chapter 3
I was half asleep beside my mother’s hospital bed when a face appeared over me.
Pale skin.
Cold tiger-bright eyes.
A beautiful boy with a stillness that felt almost unnatural.
Damian Reed.
In my last life, he had been the one who destroyed my sister.
He wasn’t blood-related to the family. He was the orphaned grandson of my late grandfather’s closest friend, taken in and raised in the Carter household. Brilliant. Controlled. Distant. Too smart too young. Too unloved too early.
Last time, my sister had treated him like trash from the day she could speak. Called him a parasite. Humiliated him in front of people. Excluded him. Ridiculed him. Fed every dark and lonely corner inside him until he grew into something sharp enough to destroy her.
And to be fair, he had grown into a genius. He had ended up running the Carter empire before he was old enough to legally drink.
My idiot sister, terrified he’d take “her” inheritance, had tried to strike first.
She had never understood one simple rule.
You do not make an enemy out of someone like Damian Reed.
This time, I would do the opposite.
I looked up at him with the widest, purest smile I could manage and stretched out both chubby arms.
He blinked.
His face actually cracked.
In all my memories of him, I had never seen that expression before.
Confusion.
Then I forced out the first word of this life.
“Brother.”
The room went still.
My mother gasped.
My father actually cursed under his breath.
“She just—did she just call him brother?” my mother whispered.
Damian stood there like he’d been struck by lightning.
Then my father, delighted beyond reason, scooped me up and shoved me straight into Damian’s arms.
“Looks like your little sister likes you,” he said. “Hold her.”
Damian stiffened from head to toe as if someone had handed him a live explosive.
He held me awkwardly, carefully, like I might disappear.
I sent my voice only to him.
He’s so handsome. But he looks lonely.
His whole body locked.
He had spent his life being polite, useful, untouchable. A guest in every room. A burden nobody called one.
No one had ever looked straight at the loneliness inside him and named it.
I kept going.
Don’t be scared, big brother. I’ll stay with you, so you won’t be lonely anymore.
For the first time, warmth flickered in those cold eyes.
Very slowly, very carefully, he took the jade pendant from around his neck and placed it over mine.
“This was my mother’s,” he said quietly. “You can have it. It’ll protect you.”
That pendant had been the most precious thing he owned.
My parents, already emotional disasters where I was concerned, nearly cried on the spot at what they clearly interpreted as an instant sibling bond.
Over the next month, Damian came to see me every day.
The frost around him began to thaw so visibly it became almost funny.
When I grabbed his finger, he’d turn his head away, but the tips of his ears would go red.
He learned how to make my formula.
From the start, I refused breastfeeding. My mother had gone through enough carrying me. I wanted her resting, not exhausted.
At night, if I was hungry, I rang for the nurse and never disturbed my mother’s sleep.
The whole family’s affection for me rose higher and higher.
I also made sure to be just clever enough to amaze them without frightening them.
I called my parents early.
I charmed every nurse, nanny, and mother in the recovery center.
Everyone said I was a miracle child.
Meanwhile, in the next wing, my sister was also turning heads.
She was beautiful. That gift from the underworld had worked on her too.
The actress mother, who had initially been indifferent, started warming up once she realized her daughter’s face could become an asset. When my sister hummed along to music before she should have even been able to, people there lost their minds.
Two genius babies in one recovery center.
What a miracle.
Whenever there was an event and our mothers ended up in the same room, my sister would stare at me from across the crowd with smug little looks that said, Wait and see. This time, I’m going to win.
A month later, her mother rushed her out of there.
I knew where she was going.
To find the wealthy married man who had secretly kept her.
In my last life, she had taken me there too, certain that our existence would earn us recognition.
Instead, he had thrown money at us and told her to disappear.
He had a powerful wife, connections, and plenty of ways to erase inconvenient women.
That was when my real nightmare had started.
The actress had taken the money.
Then she had decided I was going to become her masterpiece.
And her weapon.
This time, that future belonged to my sister.
Not me.