“Monica, I was so blind…”
The voice on the other end of the line was trembling, broken by violent, ugly sobs.
I stopped walking. The night air outside the Ridge estate was freezing, biting through my thin coat, but I couldn't feel it. I stood on the gravel driveway, my single suitcase resting by my feet, the revelation of my husband's faked death still suffocating my lungs.
I looked at the caller ID again. Mother.
For twenty-five years, my mother’s calls only ever meant one of two things: a demand for me to accommodate my adopted sister, or a cold lecture on how I was failing to be a proper daughter. She was always composed, always elegant.
But tonight, she sounded terrified.
"Mom?" I asked, my voice flat.
"I'm so sorry, my baby," she choked out, her voice cracking with a raw, desperate panic I had never heard before. "I'm so, so sorry."
"What are you talking about?"
"Jessica," my mother gasped, her words spilling out in a frantic rush. "I caught her. I went into her room to leave a gift for her engagement, and I found the papers in her desk. She forged the family will, Monica. She left everything to herself. And my pills… my heart medication…"
She broke off into a violent fit of coughing.
"Mom, get out of the house. Call the police right now."
"She swapped them," my mother cried, the regret tearing through her voice like shattered glass. "I spent my whole life loving a monster. I gave her everything. I pushed you away. My real daughter. I'm so sorry, Monica. Please forgive me."
"Mom, listen to me—"
"Run, Monica," she screamed, her voice suddenly pitching upward in sheer terror. "Run, she's trying to—"
A sickening, heavy thud echoed through the speaker.
Then, a sharp, piercing scream.
And finally, dead silence.
"Mom? Mom!"
I screamed into the phone, but the line was dead.
I dropped my suitcase on the gravel. I got into my car, slammed the door, and pressed my foot hard onto the gas pedal.
The drive to the Hollden estate was a blur of blurred streetlights and screeching tires. My heart hammered against my ribs in a frantic, painful rhythm.
I'm so sorry, my baby.
Those were the words I had waited my entire life to hear. The validation that I wasn't invisible. That I was loved. That my mother finally saw me.
The heavy oak front door was slightly ajar.
I pushed it open, stepping into the grand foyer. The massive crystal chandelier cast a cold, indifferent light over the pristine marble floors. The house was eerily quiet.
And then I saw her.
My mother was lying at the bottom of the grand sweeping staircase.
Her elegant silk nightgown was soaked in a dark, rapidly spreading pool of crimson. Her head was twisted at an unnatural angle, her limbs splayed awkwardly across the polished stone.
I dropped to my knees beside her.
"Mom," I whispered, my hands shaking violently as I hovered over her broken body.
She was still breathing. Shallow, wet, rattling gasps that shook her fragile chest.
"You're faster than I expected."
The voice drifted down from above, light, sweet, and entirely unbothered.
I slowly lifted my head.
Jessica was standing at the very top of the stairs. Not a single hair was out of place. In her right hand, she casually twirled my mother's phone, tapping it against her manicured nails.
She looked down at the bleeding woman who had raised her, pampered her, and loved her more than her own flesh and blood.
Jessica smiled. A chilling, empty smirk.
"She was getting too nosy," Jessica sighed, pouting her lips as if complaining about a spilled glass of wine. "I only needed her to hold on until next month. Once Jackson and I were officially married, the Hollden estate and the Ridge fortune would merge perfectly. But the stupid old woman just had to go snooping where she didn't belong."
My hand slipped into my coat pocket.
My fingers found my own phone. Without looking, relying purely on muscle memory, I pressed the side button sequence to start a voice recording.
"You pushed her," I said.
"Oh, please. She tripped," Jessica laughed softly, descending two steps. "She was dizzy. Probably because I swapped her blood pressure meds with sugar pills weeks ago. It was so easy, Monica. It’s pathetic how easy it is to manipulate people who love you."
She tilted her head, looking at me with pure, unadulterated malice.
"She loved me so much, Monica. She gave me everything that was supposed to be yours. And now, she's giving me her life. Just like your husband gave me his."
I stared at the monster wearing my sister's face.
She had taken my husband. She had taken my life. And now, she was taking my mother.
A weak, trembling hand brushed against my knee.
I looked down.
My mother’s eyes were half-open, clouded with pain and an agonizing, bottomless regret. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, staining the pale marble.
I leaned down, pressing my forehead against hers.
"I'm here," I whispered.
Her fingers weakly curled into the fabric of my coat. She didn't look up at Jessica. She only looked at me. The daughter she had ignored for twenty-five years.
"Monica..." she breathed, the sound barely a rasp.
"Don't speak. Save your strength. The ambulance is coming."
"I'm... sorry..."
A single tear slipped from her eye, cutting a clean path through the blood on her cheek.
"My... beautiful... girl..."
Her hand went limp.
The faint rise and fall of her chest stopped completely.
The grand foyer fell into a deafening silence.
I lost my mother at the exact moment she finally saw me. The exact moment she finally loved me.
I knelt there on the cold marble, my knees soaked in her blood. The baby in my womb was quiet. The heart in my chest went quiet, too.
Combined with my husband's betrayal, I was now completely, utterly alone in the world.
Above me, Jessica let out a bored sigh.
"Well. That's that," she said, turning her back. "You should probably call an ambulance, Monica. Tell them it was a tragic accident. I'm going back to bed."
