Everyone called my sister Alessia a prodigy.

I was the only one who knew she was a thief.

From the day I moved back into the brownstone, she started taking from me. Quietly. Carefully.

My designs. My sketches. My drafts.

Everything I created would appear under her name before I even had time to finish it.

The family stood behind her. Always.

My father, Salvatore Lucchese, head of the family, his word law itself, said he believed Alessia.

So I became the liar. The plagiarist. The disgrace.

They threw me out of the outfit's front shop. Blacklisted me from the industry. Erased my name.

Then one of her loyal admirers ran me down in the street.

That was the end.

Or it should have been.

When I opened my eyes again, it was the day before the national jewelry competition.

This time, I didn't draw a single line.

Let's see what my darling sister delivers… when the well has run dry.

Everyone called my sister Alessia a prodigy.

I was the only one who knew she was a thief.

From the day I moved back into the brownstone, she started taking from me. Quietly. Carefully.

My designs. My sketches. My drafts.

Everything I created would appear under her name before I even had time to finish it.

The family stood behind her. Always.

My father, Salvatore Lucchese, head of the family, his word law itself, said he believed Alessia.

So I became the liar. The plagiarist. The disgrace.

They threw me out of the outfit's front shop. Blacklisted me from the industry. Erased my name.

Then one of her loyal admirers ran me down in the street.

That was the end.

Or it should have been.

When I opened my eyes again, it was the day before the national jewelry competition.

This time, I didn't draw a single line.

Let's see what my darling sister delivers… when the well has run dry.

...

"Viviana, you ready for this thing? Confidence level?"

I blinked. The fluorescent lights above my workstation felt too bright, too real. My coffee cup sat exactly where I always placed it—two inches from the keyboard, ceramic edge aligned with the desk corner. The familiarity of the detail made my stomach turn.

Because I'd lived this day before.

"Viviana's got more design awards than anyone on this floor," Elena said, bumping my shoulder with hers. "She doesn't need confidence. She needs someone to hold her trophy."

I opened my mouth, but nothing useful came out. What was I supposed to say? That in a few hours, I'd submit designs I'd bled over for weeks, and the judging panel would call my name and the word "plagiarist" in the same sentence? That my own sister would stand in front of a room full of people and ask, with tears perfectly calibrated for maximum damage, why I'd stolen from her?

The organizers had displayed both submissions. Identical. Every curve of the setting, every line of filigree—matched stroke for stroke. But hers had arrived first.

And the designer who'd submitted it was my sister. Alessia Lucchese.

She'd held the microphone like she'd rehearsed the moment. Red-rimmed eyes, trembling lower lip, voice breaking at all the right places.

"Viviana... why would you do this? If you were struggling, I could have helped. We could have found inspiration together. But to copy my work? My own sister?"

I'd grabbed for a microphone. Tried to speak. But the crowd had already decided. Plagiarist wasn't a word they shouted—it was a verdict they'd delivered before I'd opened my mouth.

My parents had photographs ready. Alessia at her drafting table, supposedly working until dawn, proof of her dedication and my theft. Then my father's voice, cold and final: We regret ever bringing you back into this house. You're no daughter of ours.

Security escorted me out. My phone became a weapon in strangers' hands—every notification another stranger calling me a fraud. I'd checked my computer afterward. No malware. No remote access. My physical drafts had never left my possession.

But Alessia's designs had been identical to mine. Every single one.

And I couldn't explain it.

"Viviana?" Elena was still waiting for an answer. "Your sister's competing too, right? Any bets on which Lucchese takes first place?"

Alessia had joined the firm shortly after I did. Convenient timing, I'd thought at the time. Now the coincidence felt like a threat I should have recognized.

I forced my fingers to uncurl from the fist they'd formed against my palm. The crescents my nails had pressed into the skin would bruise by evening.

"I need to check something," I said.

My sister Alessia.

When she was born, the delivery room stayed silent. No crying. No struggle. Just a small, still thing that made the nurses exchange glances and my mother call for a priest.

Not a priest, as it turned out. A specialist. The kind of man who dealt in problems that didn't appear on medical charts.

I remember him walking through our front door—a thin man in a thin coat, carrying something that smelled like old churches. He barely glanced at the bassinet. Instead, his eyes found me across the room and stayed there, unblinking, like I was the only thing in the house worth his attention.

Your daughters' fates are tangled, he'd said. This one—he pointed at me—she's feeding on the younger one's life force. Draining her. If they remain under the same roof, the baby won't see twenty-five.

After that, my parents looked at me differently. Like I was something that had wandered in from the cold and refused to leave.

I tried. God, I tried to make them want to keep me.

I brought my favorite toys to Alessia's nursery—hand-me-downs, the only things I owned—and set them at the foot of her crib. Her room was a catalogue spread. Shelves of pristine dolls, custom dresses hanging in neat rows, a mobile above her bed that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

When I leaned over to touch her cheek, she smiled. The kind of smile that made my chest ache with hope. Maybe this time. Maybe she'll love me back.

Then she swept her arm across the shelf beside her. Blocks crashed to the floor. Her face crumpled, and the wail that followed brought my mother running.

The slap came before the questions.

My ear rang for hours afterward. I remember touching my lip and looking at the blood on my fingertips with something like scientific detachment. So this is how it works now.

They sent me to my grandmother's farm upstate the following week.

For twenty years, no one called.

Then, two years ago, my parents reached out. Wanted me back. Said they'd been thinking about family, about second chances, about making things right.

