My Sweet Fake Sister

I'm the real heiress. Lost as a baby, raised by a mob boss. I grew up sleeping on a loaded gun. The fake heiress, Coralie, grew up sleeping with a teddy bear.

Off the top of my head, half asleep, I could think of eight hundred ways to make her disappear and leave no trace.

Then, my first night in the Lin house, she came padding into my room in her pajamas, climbed onto my bed, and wedged that bear right between us. "Baby, can't sleep?" she whispered. "Don't be scared.

I've got you." I went stiff as a board. Under my pillow, the gun felt like a punchline. Chapter 1 Here's how the story is supposed to go.

The sweet, clueless real daughter comes home. The family fawns over the scheming fake one, freezes the real girl out, swallows every lie.

Then, right on schedule, the real girl catches some tragic terminal illness, and the whole family finally sobs over her grave. Too late. Roll credits. Try running that plot on me.

It doesn't survive past line three.

Fake heiress throws her first tantrum, the whole family circles the wagons to protect her, and I send all four of them off to a nice quiet family reunion six feet under. The end.

Happy ending. People like that could weep at my grave and I'd just find it loud. The only thing that would actually satisfy me is scattering the ashes myself.

So that was the fantasy I signed up for: outsmart the vicious fake heiress, freeze out the airhead parents who fell for her, loot the Lin fortune on my way out, and hand the whole empire to my mobboss father, who is obsessed with me.

Which is why, when the couple claiming to be my birth parents turned up on my doorstep dripping tears, I only blinked once before I went sprinting off to pack.

By the time I'd wrestled two enormous suitcases into the Lins' RollsRoyce Phantom, the couple still hadn't caught up.

I rolled the window down like a pro and waved at my bodyguard, who was watching me with his jaw on the floor. "Uncle Wang! Tell my dad. Actually, tell my beloved adoptive father.

I won't be home for dinner." Then I leaned back out and beamed at the Lins. "Come on, Mom, Dad.

Weren't you here to take me home?" I was so thrilled I could have set off fireworks right there on the curb. It took a nudge before the two of them scrambled into the car.

It did not look like a couple collecting their longlost daughter. It looked like one skinny, harmless girl had just abducted a pair of billionaires.

The car made it all the way to the gates of the Lin estate before my birth parents rebooted from whatever crash they'd bluescreened into. "Baby..." my father tried.

And no, that is not a pet name. Shen is my surname, and Baby is my legal, ontherecord name. You can guess the cultural range of a man who runs the city's underworld for a living.

He decided the universe had handed him a treasure, so he wrote Baby Shen onto the adoption papers with one grand sweep of his hand and called it done. Mr.

Lin, with his expensive education, clearly couldn't grasp my father's minimalist genius. A grown tycoon, and he couldn't get my name out without flinching.

Awkward, unsteady, like it belonged to a stranger.

I straightened my spine and turned to him with a full eighttooth smile. "Something wrong, Dad?" He had no idea what he'd just driven home. Chapter 2 Here it comes.

This had to be the part where they briefed me on Coralie, the fake heiress, before we went inside. What would the line be?

Maybe: Cora's about your age, this was our oversight, none of it's her fault, you're sisters now, so please get along.

Or the slimier version: Cora's always dreamed of an older sister, so isn't this perfect, now you two can keep each other company. I had a counter loaded for every angle. Mr.

Lin looked more nervous than I was.

He traded a dozen glances with his wife before he finally screwed up the nerve to speak. "Baby, you... you've had it so hard out there all these years. That's on us.

We didn't take care of you." That stopped me cold.

In none of those novels does a single set of reunited parents ever think to apologize to the kid. "We're going to make it up to you. You know we have a bit of money.

This afternoon I'll take you down to the company and sign fifty percent of the shares over to you." Lightning, straight through the skull. The company. Just like that.

So what happens to my whole meticulously plotted campaign to outscheme them for the inheritance?

My dad spent last month going bald over a corporate war with the Lin family, and in the time it takes him to leave on a single business trip, I just... acquire it.

I might have to change my last name, is all. No telling whether the old man will call me a prodigy or a backstabbing ingrate.

I was still running the numbers when the tagteam swapped and my mother caught my hand. "Baby..." I sat up straight again, all ears, hopeful.

Dad was a lost cause, but surely Mom would hand me some real drama to sink my teeth into.

In the novels it's always the mother who spearheads the favoritism. "Cora's home right now, waiting to welcome you.

These past few days she's been more excited to meet you than either of us." Now we were getting somewhere. I pricked up my ears. "One more child costs us nothing.

Your father and I love you. And we love Cora too.

Your mother won't tell you a lie about that." I pressed my lips together and lowered my gaze, tucking the sneer away behind something soft and obedient. Very highminded.

