Framed By My Blood Sister

The engine screamed down the avenue, weaving between two taxis with barely a hand's width to spare. Elena leaned into the turn, tyres skidding against wet tarmac as she cut through the gates of the Cole compound before the guard had even finished pulling them open. Gravel sprayed beneath her wheels. She didn't slow for the hedges, didn't glance at the gardener who stumbled back out of her path, didn't stop until the bike skidded sideways to a halt in front of the main steps, nearly toppling as she wrenched it upright at the last second. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. She yanked her helmet off and let it drop, forgotten, rolling somewhere behind her as she took the marble steps two at a time. Her breath came ragged, tearing at her chest, and beneath the roar of her own pulse she thought she could still hear it, that sound from an hour ago, sharp and wrong and impossible to un-hear. The front door slammed open under her palm. It crashed against the wall hard enough to rattle the glass in a nearby frame, and the sound cracked through the house like a gunshot. In the sitting room, Mr Cole lowered his newspaper, his brow furrowing. Mrs Cole, halfway through arranging white lilies in a vase, froze with a stem suspended between her fingers. On the sofa, Sophia looked up from her tablet, her thumb pausing mid-scroll. "Elena?" Mrs Cole's voice lifted, uncertain, as her daughter stumbled into the hall. "What on earth—" Elena didn't answer. She couldn't. Her throat had closed around whatever words might have explained the state of her, hair plastered to her forehead, jacket torn at one elbow, eyes wide and glassy and fixed on nothing at all. "Elena." Mr Cole rose from his chair, setting the newspaper aside with the deliberate calm he used whenever something in his world threatened to spiral. "What happened to you?" “Nothing”. She kept walking, her boots striking hard against the polished floor, cutting straight past the sitting room towards the staircase. Sophia set her tablet down slowly, her gaze tracking her sister's back with something sharper than concern. Elena never came home like this. Not dishevelled. Not silent. Not with that particular look on her face, hollow and pale, like she'd witnessed something that had rearranged everything she thought she understood about the world. "Elena, you're scaring us." Mrs Cole abandoned the lilies entirely, moving towards the staircase with quick, worried steps. "Please. Talk to us. What's wrong?" Elena's hand closed around the banister. For half a second she paused there, her shoulders rigid, and something in her seemed to consider turning around, considered explaining, considered letting the truth spill out right there in the entrance hall where her family could catch her before she fell any further. She didn't. "I need to be alone." The words came out thin and clipped, barely above a whisper, scraped raw. "Please. Just leave me." "Elena—" She was already moving, taking the stairs two at a time, her footsteps hammering against the wood until she vanished onto the landing above. A door slammed somewhere overhead, the sound rolling down through the high ceilings and settling over the sitting room. Silence swallowed the whole house. Mrs Cole stood frozen at the foot of the stairs, one hand pressed flat against her chest, her eyes fixed on the empty landing. Mr Cole remained standing near his chair, arms folded, jaw tight, staring upward as though sheer will might make his daughter reappear and explain herself. Sophia rose from the sofa slowly, her earlier stillness giving way to something more restless. She crossed to the bottom of the staircase and looked up, her expression unreadable, calculating in a way that didn't quite match the concern painted across her parents faces. "What was that about?" Sophia asked, though her tone carried more curiosity than worry. "I don't know." Mrs Cole's voice remained faint, distracted. She turned towards her husband. "Should we go up there?" Mr Cole didn't answer immediately. He crossed to the side table and set the newspaper down with more care than the moment seemed to demand, as though the small, deliberate motion might steady something in his own chest that words couldn't reach. "Give her a moment," he said finally. "She'll come down when she's ready." Sophia wasn't so certain. She glanced towards the staircase again, towards the landing where her sister had disappeared, and something cold settled low in her stomach, though she couldn't have named exactly why. Elena has many things, careful, thoughtful, occasionally too soft for her own good, but she was never frightened. Not like that. Not enough to slam a door and beg to be left alone without so much as a word of explanation. Mrs Cole drifted back towards the lilies, her hands moving without purpose now, rearranging stems she'd already arranged twice. Mr Cole stood near his chair, arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the staircase, waiting. The minutes dragged past, thick and unbearable. Sophia tried to return to her tablet, her eyes skimming the same headline three times without absorbing a single word of it. Upstairs, she thought she caught the sound of movement, quick and restless, footsteps crossing back and forth across the wooden floor. A drawer sliding open. Slamming shut. Opening again. "Maybe I should check on her," Mrs Cole murmured, abandoning the lilies for good this time, already turning towards the stairs. She had barely taken a step when a new sound cut through the compound, faint at first, rising steadily, unmistakable. Sirens. Mrs Cole froze mid-stride. Mr Cole's head snapped towards the window. Sophia rose sharply from the sofa, her tablet sliding from her lap and hitting the floor, forgotten completely. The wail grew louder, closer, until the sound filled the entire ground floor, until flashing light bled blue and red through the tall windows, sweeping across the walls in slow, deliberate arcs. A police car was turning through the gates of the Cole compound.