I'd wanted it to be true so badly I'd ignored every instinct that said otherwise.

Now I sat at my desk, scrolling through files a colleague had sent me. Alessia's portfolio. Her "body of work."

My coffee went cold while I clicked through image after image.

Every single design was mine.

Not similar. Not inspired by. Mine. Pieces I'd sketched in notebooks that never left my apartment. Concepts I'd developed in my private time, waiting for the day I'd have enough capital to launch my own line. Work no one should have seen.

And every one of them had been published under Alessia Lucchese's name.

I closed the files. Deleted the email. Wiped my browser history. Then I sat very still and let the cold fact settle into my bones.

I'd died once. Walked into traffic, too hollowed out by the weight of being called a thief to notice the light had changed. The impact had felt like falling through ice.

But I was back. And this time, I was paying attention.

I couldn't use a computer for the new designs. Whatever Alessia had access to, whatever method she'd found to see through my eyes, I wasn't going to make it easy.

I pulled out paper instead. Blank. Clean. Something I could control.

I worked on paper now. No screens. No files. Nothing that could be copied by whatever mechanism Alessia had weaponized against me.

The design came together slowly at first, then all at once—the way real work does when you stop second-guessing yourself. A ring. The band was braided rose gold, thin as a whisper, wrapping around itself in a pattern that suggested something alive. The setting held a white gold orchid, petals cupped around a violet diamond so deep in color it looked like frozen wine.

I called it Violet's Kiss.

The paper was still warm from my hand when I heard someone gasp across the office.

"Did you see? Alessia just posted another piece. Absolutely stunning."

My fingers went cold.

"It's incredible. How does she do it so fast?"

"Viviana, your sister's unreal. You must be so proud."

I pulled out my phone. Alessia's Instagram stared back at me. Posted six minutes ago—a clean, professional photograph of a design that made my stomach drop.

Violet's Kiss. New work. More to come.

Every detail. Every proportion. Every petal on the orchid. All of it, presented to the world before I'd even finished cleaning up my drafting desk.

I didn't hear whoever walked past my workstation. I only registered them when their hand closed around my paper and lifted it into the air.

"Hey—look at this. Viviana's got the same design. It's identical."

Chairs scraped. Footsteps approached. Within seconds, I was surrounded by a perimeter of faces I'd worked alongside for years, and none of them looked friendly.

"No way. Let me see that." Someone snatched the paper. "Holy shit, she's right. It's the exact same piece."

I stood. "Give that back."

"Were you going to submit this? Copy your own sister's work and hope nobody noticed?"

"That's mine." My voice came out harder than I intended. "She copied me. She's been copying me from the start."

Someone laughed—the short, dismissive kind that's worse than an insult.

Then the crowd shifted. A figure in white moved through the parting bodies like she'd rehearsed the entrance.

Alessia.

She wore a pale dress that made her look younger than she was. Her eyes were already wet, already performing, already conducting the room's sympathy like an orchestra. She'd learned early that crying was a form of power, and she'd never forgotten the lesson.

"Viviana..." Her voice trembled at exactly the right frequency. "Why would you do this to me? I know things have been difficult between us since you came back. I know you blame me for... for how things were when we were children. But these are mine. I worked so hard on them."

She paused. Let the tears fall. Let the silence do its work.

"If you're angry at Mom and Dad, I understand. But please don't take it out on my work."

The room was already convicting me. I could feel it—the weight of collective judgment, the way people lean toward the simplest story. Alessia had handed them a narrative wrapped in tears and designer clothes, and they were swallowing it whole.

Someone shoved me from behind.

I went forward hard, my temple connecting with the edge of my desk. The sound my skull made was dull and intimate. Blood, warm and immediate, traced a line down my cheek.

Alessia rushed forward. She crouched beside me, hands extended, the picture of sisterly concern—and then she threw herself backward, limbs flailing, a small cry escaping her lips.

You've got to be kidding me.

"I was just trying to help her up." She looked around the room, eyes enormous. "Viviana, why would you push me?"

"Are you okay, Alessia?" Someone was already helping her to her feet. "Don't go near her. She's dangerous."

"Someone should call security."

"She should be fired. Today."

Alessia straightened her dress. "She's still my sister. I don't want any trouble. I just..." She dabbed at her eyes. "I just wanted to help."

I laughed. I couldn't help it—the sound came out of me before I could stop it, dark and genuine and utterly inappropriate for someone who was supposed to be begging for forgiveness.

"Alessia," I said. "Come here a second. I want to apologize. Really."

She hesitated. The room was watching. She couldn't refuse without breaking character.

She leaned in, close enough that I could smell her perfume, could see the tiny flicker of triumph she hadn't quite hidden in the corners of her mouth.

I smiled.

Then I hit her.

Open palm, full force, the kind of slap that leaves a mark and a story. She stumbled sideways, heels betraying her, and went down on the polished floor with a satisfying crack.

"Oh, honey." I looked down at her, my hand still stinging. "You've got to be more careful. I barely touched you."

She stared up at me through the curtain of her hair, and for one unguarded second, I saw what lived underneath the performance. Something cold. Something calculating. Something that had been waiting years for this moment.

Then the mask snapped back into place. The wounded expression. The trembling lip.

I didn't wait for the encore. I turned, shoved through the crowd of officemates who were suddenly too stunned to stop me, and walked out.

The blood had reached my collar by the time I hit the elevator.