Translation: she wanted it both ways, and this was the gentle nudge to stop being petty and open my arms to Coralie. Love me and love her.

What kind of love parks the girl who stole seventeen years of my life in front of my face every single day?

If they were that saintly, they could buy the girl a house, move her out, satisfy the maternal conscience, and spare me the headache. "Don't worry, though.

Her father and I already signed a house over to Cora. She moves out tomorrow." I was midsulk when my mother pivoted like she'd read my mind. One sentence.

Ten full seconds of total lockup. My eyes snapped up to her face. I could not believe it. This is wrong. This is not the script.

Why does my whole realversusfakeheiress saga look nothing like a single one I've ever read? The fake heiress gets shipped out in the opening act.

How am I supposed to stage my counterkill now? I still have a gun in my suitcase.

I came packed for a bloodbath, and they went and canceled it on me. "Baby, are you still not happy?" Chapter 3 Mom clearly read my face wrong.

She rushed to reassure me, nervous. "The house we got for Cora is really far from here.

I promise you'll never have to run into her." Dad caught the panic too, wringing his hands. "If you really can't stand to see her, we could send her off first, then come back for you." The man was nothing if not efficient.

He actually reached for the door to go pack Coralie up and ship her out. "No, no, no." I grabbed his arm. "Might as well meet her. She's just a kid. She's already here.

The more the merrier." I talked him down, and just like that I'd earned myself a facetoface with the fake heiress.

Mom and Dad each took one of my hands and walked me in like a prize. On the living room couch, Coralie had clearly been waiting a long, anxious while.

The second the door opened she shot to her feet and came scurrying over. Here's the thing. She wasn't dressed to the nines to lord it over me, the way I'd pictured.

Just plain pajamas. A matching teddybear Tshirt and pants. She'd been nervous so long she'd wrung the hem into a crumpled mess without noticing. "Hi, Baby!

You must be so tired from the trip, Baby!" She beat me to the greeting, and she shouted my name loud enough to rattle the rafters.

For the first and possibly last time in my life, my own name embarrassed me. I nearly clapped a hand over her mouth. Coralie noticed nothing.

She just flashed a row of little white teeth and grinned.

For the entire dinner she glued herself to my side, piling food onto my plate, peeling my shrimp, asking on a loop what I liked to eat. I'm not used to anyone getting that close.

Bowl in hand, I inched away, trying to make it look like nothing. Coralie, with zero situational awareness, inched right after me. I glared at her.

She caught none of the threat in it. She just tipped up that bare, scrubbed little face and beamed, sweet and dumb as sunshine.

Every strategy I'd loaded for handling a twofaced mean girl went to waste. I spent the whole meal doing nothing but putting distance between us. I ran, she chased.

There was nowhere to go. By the time the two of us had nearly inched off the far end of the table, Mr. Lin couldn't take it anymore and cleared his throat, hard. "All right.

Looks like you're both about done. Baby just got home, she must be exhausted. Everyone up to bed. Wash up, get some rest." Pardoned.

I set down my bowl, mumbled a goodnight, and bolted upstairs. Something was off. Deeply off. Not one of the three people in this family was playing by the rules.

It made me, with my eight hundred schemes a minute, look like the idiot in the room. Beaten, I washed up and lay down, ready to write the whole day off as a bad dream.

Right before I fell asleep, my bodyguard called. "Miss. We've got personnel around the Lin property, twentyfour seven. Your safety is covered at all times." Of course.

No way my dad let me walk off with strangers without a backup plan. But. Out there: a ring of trained mercenaries, locked and ready. Then: Coralie's dopey, sunny little grin.

All that firepower, and it landed like a fist swung into a pillow. Nothing to hit. Chapter 4 "...Get lost.

All of you." I hung up, irritated, and burrowed under the covers, trying to sleep off the misery of the day. I'd just started to drift when a knock landed on my door.

I didn't answer. The hallway went quiet for a moment. Then the lock on my door began to turn.

I went still under the blanket, ears sharp, and my hand slid on instinct to the gun under my pillow. A habit my dad drilled into me young.

When I was little I told him I got scared sleeping alone, that I wanted him to buy me a stuffed animal like the kids on TV had.

He handed me a neat little pistol instead. "Company won't fix fear," he said. "Being able to protect yourself. That's the only thing that holds up." I figured he had a point.

But on my way upstairs tonight, I'd caught a glimpse through Coralie's open door. Dolls, wall to wall. Big ones, small ones, a whole room of them.

It wasn't that I... wasn't a little envious. I lost the thread for half a second, and in that half a second the intruder was already inside, easing onto the edge of my bed.

Every muscle locked. My finger curled around the trigger. And then something soft and fuzzy got tucked into the blanket beside me.

