Audrey’s POV
“My Sister and I.” The world around me faded as I stared at the screen, unable to process what I was seeing
Rachel Hayes and Laurel Rose… sisters?
So Laurel Rose was the sister Rachel had mentioned, the one she had such a terrible relationship with!
“Audrey, be my sister instead. I don’t want to be sisters with my mom’s other daughter.”
“Audrey, I hate my mom’s husband, and I hate my mom’s other daughter even more… When my mom isn’t looking, they
secretly bully me.”
“Audrey, do you know why I keep spending that family’s money? Because all these scars on my body were inflicted by that sister. This is what their family owes me.”
“Audrey, I know you grew up poor and had it tough, but I envy how you can be free and have your own dreams and
aspirations. Not like me… Everything gets taken away from me, even my mother…
Rachel’s voice echoed in my mind as if she were sitting right next to me.
Because of her terrible relationship with her family, Rachel nev
respected her privacy and never pried.
entioned her relatives to anyone. Astrid and I
During those two years together, we’d only met her uncle. We knew she took her mother’s family name, Hayes. That was it.
But staring at this photo, I couldn’t believe it.
The sister who had secretly tortured Rachel all those years was Laurel Rose.
If Laurel was Rachel’s sister, it made sense she had Rachel’s phone. She’d been taking things from Rachel her entire life.
“Audrey,” Ethan said quietly. “Your friend… is Laurel Rose’s sister?”
I looked up and firmly shook my head. “No, she isn’t. Laurel Rose doesn’t deserve to be her sister.”
Ethan nodded. “Makes sense. You’re a good person, Audrey. Your friend must have been too. How could she possibly be related to someone like Laurel?”
I nodded silently.
“Audrey,‘ Ethan frowned. “Did she commit suicide because of depression?”
“She’s not dead. And she didn’t have depression. Four years ago, she accidentally fell from a building.”
That day, Astrid called me crying. We searched half the city before finding Rachel in an SUV heading to the airport.
Her uncle was there, saying he needed to take her abroad for treatment and would cut off all contact with us.
Rachel had tubes all over her body. She looked lifeless, but she was still alive!
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I frowned hard at the memory.
Rachel had accidentally fallen and was still alive. So why did the Rose family claim she was dead?
What were they hiding?
“That’s messed up,” Ethan said, his face hardening. “She fell accidentally but they said it was suicide? She’s alive but they told everyone she’s dead?”
His hands balled into fists. “I’ve seen Laurel Rose crying on TV about her sister’s ‘depression. Saying if she’d known earlier, maybe her sister wouldn’t have died. It was all fake!”
I scrolled through more photos on Rachel’s phone. “If Laurel Rose really is Rachel’s sister, nothing she does would surprise
me.”
I knew better than anyone how cruel Laurel Rose had been.
When I worked as an intern nurse, Rachel was assigned to my care. That first day, I saw the most horrifying wounds I’d ever encountered. Her back was covered in festering red injuries.
I can still hear her bitter voice: “My mother doesn’t believe me. My sister just needs to cry once, and my mother thinks everything is my fault.”
“Once my stepfather speaks, she doesn’t even dare visit me. Besides money, there’s nothing else she can do.”
“The only person who really cares about me is my uncle, but he has his own life. He’s traveling for business and can’t
watch over me.”
With these thoughts swirling, I opened the Notes app from Rachel’s phone.
The screen filled with text, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
Rachel’s notes were all about me and Astrid.
Starting from the day we met, she had recorded every detail of our time together. She documented each day when she and
I cared for Blake at that seaside hospital, writing down everything.
She’d turned her notes into a diary, preserving every moment in this phone.
Looking at the screen, Ethan whispered: “Damn, Audrey… your friend really cared about you guys.
I was already crying. “Yeah, she really did.”
Yet we believed she was living well with her uncle. We never imagined her family had shipped her off alone while they
lived comfortably here.
They’d branded her as suicidal and declared her dead!
A loud knock at the door interrupted my thoughts.
I snapped back and was about to wipe my tears when I heard Dr. Evans open the door. ‘Who are you looking for?”
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Blake’s cold voice answered: “Is Audrey Sinclair here?”
Ethan’s face went white. “How’d he find us?”
“With his resources? I’m surprised it took him two days,” I said, quickly unplugging Rachel’s phone, turning it off, and sliding it under the mattress. “You and Dr. Evans did great.”
I handed the laptop to Ethan. “Put this away.”
He’d barely taken it when the bedroom door swung open.
Blake’s POV
The moment I walked into the room, I felt something shift inside me – relief mixed with irritation and a strange, bitter feeling I couldn’t quite name.
Audrey sat on the bed, her hair uncharacteristically disheveled as she straightened the blankets covering her legs. The college boy, Ethan Davies, clutched a laptop to his chest.
they’d been doing any There was nothing overtly intimate about their situation, no signs they’d been doing anything inappropriate, yet my chest tightened uncomfortably, as I could feel the easy comfort between them, the way they seemed to exist in a harmonious bubble.
I realized with a jolt that I’d never seen Audrey with many male friends before. Her world had been so small – just me, Grandfather, and Astrid. Not even her biological parents or that blood–unrelated sister Victoria had been part of her inner
circle.
But this young man, this Ethan Davies – how long had he known her? Days? Weeks at most? And yet they seemed to trust each other implicitly, to rely on each other in a way that felt… intimate, though not in the physical sense.
“Audrey Sinclair, you’ve been hard to find,” I said, taking measured steps toward her bed.
That night when she’d suddenly gone silent during our phone call, when I’d rushed to the police station only to learn she’d been vomiting blood – I’d mobilized every resource at my disposal. I’d barely slept or eaten for days, searching every corner of New York for her.
Grandfather had added to the pressure, telling me not to show my face again unless I found Audrey. I’d been operating on caffeine and determination, pushing myself and everyone around me to find her.
And here she was, seemingly comfortable and at ease with her college boy, while I’d been tearing the city apart looking for
her.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, her gaze steady, challenging.
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