Chapter 25

ROSE'S POINT OF VIEW

I slammed my apartment door so hard the walls shook. The sound echoed through the empty space,matching the thunder in my heart. My hands shook as I poured myself a drink, spilling expensive whiskey on the marble counter.

"Damn you, Camille," I whispered, then screamed it:"DAMN YOU!"

The crystal glass flew from my hand, shattering against the wall in a spray of amber liquid and broken dreams.Thirty million dollars. The Cedar Hill estate. All of it gone to those worthless foster kids.

My legs gave out and I slid to the kitchen floor, surrounded by the mess I'd made. Just like my life -everything perfect on the surface, chaos underneath. And now Camille, sweet, stupid Camille,had managed to ruin everything even from the grave.

"You think you're so clever, don't you?" I spoke to the empty air, imagining her ghost watching me fall apart."Little Miss Perfect wwith her secret fortune. Did you laugh about it? Did you enjoy knowing you had something I didn't?"

I grabbed another glass, hurled it across the room. The crash brought a sick satisfaction.

"All those years I spent making you feel small," I continued, stalking through my perfect apartment like a caged animal. "Making you doubt yourself. Making you think you weren't enough. And all along you were sitting on millions!"

My reflection caught my eye - designer dress, perfect makeup, not a hair out of place even in my rage. The mask I'd worn for so long it had become my face. With a cry of pure fury, I grabbed a decorative vase and smashed the mirror.

The glass splintered, creating a dozen fractured versions of my face. Each one a different mask I'd worn.

The perfect daughter. The loving sister. The secret lover. The hidden survivor of the foster system.

"You knew, didn't you?" | accused my broken reflection. "That's why you left the money to them. You figured out what I really was. Where I really came from."@

The thought sent me into a fresh frenzy. I tore through the apartment like a hurricane, destroying everything in my path. Ripped designer clothes from their hangers. Overturned furniture. Shredded the fancy artwork I'd chosen to match my carefully crafted image.

"I EARNED THIS!" I screamed, throwing a chair through my floor-to-ceiling windows. The glass cracked but didn't break - safety-rated, of course. Even my destruction had limits. "I clawed my way out of nothing! I made myself perfect! I deserved that money more than any of them!"

My hands found a framed photo - me and Camille at my fashion show launch. Her arm around my waist,both of us smiling. Both of us lying. I studied her face in the picture, searching for signs she'd known her death was coming. That she'd suspected what I'd done.

"I didn't mean for them to kill you,"Iwhispered to her frozen smile. "Just scare you. Make you run away.Sign those divorce papers. But you had to be stubborn, didn't you? Had to fight back. And now look what happened."③

The frame joined the pile of broken glass on my imported marble floors. Thousands of dollars in destroyed luxury items scattered around me like fallen soldiers in my private war.

I found myself in my home office, yanking open drawers until I found what I wanted-the stack of Camille's journals. The ones I'd stolen and doctored after her"death," planting false entries about her depression and suicidal thoughts. Insurance against any investigation.

"'To Rose, my sister by choice if not by blood," I mimicked her words from the will reading. "'I leave my journals with hope rather than malice.!' Hope for what, Camille? Hope I'd confess? Hope I'd feel guilty?"

I flipped through the pages I'd so carefully forged, my handwriting a perfect match for hers. So many hours spent practicing her style, just like I'd spent years practicing being the perfect daughter, the perfect sister.Always practicing, always performing.

"You don't know what it's like," Itold the journals, my voice breaking."TOhave nothing. To be nothing. To know that one wrong move means going back to that place."

The memory of the foster home rose up - the smell of too many unwashed bodies, the sound of crying in the night, the constant fear of being sent somewhere worse. I'd promised myself I'd never go back. I'd do anything to stay in this perfect world I'd built.

"I did what I had to do," I said, but the words sounded hollow even to me. "I earned my place here. Those other girls, they're weak. They'll never appreciate what you gave them. They'll waste it, just like they waste every chance they get."

But even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. I'd been one of those girls once. Before I learned to hide my past.Before I convinced the Lewis family to adopt me. Before I made myself into someone who belonged in their world.

My rage drained suddenly, leaving me empty. I looked around at my ruined apartment - broken glass everywhere,furniture overturned, clothes scattered like fallen leaves. The perfect image destroyed, just like my perfect plan.

"You win, Camille," I whispered, slumping against the wall. "Even in death, you finally win. You found the one thing I couldn't take from you. The one way to hurt me that I never saw coming."

The journals fell from my limp fingers, pages spilling across the floor. My careful forgeries, my attempted manipulations of the truth, all useless now. The money was gone. The estate was gone. Everything I'd thought I deserved, given to the very people I'd spent my life trying to forget.

But something else nagged at me, a worry I couldn't shake. Camille had been smarter than I'd given her credit for. She'd hidden her inheritance, updated her will, left those pointed messages in the legal documents. What else had she known? What else had she planned for?

The thought chilled me. I'd underestimated her before, thought her too naive to suspect my affair with Stefan, too trusting to fight back when I sent those men after her. I'd been wrong then. Could I be wrong now?

My phone buzzed - a text from Stefan: *We need to talk about what happened today.*

I ignored it. Stefan was a loose end I'd deal with later. Right now, I needed to think. To plan. To figure out if Camille had left any other surprises waiting to explode in my carefully constructed life.

"This isn't over,"|told the empty apartment, my voice steady again. "You might have won this round,sister dear, but I'm not finished yet. I've come too far, fought too hard, to let your ghost destroy everything I've built."

I stood up, brushing glass from my dress. Time to call my cleaning service, erase the evidence of my breakdown. Time to put the mask back on, be perfect Rose again. But first...

I gathered the scattered journal pages, struck a match, and watched them burn in my marble sink. No evidence. No loose ends. No weakness.

"Goodbye, Camille," I whispered as the flames consumed my forged confessions. "Thanks for teaching me one last lesson-never underestimate the dead."

As I watched the ashes swirl down the drain, a new thought struck me. If Camille had been clever enough to hide her millions, what else might she have hidden? What other secrets had my perfect, naive sister taken to her watery grave?

The question haunted me as I began cleaning up the mess I'd made. Each piece of broken glass felt like. a fragment of my carefully constructed world, crumbling beneath the weight of Camille's final revenge.

And somewhere, in the back of my mind, a small voice whispered: What if she isn't really dead at all?