She Won

Serena's Pov

I sat on the couch muching on some snacks. My last encounter with the lawyer went smooth. I was watching an episode in a documentary. And it got me real bad. I was so engrossed that I didn't hear the doorbell ring.

The sound of the cameras alarm brought me back to reality. I hesitated at first but remembered Damian mentioned about Rose's arrival. To make things clear and less suspicious, I accepted without an oppose.

I inhaled sharply and opened the door revealing Rose Whitmore smiling at me. It did send chills down my spine.

I looked at her for a while. Indeed she was beautiful. Tall and fine bone with dark eyes. The sinister smile on her face instantly wiped whatever I was thinking

"Serena." She stepped forward and pulled me into a hug before I could do anything about it. Her perfume was soft and close. "I've been thinking about you."

"Rose." I hugged her back. Not too warm, not cool enough to register. "Come in.”

"Rose—"

"I'm done pretending." She said it like she was putting something heavy down. Final. Decided. "Smiling at you. Sitting in your kitchen. Hugging you at the door like we're family. I'm done."

I didn't move.

"I'm going to say this once." Her eyes stayed on mine. "Damien doesn't love you. Not the way you think. Whatever this marriage is in your head — that isn't what it is. It has never been that."

The flat was very quiet.

"He loves me." Her voice didn't shake even a little. "He has always loved me. Before you came, all through you being here. You were the acceptable choice. The one he could put in front of his family without explaining anything." Something tightened at the corner of her mouth. "But I am who he calls when it matters. I am who he comes back to." She paused deliberately. "I am carrying his child."

She let that sit in the room.

"And the only thing standing in my way is you."

I looked at her.

This woman. Three years of dinners and hugs and me defending her to Damien when he was cold and calling her sister like it meant something.

I wasn't shocked by what she was saying.

I already knew every word of it.

What shocked me — what genuinely stole the breath from my chest for one full second — was the nerve of her. The absolute, breathtaking audacity. To come into my home. Stand on my floor. And deliver this like she was doing me a favour.

"You came to my home," I said. My voice came out quieter than I expected.

"It was never really yours."

I almost laughed.

"He won't leave you on his own." She kept going, unbothered, like I hadn't spoken. "He's too guilty. Too worried about how it looks. So I've stopped waiting for him to do it." She picked up her bag from the couch. Unhurried. "Things are going to change, Serena. One way or another." She looked at me one last time. Up, then down. Slow. Like I was already a problem she had already solved. "You should start thinking about what comes next for you."

She walked to the door and let herself out.

I stood in the middle of my own living room and listened to her heels in the hallway. The lift doors. Then nothing.

My hands were at my sides.

I hadn't moved. Wasn't from heartbreak. Wasn't from shock. It was something colder than both. The kind of stillness that arrives when the last thing you needed confirmed gets said out loud by the very person you needed to hear it from.

She came into my home and declared war.

Alright then.

---

Rose was still in the car park when she made the call.

Hadn't even pulled out of the space. Engine running, one hand loose on the wheel, the other already on her phone scrolling to the number she had saved with no name. Just digits. She had told herself it was only a precaution. Something she would never actually use.

She pressed call.

Once ring.

"It's me." Her voice was even. Almost flat. "I need something done." A pause. "Serena Whitmore." Another pause, shorter. "My brother's wife."

A question from the other end she didn't repeat out loud.

"Permanently," she said.

She ended the call and pulled smoothly out of the space and joined the traffic like she had just sorted out a quick deal. The city moved around her. She turned the radio on.

She was still smiling when the notification came through three days later.

“Accident reported on the bridge road. Single vehicle. Female driver, in a critical condition.”

Damien was behind her when the news came through. She was by the window, with a mug in her hands, watching the screen light up. His footsteps stopped somewhere in the doorway. She heard the exact moment the air left him. The sharp, strangled sound of it.

Her back faced him as she lifted the cup slowly. Took one small sip of cold tea.

And smiled at the glass.