On Friday night, the city hummed with rain and soft neon. Venessa was folding laundry—one of the few quiet, meditative rituals she had began to held onto—when her phone buzzed. Jane's name lit up the screen.
"Did Megan come over for the weekend?" Jane's voice was tight, tired, like she hadn't slept well in days.
Venessa blinked. "No. Thought she was staying with you?"
Then the phone buzzed.
Jane's name lit the screen. Her voice was tight, frayed at the edges. "Did Megan come over for the weekend?"
Venessa paused, a T-shirt half-folded. "No. Thought she was with you."
Silence cracked open on the other end.
Then Jane's breath hitched. A curse tumbled out, followed by the frantic tapping of keys. She hung up without explanation.
Fifteen minutes later, Jane called back—sharper now, voice trembling beneath its brittle shell. "She's at the Grand Lucent. Some party. Leonard Krane's birthday."
The air drained from Venessa's lungs.
Leonard Krane. Damon's golden-boy brother. The pop idol with too much money, too much attention, and not enough consequences. K5's youngest heartthrob—Megan used to paper her walls with his face. Glitter posters, song lyrics scribbled in notebooks. But that was back when dreams still belonged to them. Before the breakup. Before the engagement party debacle. Before their last name became a punchline.
Now Megan wasn't answering her phone.
Venessa didn't wait. She called Jane, told her to keep Dina and Davis. Then she grabbed her coat and headed out, wind snapping at the hem like a warning. The storm had teeth tonight—lightning baring them over a skyline too beautiful for what it held.
The Grand Lucent Hotel loomed like a crown built on delusion. Gilded trim, glass chandeliers, music that pulsed through marble like a heartbeat fed by champagne and ego. It took her five minutes to breach the velvet-rope security, to elbow past girls in couture and boys in cologne, her eyes scanning every glittering corner like a wolf on the hunt.
She found Megan on the rooftop.
Screaming.
At another girl. Lips smeared red. Mascara dripping in black trails like ink across parchment. Her voice cracked and slurred, full of venom and grief and something feral.
Venessa's heart stuttered. "Megan—"
She surged forward, dodging a half-empty flute of champagne, pushing past some influencer mid-selfie.
"Megan! What the hell is going on?"
The girl spun, legs unsteady in heels she had no business wearing. Her pupils were blown wide, her smile too loose. "Ven?"
Then she stumbled into Venessa's arms and clung like the world was ending.
"Oh my god, Venessa," she whispered, breath sour with vodka and regret. "You shouldn't be here. These people… they're not good."
Venessa held her tighter, the weight of Megan's fear sinking into her bones.
She looked around.
People were staring. Phones were out. Megan's friend, a tall brunette with panic in her eyes, mouthed sorry to Venessa.
"You're drunk," Venessa said, grabbing her elbow. "We're going."
"No! I'm fine. Let go—"
And just as she tried to pull Megan away quietly, a door opened behind them—and out stepped Damon.
Because of course.
Of course he would be here.
He looked sharp. Tailored black shirt, sleeves rolled. A girl—tall, blonde, the type with effortless curves—was holding onto his arm like she belonged there.
Megan froze.
Her face went from flushed to ghost-white in seconds.
"Oh," Megan breathed. "Of course."
Venessa didn't even have time to stop her. Megan pulled free and stormed up to Damon, eyes blazing.
"That's who you bring?" she slurred. "That's who you bring—to your brother's birthday? You're disgusting."
The girl scoffed. Damon stiffened.
"Megan," he said, low. "You're drunk. Go home."
"You think I care? You think I care?" she laughed bitterly. "You act all perfect—like you're above everything—but you're just like the rest of them."
Venessa tried to grab her again. "Megan, stop. Please—"
They stood there—awkward, tangled, people watching. It was a whole show.
"I hate him," Megan muttered.
"No, you don't, neither your lovely sister...isn't it?" Damon said calmly, his voice almost too quiet.
But Damon's eyes snapped to Venessa then, really looked at her since walked in. And the look in his eyes wasn't smug. It wasn't cold.
It was regret.
But then Venessa didn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
Not a glance. Not a twitch. Damon might as well have been another pillar of marble behind the champagne haze—irrelevant, immovable, and absolutely uninvited to this moment.
"Megan," she said again, lower this time, her voice slicing through the rooftop noise like a warning bell before the tide rushes in.
The younger girl clung tighter, mascara bleeding into Venessa's jacket. "He invited me, Ven. His brother. I thought—I thought maybe if I showed up, if I looked good, he'd tell Damon I—"
"Shhh. Not here." Venessa's fingers threaded into her hair, grounding them both. "Come on. We're leaving."
