The rain came first.
Always the rain.
Sarah used to think storms followed her — like fate had decided she deserved thunder. Even now, years later, the sound of it against the window dragged her backward through time.
She hadn't meant to remember.
But memories were cruel that way. They didn't knock. They just arrived.
---
She was ten when the call came.
Her father's driver stood in the doorway, his face gray, his hat crushed between trembling hands. Her mother was in the garden, pruning roses. Sarah remembered the scissors falling — the sound sharp and final.
There were no words at first, only a sentence that didn't make sense:
> "There's been an accident."
Sirens. Screams. Cameras.
Her father's name — Richard Windsor — plastered across every newspaper by morning.
They called it a crash.
But Sarah had seen the car.
It didn't look like an accident.
---
After the funeral, her mother stopped speaking.
She sat by the window for hours, staring at nothing, until one day she simply didn't come back. The staff whispered "nervous breakdown," but Sarah knew better. There were no hospital visits. No letters. No closure.
Just absence — heavy and suffocating.
That was the day Sarah Windsor stopped waiting for anyone to save her.
---
She learned quickly.
How to smile when people lied.
How to nod when they pretended to care.
How to stand tall in rooms full of men who saw her as a child with a crown she hadn't earned.
Her father's company — Windsor Holdings — became her inheritance and her burden.
By twenty-three, she'd turned it profitable again.
By twenty-five, she'd earned headlines that said, "The Ice Heiress Returns."
She didn't mind the nickname. Ice didn't break.
---
But under the calm, she remembered every betrayal — every whisper from her board, every smirk from Dominic when he told her she was "too emotional to lead."
She remembered the men who smiled at her and waited for her to fail.
And the women who envied her before they even knew her name.
Vanessa had been one of them.
Her mother's daughter by another man — all glitter and venom.
They'd shared a house but never a bond. Vanessa had the charm. Sarah had the brains. And the world had always made it clear which one mattered less.
When Vanessa stole Dominic, Sarah didn't cry.
She smiled, signed the divorce papers, and sent a bottle of wine to their engagement.
The note had read: Good luck surviving each other.
But alone in her room that night, she'd broken a mirror.
---
Sarah pulled the blanket tighter around her now, the present fading back in. She was in her penthouse, lights dim, city alive below.
Dante's warning still echoed in her head.
> "Stay away from Vanessa."
"She's baiting you."
Maybe he was right.
But he didn't understand what Vanessa represented.
She wasn't just a threat — she was a reflection.
A reminder of every wound Sarah had spent her life pretending didn't exist.
If she ran now, she'd become that broken little girl again.
And Sarah Windsor refused to be broken.
---
She rose from the couch and crossed to the mirror.
Her reflection stared back — fierce, flawless, untouchable.
But she saw the cracks beneath.
"I'm not that girl anymore," she whispered.
Her fingers brushed the glass, tracing the faint scar on her wrist — the one no one knew about.
It wasn't from vanity or clumsiness.
It was from the night she'd almost given up.
Seventeen, alone, sitting on her father's office floor, the world too heavy for her small shoulders.
But she hadn't done it. She'd stopped herself.
Because even then, she'd sworn she would win.
Not survive — win.
---
Her phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number.
> Unknown: "Your mother's disappearance wasn't what you were told."
Her breath caught.
She stared at the screen, her pulse spiking.
> Unknown: "Ask Vanessa about the letter."
Her hands trembled — once — before she steadied them.
The timing couldn't be coincidence.
Vanessa. Her father. The photo.
Everything was circling back.
And Dante wanted her to stay out of it?
Impossible.
---
She opened her desk drawer and pulled out the box she hadn't touched in years.
Inside — old photos, clippings, fragments of the life she'd buried.
At the bottom, a single sealed envelope she'd found in her father's study the night before his funeral.
It had never been opened.
The handwriting was her mother's.
To Richard.
Her throat tightened. She almost tore it open, but something stopped her.
Fear. Not of the truth — but of what it would mean.
If her mother had left a message that night…
Then maybe she hadn't disappeared.
Maybe she'd been taken.
---
Sarah sank into the chair, the envelope trembling in her hand.
The pieces were shifting — her father's death, her mother's vanishing, Vanessa's secrets — and Dante's silent war wrapping around them all.
For years she'd told herself she was fighting to prove her worth.
To silence the whispers. To own her legacy.
But deep down, she wasn't chasing success.
She was chasing answers.
And now, after all this time, she was close.
---
The rain outside grew heavier, drumming against the glass like a heartbeat.
Sarah stood, walked to the window, and looked out over the city her father had built — the empire she refused to lose.
Her reflection stared back, stronger now.
Cold. Determined. Alive.
"No one will ever destroy me again," she whispered.
Then she tore the envelope open.
---
Inside, one line in her mother's handwriting:
> "If anything happens to Richard, it's because of M.E."
Sarah froze.
M.E.
Her mind raced.
M. Enterprises.
The same name on the check Dante had secretly sent to cover her company's losses.
Her breath hitched, the truth slicing through the fog.
Her father's death.
Her mother's disappearance.
Dante's empire.
They were all connected.