And then she was gone, dissolving like smoke, and I was awake again in my gilded cage, twenty-one years old and still haunted by a woman I’d never actually met.
My mother.
The woman who’d left when I was two. The woman who’d walked out with her boyfriend and never looked back, leaving nothing but a note and a child who would spend the next nineteen years wondering what she’d done wrong. That’s what my father had told me, anyway. What everyone had told me. The official story, polished smooth by repetition: Barbara’s mother was selfish, Barbara’s mother chose her lover over her daughter, Barbara’s mother was never coming back.
I’d believed it for so long that the belief had become part of my DNA.
But the dreams….
The dreams told a different story.
“You know what happened to me.”
What did that mean? What was I supposed to know? And why did those words feel less like a memory and more like a warning?
I sat up, pushing my hair—chestnut brown, wavy from sleep—away from my face. My bedroom was ridiculous in the way only old money could achieve: all cream and gold accents, an antique vanity that had belonged to some ancestor I’d never met, art on the walls that probably belonged in a museum. A reminder that I had everything anyone could want and none of the things that actually mattered.
For exactly thirty seconds, I let myself believe today might be different. That maybe I could take a shower, put on one of my designer outfits, have brunch with Hailey and Cassandra and pretend to be a normal twenty-one-year-old whose biggest problem was choosing between mimosas and Bloody Marys.
Then my phone rang.
The sound sliced through the morning peace like a knife through silk. I didn’t need to look at the screen to know who it was. My body knew before my brain caught up—stomachdropping, hands starting to tremble, that familiar cocktail of dread and rage flooding my veins.
I looked anyway.
Bass.
Sebastian. My half-brother. My tormentor. My own personal demon, who wore expensive suits and a smile that could charm snakes.
I let it ring three times, a pathetic attempt at rebellion, before I answered. Because I always answered. That was the deal, wasn’t it? That was the price I paid for secrets.
“What?” My voice came out flat, dead. I’d learned not to show fear. It only made him worse.
“Good morning to you, too, baby sister.” His voice dripped false warmth, that particular tone that made my skin crawl. “Did I wake you? You sound…tired.”
“What do you want, Sebastian?”
“What I always want. What you always give me.” He paused, letting the words settle. “Cash. And before you start with the excuses—”
“I almost got caught last time,” I cut in, gripping the phone hard enough that my knuckles went white. “Dad’s checking everything now. The accounts, the household budgets, even the goddamn grocery receipts. I can’t just steal money anymore without him noticing.”
“Then get creative.” His tone sharpened, the false friendliness evaporating. “Sell something. Pawn some jewelry. I don’t care how you do it, Babs. Just do it.”
“I can’t….”
“Do you want me to leak the video?”
The question landed like a physical blow.
My hands began to tremble. Not just my hands, my whole body, a tremor that started in my chest and radiated outward until I had to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.Images flashed behind my eyes: sixteen years old, at a party I shouldn’t have attended, drinking alcohol I shouldn’t have touched, being teased by girls whose names I couldn’t remember about being “untouched” and “innocent” like it was something shameful.
And then Sebastian.
Charming, older Sebastian who’d paid attention to me when no one else did. Who’d made me feel special, wanted. Who’d leaned in close in a darkened hallway and kissed me while I was too drunk on cheap wine and too desperate to question why it felt wrong.
God, I hadn’t known he was my half-brother.
My father was first married to Sebastian’s mother, and by the time he married my mother after her death from cancer, Sebastian had been away at boarding school, then college, then God knew where doing God knew what. We’d barely seen each other while growing up. He was just a name, a ghost, a brother only in paperwork.
