Until Isabella appeared by my side in another way.
That night, after my date with Sebastian, I went back to the dorm and saw my roommate sitting on my bed, looking troubled. She kept glancing at me, opening her mouth as if to speak and then stopping. After a long time, she finally stammered,
“Evelyn, did you… break up with Sebastian?”
I blinked, confused. “No. Why?”
My roommate hesitated for a while, then handed me her phone. A bad feeling rose in my chest.
“Take a look. Is this your Sebastian?”
On the screen was Isabella’s social media feed. Her latest post was a photo—taken not long after I’d just parted ways with him.
In the picture, Sebastian wore a helpless expression, his neck wrapped in Isabella’s arm as she beamed at the camera. Empty glasses and bottles were scattered all around them. I glanced at the comments under the post. Her friends were all congratulating them, saying how perfect they looked together. Even when someone asked, “Who’s that handsome guy?” Isabella had left a single word, flaunting him like a trophy:
“Mine.”
I stared at their perfectly matched faces—the handsome man, the beautiful woman. They looked so good together it made my stomach turn. I suddenly clapped a hand over my mouth as a wave of nausea hit me. My face went cold and bloodless.
I caught my roommate’s worried gaze and forced myself to speak, my voice barely steady. “I’m fine. Really.”
Then I unlocked my own phone and began calling Sebastian over and over, but he didn’t pick up a single time. I called his roommates, but they had no idea where he was. It was as if Sebastian had vanished into thin air, leaving not even a trace.
I finally stopped calling.
Maybe when anger reaches a certain point, a person can’t help but become calm. I sat there and started to think.
How the hell did they end up tangled together?
Weren’t they supposed to be siblings? Or… had Sebastian been lying to me from the very beginning? Were they never brother and sister at all?
I didn’t have Isabella’s contact info, so I borrowed my roommate’s phone and started scrolling through Isabella’s earlier posts.
Perfect. Almost every time after I had a date with Sebastian, Isabella would post a picture of herself getting drunk at a bar with him. The comments were always full of her showing off, bragging about how Sebastian cared more about her than anyone else. As long as she got drunk, he would show up to protect her.
He didn’t give a shit about that “old woman.”
By now, I could skim past all of this without a flicker of expression.
Until I saw a post she’d made right before her college entrance exams.
“I confessed to him. He didn’t reject me outright. He must like me too.”
Attached was a side profile shot of Sebastian. Below that, one comment caught my eye:
“Wow, Isabella, your childhood sweetheart ‘brother’ is really handsome!”
I stared at the picture and the words until I almost laughed out loud in sheer disbelief.
The love that had once wrapped itself around my heart vanished without a trace. In its place surged a sick, churning disgust that rose higher and higher, until I could barely keep myself from throwing up. All the sweet memories I’d cherished turned into something filthy, like stains mocking my stupidity.
No one had ever dared to play me like that. And no one had ever walked away unscathed after doing so.
My long nails dug into my palm until a sharp pain shot up my hand. I looked down at the crescent marks in my skin and thought, almost detachedly:
No one gets to humiliate me like this. They both have to pay for what they’ve done.
Two days ago, after discovering Isabella’s posts, I’d paid a hefty fee to hire a private investigator to dig up everything there was to know about Sebastian.
