Savannah

I hated cleaning. More than Chloe, more than Cassandra, more than every person who had ever made it their mission to chip away at my spirit, I hated wiping down someone else's mess. Even when that "someone" was me.

Two days after Roman dropped me off, I had done nothing but scrub and scour. I was pretending that organizing the clutter in my apartment would somehow organize the wreckage inside my head. My home had become a disaster zone in just a week, as if the dust had thrown a rave while I was away. I folded clothes, vacuumed corners, and even toyed with the idea of a pet—a kitten, maybe—anything to feel a heartbeat in this room that wasn't heavy with my own dread.

But cleaning was just a distraction. The real work was avoiding my phone.

I ignored Alyssa’s texts. Lizzie’s voicemails. The fifty-plus missed calls from my mother. I had even blocked Dean. Every notification felt like a hand shaking me awake from a nightmare I was desperately trying to turn into a dream.

I wanted to move forward. Roman and I—that was the only thing worth carrying out of the hell of New Hope. The rest could rot. But the past has long claws. Especially Chloe. The sheer audacity of the "wedding from hell" still made my blood boil. I had spent my life protecting her, lying for her, even losing the man I liked to her, only for her to turn the knife in my back for a performance.

And everyone stood by. They watched her torch my life and called it "sibling rivalry." They cheered for her like she was a child who didn't know she was stepping on people.

My phone buzzed again. This time, the name stopped me.

Uncle Jace.

He was the quiet one. The one who stayed in the background, slipping me candy at reunions and never picking sides. Maybe that’s why I finally picked up.

"Sav?" His voice was weary, edged with relief. "Thank God. We've been trying to reach you for days."

"I'm alive, Uncle Jace," I said, my voice flat and surgical. "I just didn't feel like talking."

"Your mother is worried sick, sweetheart. Everyone is."

"Right," I muttered, bitterness curling in my chest. "Considering they all watched Chloe pick me apart, I bet they’re real worried about who her next target is."

"Sav, don't speak like that. Siblings fight. Your mother loves you. Chloe loves you, in her own strange way."

Something inside me snapped. The same tired script. The same platitudes used to shove my pain under the rug for twenty years. I almost laughed, but my eyes burned instead.

"No, Uncle Jace. She doesn't love me. She never did. She is my enemy, and I’m done pretending."

"Savannah—"

"No! Let me finish!" I was shaking now, the words cutting sharp. "You’re my father’s brother. You saw him worship her while I was a defective afterthought. You watched him water the roots of that hatred for two decades. Did you stop him? Did you ever once defend me?"

The silence on the line was an indictment.

"You let it happen. All of you. And now you want to fix it with cheap words? You can’t tape over a cracked dam, Uncle."

"Sav, don't—"

"I'm not done!" My chest heaved. I was digging it all up today. The secrets, the shadows, the things they forced me to bury so they could stay comfortable. "I know what you're doing. You're trying to smother me with silence before I say the thing none of you want to admit."

"Savannah, please—"

"No. You listen." My voice broke, but I pushed through the jagged glass in my throat. I refused to let them erase me. I refused to be the victim who took the fall for their peace of mind.

I gripped the phone until my knuckles were white, my vision a blur of hot, angry tears.

"When Professor Kingston took everything from me," I whispered, the word rape hanging in the air like a lethal weight, "where the hell were you all? Why didn't you stand up for me then?"

The line went dead silent.

A silence so heavy, so absolute, I could hear the sound of my own heart finally shattering into pieces they could never put back together.