Chapter 18
1116 Words
I pulled the phone closer, and the words on the screen sharpened until they couldn't be unread.
Ava Reed, newly announced Creative Consultant at Lancaster Corp, is seen arriving for her first official day. Sources say the company is "thrilled to bring fresh vision" to its upcoming collection.
Fresh vision.
My hand went very still around the phone, not shaking, just still, in the particular way a body goes quiet right before it decides whether to break.
"They gave her my job." My voice came out flat, almost curious, like I was reading someone else's bad news out loud. "The collection I built. The one they stole from me. They gave it to my sister."
Noah watched me across the table, and for once he didn't reach for the calm, controlled version of himself first. "I only saw it twenty minutes ago. I wanted to tell you before you found out from someone else."
"That's what my mother was trying not to say." Something in my chest was unspooling, slow and cold. "She's your sister, and she's… she's taken over your life. Again. That's what she couldn't finish."
I set the phone down, face up, so I wouldn't have to look at Ava's smile anymore. It was the same smile she'd had our whole childhood, the one that made adults melt and made me feel like furniture in the corner of every room we ever stood in together.
"I need you to say something," I told Noah, "because right now I am about two seconds from throwing this cup."
"Then throw it." He didn't blink. "But it won't undo the article, and it won't touch Lancaster. What will is what we're already building. Slower than you want. But it works."
"Slower." I laughed, and it came out wrong, sharp at the edges. "Noah, she's not just working there. She's the face of it now. My sketches, my patterns, my entire aesthetic, with her name stamped on top like she made any of it."
"I know." His voice dropped, quieter. "That's exactly why we don't move fast. A rushed strike gives them time to cover their tracks. We wait until we have enough to make it impossible for them to spin their way out."
I hated that he was right.
I pushed back from the table, needing to stand, needing my body to do something other than sit still and absorb this. The living room stretched out around me, all glass and cold morning light, and for a second I felt exactly the way I had the day I found Ryan in bed with my sister… like the floor had quietly become a different floor while I wasn't looking.
"Jasmine." Noah's chair scraped back. He didn't come closer, just stood there, hands loose at his sides instead of in his pockets for once. "Look at me."
I didn't, not right away. I stared out at the skyline instead, at all that glass and steel that didn't care about any of this.
"I'm looking at the window," I said.
"Then talk to the window. I don't care. But hear this,” he said, paused, and continued. "She didn't win anything. She took a job. That's all that photo shows. It doesn't show that the designs are legally yours. It doesn't show what happens when the paperwork catches up to the headline."
"You don't know my sister." I finally turned to face him. "She doesn't just take things. She makes sure everyone watching thinks she deserved them. She'll have people convinced by next week that the whole collection was her idea from the start."
"Then we make sure the timeline says otherwise." Noah's jaw tightened, just slightly, the only crack in the calm. "I have people who can pull design file metadata, dated sketches, anything with a timestamp older than her employment contract. If it exists, we'll find it."
I wanted to believe that would be enough. Some small, tired part of me, the part that had believed my mother would take my side, that Ryan would choose me, that this family would ever once put me first, wanted so badly to believe it.
"Why are you doing this?" The question came out before I decided to ask it. "Really. Don't give me the arrangement speech. Why does it matter to you if my sister struts around in a job she stole?"
Something moved behind his eyes, there and gone too fast to name. "Because Lancaster Corp isn't just costing you a collection. It's the same company that tried to swallow one of my early acquisitions eight years ago and nearly succeeded. I've been waiting a long time for a reason that actually meant something to go after them properly." A beat. "You're not just convenient, Jasmine. You're the reason this finally makes sense to do."
I didn't know what to do with that. It sat somewhere between comfort and warning, and I couldn't tell yet which one it actually was.
My phone buzzed again on the table, cutting through whatever had just opened up between us. I almost ignored it. Then I saw the name and my stomach did that same cold drop from earlier that morning.
Ava.
Not a missed call this time. A text, the little preview visible before I even unlocked the screen.
I read it twice. Three times.
Before you say anything, you need to know I didn't ask for this. They came to me. Call me before you do anything you'll regret.
"What is it?" Noah's voice, closer now, careful.
"My sister." I set the phone face down on the table, like that would make the words on it stop mattering. "Says she didn't ask for the job.”
"Do you believe her?"
"I don't know what I believe anymore." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "That used to be the worst part of all this. Not the betrayal itself. Just… not trusting my own read on people anymore."
Noah didn't say anything to that. He didn't need to. He just stood there, steady, letting the silence hold the weight instead of rushing to fill it.
My phone buzzed again in my hand, and I flinched at it as if it might bite.
It wasn't Ava.
It was Diana, and she never called this early unless something was wrong.
I answered before the second ring finished. "Diana? What's…"
"Jasmine." Her voice came fast, breathless, like she'd been running or crying or both. "Turn on the news. Right now. Whatever channel, it doesn't matter which one."
"Diana, what's going on…"
"Just turn it on." Her voice cracked on the last word. "Please. Before you hear it from anyone else.”
- Writer