The cold, empty space at my back went full and warm. "Baby? You asleep?" Coralie, in the smallest voice. "...What." I should have hated it.

Someone creeping into my room in the dead of night, uninvited. My first reaction should have been suspicion. What's her play. What is she scheming.

Instead my hand came off the gun like it wasn't mine to command. Coralie, this girl. She didn't trip a single one of my alarms.

She heard my voice and let out a small, relieved breath.

She climbed up, wedged the giant teddy bear she'd hauled in deeper into the gap between us, dragged off half my blanket, and lay down. I opened my mouth.

Closed it. "Knew you couldn't sleep. Don't be scared. I'm here now." With no read on the room whatsoever, she stretched an arm over the bear, barely reached my back, and patted it.

Soft. Reassuring. I didn't turn around. Every limb stiff. I've slept alone my whole life. I'm not used to being touched like that. But... I didn't mind it.

Like she couldn't feel the cold coming off me at all, Coralie kept murmuring away. That Mom and Dad were good people. What each of them loved, what each of them couldn't stand.

Which corner of the garden she'd buried a little treasure in. She was helping me find my way into this strange house.

Somewhere under the drowsiness, that landed on me. "You get all that, Baby?" She kept circling back. "You have to remember, okay? I leave tomorrow.

If you don't remember, there won't be anyone to teach you." "But that's okay. Mom and Dad are really patient. They'll teach you." Talking to herself.

Not a trace of resentment in it, from the girl they were shipping out. And not an ounce of hiding how much she loved them.

Nothing was the way I'd imagined it. "Don't leave," I said. "I need a tagalong for school." Chapter 5 I threw that last line out with the final scrap of my conscious mind.

Then I pulled the blanket over my head, shut out Coralie's stunned, delighted stream of "Really? Really?", and dropped straight into sleep.

Early the next morning, the Lin parents heard my decision and spent a long while just staring at each other. Not a flicker of the delight I'd expected.

They asked me, over and over, grave and careful, whether I'd really thought it through. They hadn't been faking. That much was clear. They'd already packed Coralie's bags.

I nodded and nodded, swore up and down I was in my right mind.

Thank god Coralie and I had school that day, or they'd have grilled me a full twentyfour hours before they believed me. "All right then. You two get along.

Anything comes up, you call Mom." Mrs. Lin fretted at the door. "Cora, look after Baby. It's her first day.

Don't let anyone push her around, you hear me?" "You got it, Mom!" Coralie nodded and packed her bag at the speed of a spinning top. "Backpack, water bottle, gym clothes..." Done with her own things, she started in on mine. "Baby, you want to bring a snack?

Should the housekeeper drop off lunch, or are you eating in the cafeteria?

What if you don't like the cafeteria food?" She fired the questions off one after another until my ears ached.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and made a break for the door. "I'm good. All good. Stop worrying about me." I'll be damned.

Seventeen years without a mother, and now, all at once, two. So this is what it feels like. Deafening.

It was only at school that I realized I'd had the wrong battlefield the whole time. No knives out at the Lin house, no scheming.

But every idle hand and sharp instinct I had found plenty of use once we hit campus. Simple reason.

Coralie, soft enough to bruise if you looked at her too hard, had been getting manipulated for a solid year and had no clue.

The whole ride over, she gushed about her "best friend," Regan. "Rae's so nice.

Back when people picked on me, she was the first one to stand up for me!" "When nobody else would talk to me, she was the only one who still treated me like a best friend." "She even gives me presents!

Look, this clip, and this bow. She got me both, and she wears the matching set.

She says we'll be best friends forever!" She showed off the clip in her hair and the bow at her collar, eyes shining. She really did love this socalled friend.

That much was obvious. And I could see the whole con from a mile off. Isolate the girl until she's got no one, then sweep in as the only one who stayed.

A year of gaslighting dressed up as loyalty. The matching set wasn't friendship. It was a receipt she could cash later. I said nothing.

Coralie had ground my ears down to calluses, but mercifully the car pulled up to the gates and cut off the drone.

The second we hit the classroom, she ignored my irritated protest and towed me off to introduce me to her best friend. "You're totally going to be friends with Rae too, Baby!" "I don't—" I was reaching to shake her off when she spotted Regan by the window and lit up. "Rae!" The girl looked up at the sound.

Chapter 6 A sweet, harmless doll face. Blunt bangs resting neatly on her forehead. The textbook look of a good, wellbehaved honor student.

When she saw Coralie, her lips curved into a sugary little smile. Nothing you could point to as wrong. But one glance and my brow furrowed on its own.

Something about that smile sat wrong with me. Gentle on the surface. The warmth never reached her eyes. Whatever these two had, it wasn't the closeness Coralie kept describing.

