Hiding the bloodstains on her palm behind her back, Brittany lifted her gaze to Weston. Her eyes were hollow, stripped of warmth, yet her lips curved into a mechanical smile, lifeless, like a doll going through the motions.
"Sorry, sister-in-law. I only wanted a glass of water. I didn’t realize you were behind me." She tilted her head slightly, voice light, almost indifferent. "It’s a habit I picked up in the psychiatric hospital. I get a little nervous when someone touches me out of nowhere."
Theresa stiffened, her expression flickering.
Brittany reached for the ointment and bandages beside her, then stepped forward.
"I’ll help you apply the medicine. Will you forgive me, sister-in-law?"
The room fell silent.
Her surrender was too smooth, too easy, wrecking whatever performance Theresa had planned.
Even Weston sensed something was off. His grip closed around Brittany’s wrist.
"What exactly are you trying to do?"
Trying to do?
Was she the one behaving strangely?
Hadn’t they told her that as long as she was obedient, they wouldn’t send her back?
She had played by their rules, careful not to step out of line, yet Weston still looked at her with discontent.
As if no matter what she did, it would never be enough.
Brittany lowered her gaze, ignoring him entirely. Without hesitation, she yanked her wrist free and, with unsettling ease, took Theresa’s injured palm in her grasp. Her fingers moved with practiced precision, securing the bandage as though she had done it a thousand times before.
Weston only noticed the blood on her hand after she had finished.
His expression flickered, brief, almost imperceptible, but she caught it. A muscle in his jaw tightened.
Yet all he did was ask, as if out of obligation.
"What happened to your hand?"
For a fleeting moment, he almost sounded like the brother she once knew.
"Did you hurt yourself just now, too?"
Theresa’s fingers curled against her palm, her sharp gaze a silent warning.
But Brittany didn’t need the reminder. She already knew.
The truth was pointless.
Everything had been too precise, too well-timed as if orchestrated from the start. Weston had already chosen his side, and she refused to humiliate herself further.
"It has nothing to do with you, brother." Her voice was calm, detached. She gathered the leftover ointment and bandages, turning toward the attic. "I was just careless."
Weston wanted to say more, but he stopped the moment he stepped forward.
Brittany didn’t need to look back. She already knew.
Theresa must have stopped him.
That woman loathed her, saw her as a threat, framed her time and time again, and stole everything she once had.
Brittany despised her.
Yet, she had to admit. She was right.
She and Weston were destined to drift further and further apart.
That night, Brittany dreamed.
She was back in the psychiatric hospital, sitting alone in a stark, empty room, pretending she belonged there.
The doctor, once kind, had stepped out to take a call. But when he returned, his face had changed, and his voice was clipped and impersonal.
"Miss, we’ve assessed your condition. Cases like yours are quite common."
His words rang hollow, yet the judgment behind them was suffocating.
"A life of indulgence makes people like you forget propriety… and shame."
Brittany wanted to refute him, to claw her way out of the nightmare. But in the dream, she was paralyzed, unable to move, unable to speak.
"Propriety and shame… How could you fall in love with your brother?" His tone was laced with scorn. "A young lady should have self-respect. Some dignity. Do you understand?"
The ridicule coiled around her like a noose.
There was no physical pain, yet each accusation tore at her, stripping away the last remnants of her dignity, piece by piece.
Brittany’s eyes fluttered open.
She had spent the entire night awake, lying in the suffocating silence, waiting for morning to come.
Before the sky brightened, she pulled on a coat and stepped out of the villa, the crisp air swallowing her whole. Her path was set by the Civil Affairs Bureau.
The first step to severing the past was to cast off the name that tethered her to it.
Weston had made it clear, she was nothing to him now. Not a sister. Not anything at all.
But the years she spent in his family’s home had been real. His parents had loved her and cared for her. That much, at least, had been true.
For a decade, she had carried the name Beverleigh It had sunk into her skin and stitched itself into her identity.
And in those cold, sleepless nights at the psychiatric hospital, she had asked herself, was she truly ready to let it go?
Now, she had her answer.
