Bianca did not get far. The echo of the slammed penthouse door still
hung in the private hallway when the sound of a choked sob, then the scrape of
a body sliding down the wall, reached Elara and Silas inside.
Elara met Silas's eyes. He gave a barely perceptible nod, his expression
saying the choice was hers. The war was won, but the casualties remained.
Quietly, Elara opened the door. Bianca was crumpled on the polished
floor, her back against the wall, face buried in her hands. The furious,
shattered-glass girl was gone, replaced by a figure of pure, broken despair.
The raw sound of her weeping was a stark contrast to the sterile, wealthy
silence of the corridor.
"Bianca," Elara said, her voice not soft, but clear.
Bianca flinched, dropping her hands. Her mascara was a ruined watermark
down her cheeks. "Go away. Haven't you done enough?"
"The security feed is live. You can sit in the hall and be a spectacle,
or you can come back inside. Your choice." Elara turned, leaving the door open,
and walked back to the living area. It was not an offer of comfort, but a
pragmatic alternative to further humiliation.
After a moment, a sniffling silence, then the hesitant click of heels.
Bianca stepped back into the penthouse, closing the door softly behind her. She
stood just inside, arms wrapped around herself, looking young and lost.
Silas had discreetly moved to the study, giving them the illusion of
privacy. The archival box from Claire sat on the coffee table like an
accusation.
"He told me you were a threat," Bianca whispered, her gaze fixed on the
magnificent, indifferent cityscape. "From the time we were little. He said you
were spoiled, that your father indulged you, that you'd been handed everything
that should have been mine by right. Not just shares or money… but attention.
Legacy."
Elara stayed silent, letting the poison spill.
"At family dinners, he'd quiz me on business articles, then say, 'Elara
would have understood the implications.' When I came second in the equestrian
finals, he said, 'Your cousin has a champion's focus. You lack her killer
instinct.' He built you up as this… this paragon I could never reach, just to
watch me strain and fail." A bitter, wet laugh escaped her. "And I hated you
for it. So much."
She finally looked at Elara, her eyes swimming with a painful clarity.
"But it was never you, was it? It was him. Using you as a stick to beat me
with. Using my jealousy to keep me loyal, to keep me trying to win a game only
he was playing."
Elara felt the old, familiar hurt—the lonely childhood, the cousin who'd
sneered rather than played. Now she saw the puppet strings leading back to the
same master. "Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because he finally said it out loud!" Bianca's voice rose, cracking.
"Today, when everything was falling apart, he looked at me with pure contempt
and said, 'You were supposed to be the counterweight. My tool to manage her.
And you were never even fit for that.' A tool. That's all I was. My entire
life, my entire identity… was just a strategy to control you."
The full, horrific symmetry of Robert's manipulation settled over the
room. He had obsessed over Elara, and he had weaponised Bianca. Two cousins,
set against each other in a war designed by one man to feed his own emptiness.
Bianca wiped at her face, a futile gesture. "All those times I mocked
you, froze you out, told the press little 'harmless' tales about you being
aloof or reckless… he encouraged it. He'd say, 'Keep her off-balance. It's for
the good of the family.' I thought I was protecting what was ours. I was just
doing his dirty work."
Elara walked to the sofa and sat, not inviting Bianca to join her, but
anchoring the space. "What do you want, Bianca?"
"I don't know!" The confession was a wail of utter lostness. "I have
nothing. No purpose, no father, no future. The money… it's just numbers on a
screen now, and they're disappearing. I have nothing but the hatred he taught
me to feel, and I'm too tired to even feel that anymore."
The words hung between them, a bleak inventory of a ruined life.
"Then start with the truth," Elara said, her tone pragmatic, cutting
through the emotional fog. "You want a truce? It begins there. You have
information. About his tactics, his whispers, his networks. You were his
instrument. You know how he plays."
Bianca stared, shocked. "You want me to… help you?"
"I want you to help yourself. The only way out of the wreckage he made
of you is to walk through it, not around it. You can be another one of his
silent victims, or you can be a witness." Elara gestured to the box. "Your
mother chose to be a witness. It's the only power any of us have left."
The mention of Claire seemed to startle Bianca further. "My mother left
him?"
"She saw the flames and decided not to burn with him."
A long, shaky silence followed. Bianca's gaze drifted from the box to
Elara's face, searching not for weakness, but for something real. The false
idol her father had built was gone. In its place was just a woman, weary but
resolute, holding a line.
"He has a ledger," Bianca said, the words so soft they were almost
inaudible. "Not digital. Paper. Old-fashioned. He calls it his 'contingency
register.' It's in a safe behind the portrait of my grandfather in his study.
It has… everything. Favours owed. Payments made. Secrets he's kept on people
who could have opposed him." She took a shuddering breath. "Including things
about me. Things he said he'd use if I ever disappointed him."
It was the ultimate turn of the key. Not just cooperation, but a shared
stakes in the downfall.
Elara nodded slowly. "That would be useful."
"I'm not doing it for you," Bianca said quickly, a last vestige of
defensive pride flaring. "I'm doing it for me. To get my life back from him."
"I wouldn't expect anything else," Elara replied. There was no offer of
sisterhood, no false promise of friendship. Only a clear, cold alignment of
interests born from shared trauma. It was the most honest foundation they had
ever built.
Bianca straightened her shoulders, a fragile mimicry of composure. "What
do you need me to do?"
"For now? Go home. Be seen. Don't let him suspect you're broken. When
the time comes, we'll need access to that study."
Bianca gave a stiff nod. She walked to the door, pausing with her hand
on the handle. Without turning, she said, "He was wrong, you know. When he said
I lacked your killer instinct." She finally glanced back, her eyes red-rimmed
but clear. "He just never realised mine would be for him."
She left, closing the door with a quiet, final click.
Silas emerged from the study. "A risky alliance."
"It's not an alliance," Elara said, looking at the door where her cousin
had just stood. "It's a mutually agreed demolition project. She brings down his
walls to free herself. I do it to ensure he can never rebuild." She met Silas's
gaze. "Can we trust her?"
"No," he said plainly. "But we can trust her fear, her anger, and her
self-interest. For now, that's enough."
Elara returned to the window. The city lights were beginning to sparkle,
holding the darkness at bay. The fallout had settled, and from the radioactive
dust, a new, treacherous shape had emerged. Bianca was no longer just a victim
or a foe. She was a fractured mirror, finally reflecting the true source of the
distortion.
The torchlight had reached another shadow, and the shadow, in its
desperation, had chosen to point toward the source of the darkness. The path
forward was no less dangerous, but it was now walked by more than one.