Megan wavered. "But my bag—"
"I'll buy you another." Venessa want to bite her tongue yet couldn't stop from wording it. Doesn't matter if it cost two month's salary she won't back out.
She looped an arm around her shoulders and turned her toward the elevator like a shield, keeping her back to the gawking crowd and the cameras they carried like eyes made of glass. They passed the velvet-draped VIPs, the sugar-dusted cocktails, the glittering heirs of nothing real.
Damon didn't move.
But she felt him.
Like smoke from a fire she'd already escaped.
They reached the lobby, cool and quiet in contrast, and Venessa flagged down a cab. Megan slumped into the back seat, still hiccupping apologies into her sleeve.
Venessa gave the driver her address and climbed in after, slamming the door shut like it could keep history out.
It couldn't.
But it was a start.
As the city rolled past, Megan rested her head against the window, the ghost of that rooftop still clinging to her hair and clothes. Venessa didn't say a word. Just watched her. Watched the girl who once sang K5 songs into a hairbrush. Who believed in love stories with happy endings.
Who now looked like she was learning what heartbreak really cost.
And for the first time in a long time, Venessa didn't just feel tired.
She felt angry.
Because Damon Krane had no idea the damage he left behind.
But he was going to.
Privately. Quietly. Brutally.
Soon.
....
Back at home, with Megan finally asleep and her mascara rinsed down the drain, Venessa stood by the window and let her hands tremble.
The storm outside had softened, but inside her? It hadn't passed.
Megan had once loved Leonard Krane the way only a teenage girl could—with stars in her eyes and posters on her ceiling, believing that voices on radios were promises made just for her. Those posters were probably still stuffed in a cardboard tube in the back of their shared closet, curled like old memories too painful to hang.
But tonight must had stripped the glitter from that dream.
And for what? A rooftop party? A boy who wouldn't even remember her name by sunrise? A legacy of Ellison women falling in love with men who didn't know how to stay?
Venessa moved through the apartment like a ghost, the kind that carried grocery bills in her coat pocket and bruises where hope used to live. She stepped into Megan's room and sat on the edge of the bed.
Her sister's breathing was soft now. Steady. The way it always was after too many tears.
"I know you like Leonard," Venessa whispered, voice catching. "But love shouldn't be a war zone. And sisters shouldn't be the ones left bleeding."
She reached out and gently tucked a damp strand of hair behind Megan's ear. The girl looked so small now, curled into herself like she was trying to make less space in a world that had never really made room for her.
Venessa exhaled.
A vow, not loud or dramatic, but forged in something fiercer than fury.
"I'll make this right," she said, to no one and everyone. "I don't care what it takes. No more chaos. No more crumbs from kings and their crooked crowns."
She looked back at Megan—then toward the moonlight spilling onto the floor, silver and sharp like a blade.
"I'll find another way."
....
Megan woke with a hangover and regret curling like smoke in her chest.
She didn't say much. Didn't have to.
Venessa had already set out toast, scrambled eggs, and a mug of bitter black coffee—no judgment, no sermon. Just quiet care plated up with a silence that said everything Megan wasn't ready to hear.
"Thanks," Megan murmured, voice small.
Venessa didn't say, You scared me.She didn't say, You humiliated yourself.She didn't say, You humiliated me.
She only said, "Next time, you're getting drunk at a party, call me. I don't care where you are." Megan was a silent and mindful young girl, but once she gets drunk all hell break lose.
Megan nodded, her shame swallowing any words that might've followed. She took the plate and disappeared, barefoot and hollow-eyed, into her room.
The day dragged on in weird, shallow breaths. Jane dropped off Dina and Davis in a whirlwind of cheerful chaos, her voice breezy and oblivious as if last night hadn't happened, as if Megan hadn't nearly collapsed on a rooftop clinging to the name of a boy who would never hold her back.
Venessa played along. Pretended to laugh. Pretended not to glance at Megan's door every ten minutes. Pretended the silence wasn't thick with everything they'd left unsaid.
When the kids were finally asleep—Dina tucked under three blankets, Davis snoring with his arm flopped over a picture book—the apartment exhaled.
And then it hit.
A single buzz.A name she hadn't seen since the fallout.
DAMON: I didn't know she'd be there.
Venessa stared at the message, heart thudding behind her ribs like it wanted to punch its way out.
Her fingers hovered over the screen.Then tapped.
VENESSA: Does it matter?
The typing dots blinked. Paused.Came back.
DAMON: It does to me.
She closed her eyes. For a second, she saw his face. Not the Damon from the gossip blogs or glossy magazines, but the boy who used to kiss her like he had nowhere better to be. The man who'd left anyway.
She almost hurled the phone across the room.
Almost.
But instead, she blocked his number then deleted it before turned off the screen.Set it face-down on the table and went to sleep beside the twins.