The letter felt heavier than paper should.
Her name wasn't on it—only her initials, written in that familiar looping script she had once mocked as "childish." But now, it looked sacred. A remnant of something irreplaceable.
She sat at her desk, alone in the dim light of her office. Outside, the sky rumbled and rain streaked down the glass windows like tear trails. Her empire was collapsing around her, but the silence inside this room was louder than any explosion.
She opened the letter with trembling fingers.
The first line stole the breath from her lungs.
"I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye."
She blinked, her throat tightening.
"By the time you read this, I'll be gone. I didn't want to burden you again—not in life, and certainly not in death."
She gripped the edge of the desk. Her hands were cold. Her heartbeat was a war drum in her ears.
"There's something I never told you. I knew from the beginning. From the first time I saw you at school, I knew you were my sister."
She froze.
"Your father was my father too. Mine in secret, mine in shame. My mother was the woman your father kept hidden, tucked away in silence while he built his world of marble and steel."
"He visited us once a month. Gave us money. Smiled at me like I was a ghost. I wasn't bitter. I just... learned early on how little people like us mattered."
Tears welled up in her eyes before she realized it. She didn't wipe them away.
"I didn't come to that school to beg. I came to see you. To understand you. To see if the blood we shared meant anything."
"And I saw someone who didn't know love. Someone taught to be cruel. Someone lost in all the noise of gold and pride."
"But underneath all that... I saw a girl who watered a rose in secret. Who stood still when it rained. Who sat with me even when she didn't have to."
"I loved you. Not because you were my sister. But because you were you."
The girl pressed the letter to her chest.
It hurt. So much it felt like her ribs might crack from the pressure.
The last part of the letter was messier. The ink had run, as if tears had fallen onto it.
"I got sick. It started slow. I didn't tell you—I didn't want you to think I was trying to get pity. Maybe I should've said something."
"I left because I couldn't take it anymore. Being near you and knowing I didn't matter. Hearing you say I was beneath you—"
"That's when I knew I had to go."
"Please don't carry this forever. I forgave you the day you broke me. I still forgive you now."
"But if you're reading this... please remember this much—"
"You were loved."
The girl screamed.
A sound ripped from her throat that had no name, no shape, no pride left in it. She screamed until her voice broke, until she was sobbing on the floor, her hands clutching the letter like it was her only anchor to this world.
Violet was dead.
Her sister.
The one good thing in her life.
Gone.
And she never even said sorry.
Later that night, she found the old marigolds Violet had planted behind the building. She hadn't noticed them in months. Now they were dry, crumpled, dying.
She knelt before them in the rain, her once-pristine clothes soaked and clinging to her like guilt.
"Why didn't I stop you?" she whispered. "Why didn't I see what you were trying to give me?"
The marigolds didn't answer.
The next morning, the news broke.
The company was officially gone. Bought, sold, dissolved into nothing.
She had nothing left.
Not even a name she was proud of.
She went to the rooftop that evening.
Same rain. Same wind.
But now... a letter in her coat pocket. Violet's final words burned into her chest.
She took off her heels, set them beside the ledge.
She looked down—not in fear, but in clarity.
Then she looked up.
Rain struck her cheeks like little knives. The clouds above were endless.
She smiled.
Not because she was happy.
But because there was nothing left to break.
"I don't want to be remembered," she said quietly.
And then she stepped forward—
—