Chapter 8

Chapter 8

ODALYS

Reign's face changed.

For two days, I had watched her stay calm. At the funeral, at the will reading, even in that dirty hospital ward, she had held her face still. It had driven me mad.

Now it cracked.

"You want to talk about blood?" she said. Her voice was low and shaking. "Fine. Let's talk about blood. Do you want to know what's in the second drawer of his desk, Odalys?"

I went cold.

"My baby pictures," she said. "All of them. From the day I was born. My first steps. My first day of school. He kept them in his desk and looked at them every night. My mother told me. He told her."

"Shut up."

"Did he keep yours? Did he ever keep yours?" She stepped closer. "He never loved you. He paid for you. You were the daughter he had to have. I was the one he wanted."

I slapped her.

It was so hard that her head snapped to the side. The sound echoed across the whole floor. When she turned back, her bottom lip was split, and a thin line of blood ran down her chin.

She stared at me. Then she put both hands on my chest and shoved me back.

I stumbled one step. My heel caught. For a second, the whole room tilted.

And then I stopped thinking.

I went forward and shoved her with both hands, as hard as I could.

She flew backwards. Her borrowed shoes slid on the smooth floor. Her back hit the glass railing with a heavy thud, and the railing wasn't high enough. Her body bent right over it. Her feet came off the floor.

For one second, Reign was hanging over the open drop. Forty floors of empty air sat under her head.

Somebody screamed. Then everybody screamed.

Her arms were flying. Her hair fell down into the empty space. One of her shoes slipped off her foot and fell. I watched it drop. It fell and fell and fell, and I never heard it land.

And I didn't move.

I stood there with my hands still out in front of me, and I did not move.

Reign twisted. Her fingers found the top of the rail. She grabbed it and pulled, and she dragged herself back over the edge. She fell onto the floor on her hands and knees, shaking, gasping, one foot bare.

The whole floor was silent except for her breathing.

I looked down at my hands.

Here is the truth. I have never told anyone this, and I never will.

In that one second, when she was hanging over the edge, a small cold part of me wanted her to fall.

It wasn't all of me. Just a small part. But it was there, and it was real, and it was the most frightening thing I had ever felt in my life.

I put my hands down by my sides so no one would see them shake.

---

"Odalys."

Cassian was standing in the doorway of his office.

I didn't know how long he had been there. He looked at Reign on the floor. Then he looked at me. His face showed nothing, no anger, no shock. He just looked.

He opened his mouth to speak.

"Back off," I said.

He paused.

I turned to face him, and I made sure my voice was steady and loud enough for every phone in the room.

"Don't you dare. I'm not doing this because I love you. I don't love you. I don't even care about you." I lifted my chin. "But I will not lose what is mine to her. Not my company, not my name, not one single thing my father left me. Not to her. Not to anyone. Do you understand?"

Cassian looked at me for a long moment.

He didn't answer.

He just lifted one hand and signaled to the guards by the lift.

Two of them came and took Reign by the arms. She didn't fight this time. She could barely stand. They lifted her up and walked her toward the lift. Her split lip was bleeding onto the green dress. Her hair was everywhere. She was limping on one bare foot.

People kept filming the whole way.

At the lift, she turned her head and looked back at me. Just once. There was nothing in her eyes. No anger, no tears. Just nothing.

The doors closed.

Her other shoe was still lying on the floor by the railing.

---

The staff went back to their desks slowly. Nobody looked at me. The hall got quiet again, like nothing had happened.

I stood by the railing. I didn't look down.

I held out my folder to Cassian. "The papers. We can sign them now."

He didn't take them.

Instead, he turned to his assistant, who was still standing frozen by his desk.

"Pull the camera footage from this floor," Cassian said quietly. "All of it. The last thirty minutes. Save it on the private server. Nobody else touches it."

"Yes, sir."

The assistant ran.

My stomach turned. "Why do you need the footage?"

Cassian walked toward me. He stopped right beside me at the railing and looked down into the atrium, at the tiny fountain far below, where my sister's shoe had fallen.

Then he turned his head and looked at me with those dark, calm eyes.

"Your father came to see me," he said. "Three weeks before he died."

I couldn't breathe.

"He told me you would do something like this," Cassian said. "He said that when the time came, I should watch you." He paused. "Not her."