She'd been trying—failing—to bleach her brain of it. The short, shaky videos Sierra usually dropped like tactical nukes time to time: Phei's hands disappearing under their skirts, mouths fused, bodies moving in ways that made Delilah's cheeks burn and her stomach knot with something far too close to jealousy for comfort.

The casual flex posts: Maddie draped over him in some overpriced restaurant booth, Sierra sprawled across his lap at a rooftop party, both gazing up at him like he'd personally invented orgasms and they were just grateful to be early adopters.

"They're pathetic," Delilah muttered, tasting the sourness on her tongue.

"They're marking territory," Sienna corrected, clinical as ever. "It's fascinating, really. Two apex predators who've never had to share a single toy suddenly reduced to digital pissing contests for a man's attention. Primal. Embarrassing. Educational."

"It's not—"

Delilah bit the sentence in half. Breathed through her nose like a bull deciding whether the matador was worth the effort.

"It's disgusting," she finished.

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"Interesting."

Delilah shot her a glare sharp enough to shave with. "What's interesting?"

Sienna merely shrugged and returned to contemplating the scenery, as if the conversation were a mildly diverting TED Talk she might finish later.

Silence pooled between them, thick and uncomfortable.

Delilah's thoughts slunk back to the other thorn lodged under her skin—the one she'd been pretending wasn't festering.

"Where is he even staying?" The words slipped out before she could cage them. "He hasn't slept in the mansion for weeks. Father acts like the charity investment simply evaporated—no questions, no tantrums, nothing. Like he's relieved the walking reminder of Mum's soft heart finally fucked off."

Delilah snapped her mouth shut.

Too much. Way too much.

But the resentment was real, hot and ugly. Every night Phei spent elsewhere was another night those vultures had unrestricted access.

Another night Sierra and Maddie could dig their manicured talons deeper while Delilah played dutiful daughter, chauffeuring her emotionally refrigerated sister home like a bloody Uber with trust-fund plates.

It wasn't fair.

It was never fair.

"Why do you care?" Sienna asked.

Delilah's breath snagged.

Sienna was watching her again, head tilted with the mild curiosity of someone observing a lab rat discover the cheese was laced with cyanide.

"What?"

"Why do you care where Phei sleeps?" Sienna asked, tone flat enough to skate on. "Shouldn't you be celebrating? He's gone. Out of your hair. No more awkward breakfasts, no more of those accidental eye contact you hate across the dinner table. Isn't that what you spent a decade praying for?"

Delilah's jaw locked so tight she felt her teeth creak.

"I don't—it's not—"

"You hated him," Sienna snapped at her, unforgiving and relentless. She hated her siblings the way they treated him. "Actively, creatively hated him, all of you. Made his life a daily exercise in quiet misery. And now you're… what? Worried about his accommodation? Concerned about his social calendar?" A beat. "That's a rather dramatically annoying pivot, sister."

"Don't." The word cracked out sharper than Delilah intended. "Don't pretend you're innocent in this."

Sienna blinked—slow, deliberate.

For a single heartbeat something raw flickered across her face, then vanished behind the usual porcelain mask.

"I never claimed to be. Solely because I never stepped in to stop you vultures!"

"What about the laptop, Sienna. Ring any bells?"

Silence dropped like a guillotine.

Delilah could feel her sister's stare burning the side of her face, but she kept her eyes fixed on the road, knuckles bone-white against the leather wheel.

They both remembered.

Everyone remembered.

Phei had slaved for months—tutoring brats who treated him like dirt, skipping meals, hoarding every coin—until he could afford that second-hand laptop.

A clunky, ancient thing he'd polished like it was solid gold.

His lifeline. His tiny, fragile piece of independence.

Sienna had "borrowed" it.

For a project, she'd claimed.

And dropped it.

Pure accident— the whole family knew Sienna wasn't cruel like her siblings, not the way Victoria Danton or Delilah excelled at cruelty when it came to Phei. She was simply… absent. Things broke around her because she forgot other people invested emotion in objects.

Delilah had watched her sister go to Melissa afterward, face pinched with actual guilt—one of the handful of times Delilah ever saw Sienna had ever looked human—asking for the credit card to replace it, rehearsing a real apology.

But Harold had intervened.

Then Danton had gleefully twisted the narrative.

By the time Phei walked through the door, the story was set in concrete: "Sienna smashed it on purpose. Thought it'd be hilarious. You know how she is."

