Chapter 2

"Isabella, none of this is your fault!"

Victoria grasped her elder daughter's hands, her tone soft and doting. "You're kind and sensible—you just don't want to make things worse between you two. If anyone is to blame, it's Sophie. She's old enough to know better, yet she still behaves like a child, desperate for attention. Once she's back, I'll make sure she apologizes to you properly."

Edward, standing nearby, chimed in with a nod. "Exactly. She must apologize. With a temperament like that, she'll never accomplish anything."

"If Sophie hadn't pushed you into the pool back then, leaving you with that high fever for a whole night and day, your body wouldn't be so frail now."

Victoria brought up the incident again, her eyes flashing with barely concealed hatred, as though peeling away my skin might ease her fury.

"Mom, that wasn't intentional," Isabella said, with a gentle wave of her hand. "It was her birthday, and she was upset because I blew out the candles by accident. I don't blame her."

She sounded so gracious—so forgiving—that my parents' fury toward me only deepened.

That incident had always been a wound buried deep in my heart. And now, they tore it open again.

I was thirteen when Victoria first said she would throw me a birthday party.

I had been thrilled for a whole month. I even used my savings to buy myself a new outfit.

After all, this was a party my mother was hosting for me. I couldn't afford to embarrass her.

Isabella had noticed how much it meant to me. She sneered, lips curling in disdain. "You really think this party is actually going to happen?"

I didn't want to argue. I ignored her mockery, focusing instead on the celebration I had long waited for.

On the day of the party, Victoria carried the cake into the room. But she seemed to forget who the party was for. Her eyes locked only on Isabella, who sat looking glum and uninterested. Without hesitation, she placed the cake in front of her.

"Isabella, go on—make a wish and blow out the candles," she said tenderly.

Everyone clapped, thinking it was Isabella's birthday. No one even glanced my way.

I stood there, dressed in the new clothes I had proudly picked for the occasion, and felt as if someone had slapped me across the face. Isabella's smug smile met my eyes, and I realized how laughable my month-long excitement had been.

I left the room quietly and stepped into the courtyard, hoping to escape the noise and humiliation.

But Isabella wasn't done with me. Pretending to bring me a piece of cake, she approached with a wicked smile and whispered, "You'll never have Mom and Dad's love. Not ever."

Then she threw herself backward into the pool.

Edward dove in instantly to rescue her.

Victoria didn't give me a chance to explain. She believed I had tried to kill her precious daughter. She shoved me to the ground, then kicked me hard in the stomach.

"If anything happens to your sister, I'll never forgive you!"

The hatred in her face then was the same as it was now, unchanged.

"Good thing I gave you the oxygen canister," she muttered coldly. "She's always been jealous."

She never bothered to hide her disgust for me. It was as if my very existence stained her.

If Isabella hadn't needed umbilical cord blood to survive, I doubt Victoria would've had a second child at all.

"Isabella, you must recover quickly," Victoria said sweetly. "Your father's waiting to hand the company over to you."

"Yes, darling," Edward added. "Get better soon, and I promise—Harrington Luxe will be yours."

After I graduated from university, Edward had told me he was getting old. The shareholders were circling like vultures, and Isabella's health made her unfit to lead. He asked me to take over.

He said it with humility, almost pleading. I couldn't say no.

So I gave up my dream of studying scientific research and took the reins of the family business.

To grow the company, I worked tirelessly—meetings by day, social obligations by night. More than once, I ended up in the hospital from overdrinking and exhaustion.

But my efforts paid off. I expanded our reach into overseas markets and raised the firm's profile.

Still, none of it mattered.

In their eyes, I would never measure up to Isabella. From the beginning, they had always planned to give everything to her. My success was just groundwork for her future.

Isabella was never truly sick. She hated hospitals and only pretended for attention.

Once she decided she was "recovered," she pressured our parents to arrange her discharge.

They never questioned her. Whatever she asked for, they delivered.

I watched from a distance as the three of them—smiling, united—signed the paperwork and left the hospital together.

In that moment, I felt truly pathetic.

I had never known real love from them. Watching Isabella claim it all so easily made my long-dead heart jerk with pain, as if pierced by a sharpened needle.

From the day I was born, I had so little.

The only thing truly mine was my life.

And now, even that had been taken.

Even as they walked out of the hospital, not one of them remembered the daughter they left to die on a snowy mountain.