All Chapters of Prodigy by Theft: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

Everyone called my sister Alessia a prodigy.I was the only one who knew she was a thief.From the day I moved back into the brownstone, she started taking from me. Quietly. Carefully.My designs. My sketches. My drafts.Everything I created would appear under her name before I even had time to finish it.The family stood behind her. Always.My father, Salvatore Lucchese, head of the family, his word law itself, said he believed Alessia.So I became the liar. The plagiarist. The disgrace.They threw me out of the outfit's front shop. Blacklisted me from the industry. Erased my name.Then one of her loyal admirers ran me down in the street.That was the end.Or it should have been.When I opened my eyes again, it was the day before the national jewelry competition.This time, I didn't draw a single line.Let's see what my darling sister delivers… when the well has run dry...."Viviana, you ready for this thing? Confidence level?"I blinked. The fluorescent lights above my workstation f

Chapter 2

My sister Alessia.When she was born, the delivery room stayed silent. No crying. No struggle. Just a small, still thing that made the nurses exchange glances and my mother call for a priest.Not a priest, as it turned out. A specialist. The kind of man who dealt in problems that didn't appear on medical charts.I remember him walking through our front door—a thin man in a thin coat, carrying something that smelled like old churches. He barely glanced at the bassinet. Instead, his eyes found me across the room and stayed there, unblinking, like I was the only thing in the house worth his attention.Your daughters' fates are tangled, he'd said. This one—he pointed at me—she's feeding on the younger one's life force. Draining her. If they remain under the same roof, the baby won't see twenty-five.After that, my parents looked at me differently. Like I was something that had wandered in from the cold and refused to leave.I tried. God, I tried to make them want to keep me.I brought my f

Chapter 3

I worked on paper now. No screens. No files. Nothing that could be copied by whatever mechanism Alessia had weaponized against me.The design came together slowly at first, then all at once—the way real work does when you stop second-guessing yourself. A ring. The band was braided rose gold, thin as a whisper, wrapping around itself in a pattern that suggested something alive. The setting held a white gold orchid, petals cupped around a violet diamond so deep in color it looked like frozen wine.I called it Violet's Kiss.The paper was still warm from my hand when I heard someone gasp across the office."Did you see? Alessia just posted another piece. Absolutely stunning."My fingers went cold."It's incredible. How does she do it so fast?""Viviana, your sister's unreal. You must be so proud."I pulled out my phone. Alessia's Instagram stared back at me. Posted six minutes ago—a clean, professional photograph of a design that made my stomach drop.Violet's Kiss. New work. More to come

Chapter 4

I stopped at a clinic on the way home. Six stitches, a bandage the size of a credit card, and a nurse who kept asking if I felt safe at home. I told her I'd tripped. She didn't believe me, but she'd probably learned long ago that some women aren't ready to tell the truth.The brownstone was empty when I got back. Salvatore and Isabella were out—dinner somewhere that required a reservation and a reputation. I went straight to my room and started pulling out every design I'd ever committed to paper.The pile was thicker than I expected. Years of work, hundreds of hours of drafting and erasing and starting over. Every single page accounted for. Nothing missing.So how?How was she doing it?I sat on the floor, surrounded by my own work, and let the question settle around me like cold air. No malware. No hidden cameras. No sign of entry. My physical drafts never left my control. My computer was clean. And yet Alessia had produced identical work, on a faster timeline, every single time.I c

Chapter 5

The bus took six hours. I watched the landscape shift from city steel to the tired sprawl of suburbs to the kind of open country where cell service gets unreliable and the air starts smelling like earth instead of exhaust.My grandmother was waiting at the station before I arrived. She must have been there a while—her silver hair had escaped its bun in places, and her coat was buttoned wrong, the way it always was when she dressed in a hurry. The sight of her, small and stubborn and already scanning the arriving buses with that particular intensity she brought to everything, made something crack open in my chest.I'd called her the night before. Hadn't said much. "I want to come home, Nonna," I'd managed, and then the silence had stretched long enough that I thought the call had dropped."Then come," she'd said finally. "I'll make the braciole. The one with the egg inside. You remember."I remembered. I remembered everything about her kitchen—the garlic smell that lived in the curtains

