Page 73 of Twins for the Off-Limits Lawyer

I thought about Lili, somewhere in Texas, believing that our entire relationship had been a lie orchestrated by people more powerful than herself.

Believing that I'd chosen career over love, that I'd abandoned her to save myself.

"After that, I'm going to find Lili and spend however long it takes convincing her that what we had was real. That despite my family's manipulations, despite the lies and the schemes and the betrayals, what happened between us was the most honest thing in my life."

"She may not believe you," Cece warned. "The damage runs pretty deep."

"Then I'll keep trying until she does. Or until she tells me definitively that she never wants to see me again." I met her eyessteadily. "But I won't let my Mother's version of events be the final word on this story."

I gathered the evidence Cece had provided, feeling something like purpose for the first time since Lili had walked out of my life. "I'm ready to destroy everything she built, then win Lili back."

The words hung in the air like a declaration of war.

And perhaps that's exactly what it was—a war against manipulation, against the belief that power justified any means, against the idea that love was too dangerous to be worth fighting for.

Mother had won the first battle through superior strategy and ruthless execution.

But the war was far from over.

CHAPTER 18

Lili

My fingers trembled as I typed:

Me:Daphne, did our friendship mean anything to you, or was I just convenient cover for your affair with James?

Delete.

I sat cross-legged on my childhood bed, surrounded by the same pink floral wallpaper I'd begged Mama to change when I turned sixteen. "It's too young for me," I'd whined then, desperate to seem sophisticated. Now, at twenty-five and drowning in the aftermath of actual sophistication, those cheerful roses felt like the only things in the world that weren't using me for their own agenda.

My phone showed seventeen drafted messages to Daphne, each one cycling between anger and heartbreak. Despite everything that had been said in that conservatory, I found myself struggling to accept the reality that both Daphne and Edward were no longer a part of my life. The cursor blinked mockingly as I tried again:

Me: I know we both lied to each other, but I actually thought you cared about me. Turns out I was just your convenient distraction while you—

My thumb stabbed the delete button so hard it hurt.

The contrast between this simple room and the blue guest suite at Grosvenor Manor hit me fresh every morning.

Here, my twin bed sagged in the middle where I'd jumped on it as a kid, covered with Grandma's hand-stitched quilt that had faded to the color of old roses.

There, Egyptian cotton sheets in a room I'd been given not out of kindness, but because it served Daphne's purposes.

Here, a mirror with a crack down one corner from when I'd thrown my hairbrush at it during some long-forgotten teenage tantrum.

There, antique silver mirrors that had reflected back someone I barely recognized—someone polished and performative and played like a fiddle.

The familiar symphony of home drifted through walls thin as paper. Mama's morning talk show playing too loud in the kitchen, Mrs. Patterson's rooster next door announcing dawn like he'd invented the concept, the distant whoosh of eighteen-wheelers on the county road carrying people to places that mattered. Real sounds from real people living real lives, not the hushed perfection of a manor where even the kindness came with strings attached.

I started typing again:

Me:We both kept secrets. But I fell in love with your brother—you used me as camouflage for your affair. Which one of us is the real villain here?

The words sat there on the screen, brutal in their honesty. Because that was the truth that burned like acid in my chest. I'd been played by my best friend just as thoroughly as I'd been played by Lady Victoria. The only difference was that Daphne had hidden it behind years of friendship and inside jokes and shared dreams.

Delete.

The old house creaked around me as I padded to the kitchen in yesterday's clothes—or were they from the day before? Time had gotten slippery since I'd been back, marked only by the progression from instant coffee to sweet tea to the bourbon Mama pretended not to know I'd been stealing from her cabinet.

---