The devastation on his face that day still probably haunted Sienna on bad nights.

"That was a mistake," Sienna said at last, voice barely above the engine's hum.

"I know."

"I wanted to fix—"

"I know." Delilah's throat felt raw. "We all know. And none of us opened our mouths to stop the lie. We just… let it rot there between you two."

More silence, heavier this time.

Then Sienna spoke again, and the temperature in the car seemed to drop ten degrees.

"But you didn't just let it rot, did you?" Her voice was quiet steel. "You kept pouring poison on it for years. So, spare me the sudden crisis of conscience, Delilah. If you're jealous of Sierra and Madison's little victory laps, own it. Don't dress it up as concern for his welfare."

Delilah's foot eased off the accelerator without permission.

The car slowed.

She swallowed hard, tasting copper where she'd bitten her cheek.

Sienna wasn't wrong.

And that made everything worse.

"That's why I'm not suddenly some lovesick idiot tripping over herself for him just because he got attractive." Sienna turned back to the window, the manicured lawns blurring past like a green accusation.

"I'm not that shameless. And besides—" A small, brittle sound escaped her, the closest she ever came to laughter. "I don't date high school boys. They're boring and pathetic."

Delilah's tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

She wanted to fire back—something vicious, something that would crack that porcelain composure and leave fingerprints. But the words wouldn't come, because Sienna had landed a clean gut punch and they both knew it.

At least Sienna was honest. At least she wasn't on her knees begging for crumbs from the same boy her family spent a decade kicking while he was down.

Like Delilah was.

Gods.

"You're thinking too loud," Sienna said, not looking up from her phone again.

"Shut up."

"Your jaw's doing that clenchy thing. You only do that when you're spiralling about something emotional. It's very unattractive."

"I said shut up."

"Is it about him? The sudden concern, the group-chat stalking, the—"

"Sienna." Delilah's voice splintered. "As your sister, I am begging you to shut the fuck up and not ask me anything else. Nothing good is going to come from this conversation."

Sienna studied her for a long, arctic moment.

Then—miracle of miracles—she nodded.

"Fine."

Phone back up. Scroll resumed. Conversation erased, as if it had never existed outside Delilah's head.

Delilah exhaled like she'd been holding her breath for years.

The mansion gates loomed ahead now, ornate iron bars rising like the teeth of some very expensive trap. Almost there. Almost home. Almost alone with the cotton bag and whatever delicious depravity Phei had tucked inside it.

Then she saw the taxi.

A grubby yellow blemish parked just outside the pristine white columns, looking as out of place as a hooker at a christening.

And then she saw him.

Phei.

Handing cash to the driver. Straightening. Walking toward the gate with that loose, predatory stride that still felt wrong on the boy who used to shrink into corners and apologise for breathing too loudly.

He was here.

Phei was home.

Her heart slammed against her ribs so violently she half-expected the airbag to deploy.

She floored the accelerator.

The car surged forward with a roar, tyres spitting gravel, and Sienna yelped—actually yelped—grabbing the door handle like it might save her soul.

"What the fuck, Delilah—"

Delilah wasn't listening.

Her brain had short-circuited, every neuron firing the same frantic, glorious thought:

Phei was home.

He'd left her a gift in her locker and now he was strolling through the gates like he'd never left.

Why?

The cotton bag burned against her hip. His words echoed, low and filthy in her memory.

And then it clicked—sharp, electric, certain.

He wasn't here for Harold. Wasn't here to collect forgotten hoodies or make awkward small talk over family dinner.

He was here for her.

He'd come to the Maxton mansion—to the house where she'd spent ten years making his life hell—to fuck me senseless in my childhood bedroom. While father sit downstairs pretending his empire wasn't built on quiet cruelties.

The audacity of it.

The sheer, breathtaking nerve.

Ninety-nine percent certainty.

Maybe a hundred.

Phei had come to claim her under the same roof that had watched her break him, to turn her pretty pink bedroom into a crime scene of the best possible kind.

"Delilah." Sienna's voice cut through, genuinely alarmed now. "Slow the fuck down. What is wrong with—"

The gates swung open.

Phei looked up.

Their eyes locked through the windshield.

And he smiled.

Slow. Knowing. The kind of smile that said he'd already pictured her naked on those childhood sheets and liked the image enough to make it real.

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