Chapter 6

The woman beside my grandmother was ancient in a way that felt geological. White hair pulled back so tight it stretched her features. A spine curved from decades of bending toward something invisible. And in her hand, a walking stick that made my stomach clench.The stick was moving.Not a carved snake head—a real one. Scales the color of charcoal, eyes like blood drops, tongue flickering out to taste the morning air. It was alive, and it was watching me."This is Lena," Nonna said, ushering the old woman inside like this was a perfectly normal visit. "Her family has worked in this territory for six generations. If there's something wrong, she'll see it.""See what, exactly?"Lena didn't answer. She raised her stick—the snake's body went rigid, extending toward me—and touched two thin fingers to the serpent's tongue. Then she pressed those same fingers to my forehead, right between my eyes.Cold. Not the temperature of the room, but something deeper. Something that belonged in a cellar

Chapter 7

The brownstone looked the same. That was the first thing I noticed. Same brick facade. Same iron railing. Same light burning in the dining room window. As if the house itself was indifferent to everything that had happened inside it.I stood on the sidewalk for a full minute, the bracelet cool against my wrist, and let myself feel nothing.The door was unlocked. It always was—Salvatore considered locks a sign of weakness, a confession that you had something worth taking. The Lucchese household didn't lock doors. The Lucchese household was supposed to be untouchable.Inside, the three of them were mid-meal. Salvatore at the head of the table, Isabella at his right hand, Alessia across from her. The food was plated. The wine was poured. A family portrait that had never included me."Well." Salvatore set down his fork. "Look who remembered where she lives.""The prodigal daughter returns," Isabella said. Her tone was light, but her eyes had already done a full inventory of my appearance—t

Chapter 8

The inspiration room was a converted guest suite on the second floor. I'd walked past it a hundred times without knowing what was inside. Now the door stood open, and Alessia was guiding me through it with the pride of a curator unveiling a private collection.The room glittered.Display cases lined the walls—custom-built, museum quality, climate controlled. Inside them, jewelry worth more than most people's homes. Emeralds the size of thumbnails. Sapphires that caught the light and held it. Diamonds arranged by cut and clarity like specimens in a laboratory.And everything—every piece—had been chosen for her."Dad had this one commissioned from Milan," Alessia said, pointing to a necklace that could have paid for a year of operations. "And this bracelet is from an estate sale in Geneva. Mom outbid a Saudi princess for it.""How fortunate for you."She didn't hear the edge in my voice. Or chose not to. "I come in here when I need inspiration. Touching something beautiful... it helps th

Chapter 9

The house emptied by nine. Salvatore's car pulled away first, then Isabella's, each departure a carefully timed exit designed to suggest importance. I watched from my window as the last taillight disappeared around the corner.Alessia's bedroom door was unlocked. She'd never needed to lock it—her possessions had always been protected by something more effective than a deadbolt. The family's favor. The family's blindness.The room was obscene. A canopy bed draped in pale silk. A vanity covered in products that cost more than my first car. Jewelry scattered across every surface like she'd been trying on pieces and couldn't be bothered to put anything away. The air smelled like roses and something else underneath—something sharp and medicinal.The bracelet on my wrist was warm.Not hot yet. Just warm. The way metal gets when it's been sitting in sunlight.I moved slowly, letting the bracelet guide me. Past the bed, past the closet, past the floor-length mirror that probably cost as much a

Chapter 10

The exhibition hall was a converted theater in the garment district, all gilded moldings and velvet curtains and the particular kind of hush that money produces when it's concentrating. I'd been here before. Last time, I'd walked out with security guards on either side of me and the word plagiarist ringing in my ears.This time, I came in through the service entrance.The backstage area was chaos—designers making final adjustments to their displays, assistants running cables, someone's model having an existential crisis near the fire exit. I moved through it like I belonged there, head down, clipboard in hand. No one questioned a woman with a clipboard. It was one of the first things I'd learned, back when I was still young enough to believe the family's business was entirely legitimate.Alessia's dressing room was at the end of the hall. Her name was printed on a placard beside the door. Alessia Lucchese. Not Competitor. Not Contestant. Her name, as if she'd already won.The door was

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