Chapter 2

Before I left the hospital that night, the doctor handed me a bottle of painkillers with a look of pity.

Dragging my weak body, I made my way back upstairs to my bedroom.

Early the next morning I woke to a familiar smell drifting up from the kitchen downstairs.

Pastina.

Could it be that she hadn't forgotten her promise to cook for me yesterday after all?

The next moment, my door was pushed open.

"Isabella, you are perfectly fine. What are you doing shut in this room all day? You used to live at the range. Go out and shoot something."

My mother stood at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed.

"How much longer are you going to keep this up?"

"Are you really so jealous of your sister that you can't stand to see her happy?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and the cough tore out of me instead.

It went on and on. By the time it stopped I was gripping the sheets, and there was no color left in my face.

My mother stood there frowning at me. For a second I thought she was going to come closer and take a proper look.

Then she looked away.

"Serena's cross necklace. Have you seen it?"

Something in my chest went sour.

"No."

"We've turned her hospital room upside down. She had it on when she went to see you yesterday, and it was gone by the time she got back."

"That was the birthday gift we gave her. Are you sure you didn't... Never mind. I'll look myself."

She didn't wait for an answer. She started pulling open my drawers, one by one.

Pill boxes, test results, photos of me as a child. She shoved them all aside.

A pill bottle fell to the floor and rolled under the bed.

I got down to reach for it, and my vision went black.

By the time I steadied myself against the bedframe, cold sweat had soaked through my shirt.

My mother turned, saw me, and caught my arm out of pure reflex.

"Enough, Isabella."

"Why are you pretending to be weak again? Must you turn this house into a battlefield?"

I understood.

Even if she saw my frailty with her own eyes, she would only see it as one of my schemes.

I should have stopped expecting anything from them a long time ago.

Then something seemed to come back to her, and she went out and hurried down the stairs.

I no longer cared. I only wanted a little sunshine before I died.

She was in the kitchen with the lid off the pot, packing the soup into an insulated container.

Steam rose off it. Little star-shaped pasta spun in the broth.

A ridiculous flicker of hope rose in my chest.

"Serena doesn't have much of an appetite after her surgery. I spent a long time cooking this, and she has to eat at least a little."

"If you're hungry, I'll have the cook make you something."

The front door closed behind her. I went back up and sat alone in the empty room for a long time.

One of the maids finally fished the pill bottle out from under the bed for me.

She saw how bad I looked and warmed a cup of milk for me.

"Should I go and ask the madam to come sit with you?"

I lowered my eyes.

"They're busy."

Busy handling Serena's discharge paperwork, busy arranging the private jet and private chef for the islands, busy mapping out the whole rest of her life once she recovered.

In the afternoon, several maids knocked on my door.

The housekeeper hurried in behind them, looking troubled.

"Miss Serena is low on vitamin D after her heart transplant, and the doctor wants her getting plenty of sun. This is the brightest room in the house, and she comes home tomorrow evening."

"Your father said it made no difference which room you're in..."

My belongings were packed into two cardboard boxes.

A family photo slipped out of a folder of my test results and fell to the floor.

It had been taken on my sixteenth birthday.

That was the year Serena had just been brought into the estate. She stood timidly at the very edge of the frame.

My mother had her arm around me, my father was smiling for once, and a teenage Rafael stood at my side, settling a birthday hat onto my head.

It was the last photo we ever took with me at the center.

My father was already in the doorway with a man from the AV company, working out where the projector screen would hang for her. My mother came up the stairs with an armful of flowers for the vases.

Rafael arrived while the boxes were going out, Serena's favorite cake in his hands, on his way to the hospital with it for that evening.

When he saw me on the landing, his steps hitched and his brow creased.

"Why do you look so pale?"

I glanced at the box holding everything I owned.

"Just changing rooms."

Rafael seemed to have only just remembered, and for a second his expression went uneasy.

"The north room is quieter anyway. You've always slept better in the dark."

I said nothing.

My mother's phone rang, and she put Serena on speaker.

"Isabella, maybe you should keep the room after all." A pause, and then her voice went smaller. "It's only that the doctor keeps saying I need the sun..."

My mother answered her before I could.

"Don't overthink it, sweetheart. Your father arranged it."

Rafael looked at me too, a warning in his tone.

"Isabella, don't unsettle Serena over something this small."

I nodded.

After all, I was dying soon. It was just a room.

I'll let her have it.

I was supposed to be the future bond between the Rossis and the Valentes, the shared princess of two of the most powerful names on this coast.

The princess who would never have to open her mouth to fight for anything, to ask for anything.

That promise had been repeated to me since I could walk.

The best room, the best doctor, the best of everything.

And now that same "princess" was carrying her entire life into the back of her own house in two cardboard boxes.

The housekeeper made up my bed, looking at me with eyes full of pity.

At nine that night, Serena updated her Instagram.

In the photo, the whole family sat around a cake.

Rafael was placing a birthday hat on her himself, our parents smiling as they urged her to make a wish.

The caption read:

Celebrating my second birthday early. From now on, we spend every single one together.

I zoomed in on the photo.

The cake on the table was a Ron Ben-Israel, my favorite.

Beside the cake box sat a Bulgari haute couture pink diamond necklace.

I recognized it.

Last week, Rafael asked me what kind of birthday gift girls liked.

I thought he was preparing it for me, so I picked out the pink diamond necklace with real joy.

But I never expected him to forget my birthday altogether and give it to Serena instead.

My phone buzzed again soon after.

A message from Rafael:

Serena really likes this necklace, I'll get you a new one later.

I stared at it for a long time and replied with one word.

Fine.

After I died, everything of mine would become Serena's anyway.

A little sooner, a little later, what difference did it make?