If it hadn't been for my dog Mochi knocking over that bowl of medicine, Eleanor would never have been born.
Sophia had cried about it endlessly afterward, insisting she was young and naive, that she hadn't known the concoction could harm a pregnancy.
Luke shielded her, as always. And I'd told myself she probably hadn't meant any harm.
Until my last life, when the cold edge of a blade split my heart open.
Sophia had leaned in close, her voice dripping with mockery.
"You've gotten old, dear sister-in-law. My brother stopped loving you a long time ago. Did you really think he still cared about you the way he used to? It's me he loves. Why else would he let you come alone to deliver the ransom?"
Every last ember inside me went dark. I stopped fighting.
I lay on the rubble of that abandoned site for a full hour. By the time someone found me, the blood had nearly drained out.
A bone-deep chill ran through me, and I shuddered.
"Please, Marlene, I know you don't like me, but I really have no one else. You and Luke are my only family. I'm begging you, save me!"
On the video, Sophia wailed at the screen, tears streaming, as if my refusal to rescue her would make me a murderer.
Sophia had been adopted from an orphanage by Luke's mother. His mother had spoiled her rotten, demanding that Luke look after her and yield to her in everything. After his mother passed, that blind devotion transferred straight to Luke.
His indulgence of Sophia became the knife that carved into me, over and over.
What he didn't know was that the little sister he'd protected his entire life had long since twisted her feelings for him into something else entirely.
Luke had raised her for thirteen years. I'd treated her like my own sister. I used to chalk up her clinginess and suspicion to the insecurity of a child who'd grown up without parents.
I never imagined the truth: a heart that was vicious and a greed that knew no limits.
In the end, I went to the abandoned construction site on the outskirts of town.
Only this time, I brought a voice recorder. And I'd insisted Luke follow me in secret.
The derelict site sprawled under a gray sky.
I gripped the recorder in my pocket and walked toward the crumbling warehouse, one step at a time.
Luke trailed not far behind. I could feel his gaze boring into my back, anxious and skeptical all at once.
But he had no idea.
This time, I was going to tear off Sophia's pitiful little mask with my own hands.
Inside the warehouse, Sophia sat bound to a chair, her wrists tied behind her back. Her hair was tangled, and a few faint red scratches marked her face. An unnatural flush crept along her neck and up behind her ears.
I could guess what she'd been doing to keep her so-called kidnapper cooperative.
The second she saw me, her eyes turned red and she let out a gut-wrenching sob.
"Marlene, you finally came! I thought you were going to leave me here to die!"
Her lackey Kurt Braddock stood off to the side, gripping a wooden club, glaring at me like some kind of thug.
"Where's the money? Five hundred grand, not a cent less. If it's short, nobody's walking out of here."
I pulled out my empty wallet, dangled it lazily, and kept my voice flat.
"There's no money. I came to see just how far my dear little sister is willing to take this performance."
Sophia's wailing cut off like a switch had been flipped. Panic flickered through her eyes before she threw herself back into the act, crying harder than before.
"What are you talking about? I've been kidnapped! How can you say something like that?"
Kurt raised the club, ready to swing at me.
I was ready for it. I sidestepped and deliberately raised my voice.
"Kurt, how much did Sophia pay you to stage this kidnapping? Did she promise you half the money once she got her hands on it?"
The words landed like a grenade. Every drop of color drained from Sophia's face.
She jerked her head up, her gaze sweeping over me before locking onto the faint red light peeking from my pocket.
My stomach dropped. I'd been a beat too slow. She'd spotted the recorder.
Sophia thrashed violently against her restraints, screaming through her tears.
