhere near okay but because Arabella has just declared war on me and I have never been afraid of war.