"When we were children you tried so hard to win their love. They only ever loved me. When the inheritance was divided, they wouldn't give you a single cent. Then you chased after my husband, and he didn't love you either. Julian Frost was kind to you, sure. But now he's dead."
She let out a soft laugh, her voice turning lazier, crueler. "A pitiful thing nobody loves. What's even the point of you being alive?"
I looked at her, and suddenly the whole of it struck me as absurdly, grotesquely laughable.
From the time we were small, she had taken everything I ever had. Our parents. My promised husband, Julian Frost. Even my sworn husband, Julian Moretti, belonged to her in the end.
Everyone loved her.
And even so, she still wouldn't leave me alone. She had to come stand in front of me again and again, parading her victory.
I was thinking it, and I said it aloud.
She heard me out, then smiled with open contempt, not even bothering with the last shred of pretense.
"There's no why." Her tone was casual to the point of cruelty. "I just can't stand the sight of you. I never wanted a sister. I've been trying to push you into an early grave for years, but you're stubborn about staying alive. So I suppose I'll just have to do it myself."
Before the last word left her mouth, she lunged, both hands slamming into my chest.
"Die!"
The force knocked my feet from under me. My center of gravity broke apart in an instant, and my body pitched backward. Behind me there was nothing but open air and the black, endless sea.
In the panic I reached out on instinct. Adrian Winslow hadn't expected it. My fingers locked around her wrist like a vice.
The next second, we both went over the rail.
Two splashes and two screams shattered the calm of the banquet. Shouts erupted along the deck, overlapping, frantic.
"Someone's in the water!"
The freezing ocean swallowed me whole. I couldn't swim. All I could do was thrash, clawing my way to the surface only to be dragged back under by the churning waves.
Suffocation and terror blanked my mind. Nothing remained but the raw animal need to survive.
"Help… help me…"
When I fought my way above the surface again, I finally heard two bodies hit the water.
My vision was already blurring, but I recognized them. Julian Moretti. And Adrian Lennox.
In that moment, a faint, fragile hope caught fire inside me.
And in the next, I watched them both swim toward Adrian Winslow.