Coralie clocked none of it. She hauled me straight over. "Coralie, and this is...?" Up close, Regan finally noticed the girl glued to Coralie's side.

She looked me over as she asked. I've always hated being stared at.

My frown deepened, and my gut turned against this Regan on sight. "Baby, this is Rae, the best friend I told you about!

Rae, this is Baby!" Of the three of us, only Coralie was sunny enough to run the introductions. "BBaby?

Whose baby?" The overfamiliar name put a hairline crack in Regan's polished mask. "No, no, not baby like that—" Coralie waved her hands, too tonguetied to get it out. "...Baby Shen." Ears aching, I cut in and introduced myself. "Right!

Her name's literally Baby!" Coralie finally landed it, relieved. "Baby's the real Lin daughter. She just came home yesterday. She goes to school with us now." She hid nothing.

Once again blowing up my theory that a fake heiress always buries the real one's identity. This particular fake heiress came with a few screws pleasantly loose.

I glanced at Coralie's excited face and closed the case in my head. But Coralie was an open book.

Not everyone is as simple and kind as she assumes. "You mean she's the real Lin heiress?" Surprise crossed Regan's face.

She shot me a look, then fixed her stare on Coralie. "So then what are you?" A flick of malice crossed the back of her eyes. I caught it clean.

My own narrowed. "I..." The question blindsided Coralie. Her face went hot and red. She isn't a blood daughter of the Lins. Her real parents still haven't turned up.

There's no clean answer she can give. Regan wanted her squirming. Plain and simple. Class was about to start. The room was filling up. Nosy heads kept turning our way.

Every bit of Coralie's humiliation registered in Regan's eyes.

The smile at the corner of her mouth went stranger, the malice barely veiled now. "So what should I even call you from now on? Guess I can't say Lin anymore.

You're not a Lin, after all." Regan's voice was sweet, laced with innocent little confusion. To me it was nails on slate.

One more word out of her and I'd be on my feet and swinging. Coralie hung her head, humiliated, one blink from tears. "She's my sister." I said it flat. No heat.

Coralie's head came up at the sound of my voice, dazed. Redrimmed rabbit eyes, brimming with two pools of tears that wouldn't quite fall.

Chapter 7 ...This useless little cream puff. Claiming her as my sister is honestly an insult to my mobboss father's good name.

I sighed on the inside, hooked her by the wrist, yanked her behind me, and met Regan's startled stare headon. "Coralie is my sister. Her last name is Lin.

You got a problem with that?" I didn't raise my voice. But the room had gone dead quiet, and everyone caught every word.

I watched the nosy, gossiphungry stares pull back, one by one. The only holdout was the boy at the desk behind Regan, still watching me, something faintly amused in his eyes.

I glared back, sour. "Keep staring and I'll take your eyes out of your head." He didn't so much as flinch. Just lifted a brow and let out a small, surprised laugh.

Regan, on the other hand, pressed her lips together, put out. My hand sat easy in my pocket, thumbing the butterfly knife I keep there. I don't have much patience.

My dad raised me not to waste breath on people who aren't worth it. So I just watched Regan, calmly running the logistics.

If this clueless girl mouthed off one more time, how exactly could I relieve her of her tongue without dragging the Lins into it. Tch. Not that easy to pull off.

Might even have to bother the old man to clean up after me. But Regan's quickchange game was elite. "I'm just kidding!

Coralie's my best friend!" In the space of a blink she'd swapped faces, all smiles, catching Coralie's hand, then reaching for mine.

I kept my face cold and my hand right where it was. Didn't faze her. She dimpled at me anyway. "Aw, come on, now her big sister's mad at me.

Coralie, help me explain, quick." "Ba—" Coralie opened her mouth to say my name. "Zip it. Go sit down. Class is starting." I cut her off fast and turned on my heel.

If this sweet little airhead actually opened her mouth to defend Regan, I couldn't promise I wouldn't start swinging. I was short with Coralie the whole day.

She could tell I was angry about the Regan thing. She just couldn't figure out why. So she orbited me, careful and anxious, from school all the way home that night. "There they are.

My little princesses." Mrs. Lin came to meet us, beaming. "How'd it go? Are you settling in, Baby? What do you two feel like tonight?

I'll have the housekeeper make it." "What do you want, Baby?" Coralie jumped on the opening to talk to me. "Auntie's sweetandsour fish is amazing, and the baked pumpkin, and the tomatobraised tofu is really good too!" "Not hungry.

Full on spite." I swallowed the actual saliva and held my icequeen line. Mrs. Lin looked from Coralie to me, lost.

She could not work out how her two daughters left the house on good terms that morning and came back at war. Say what I would, I still sat down at the table for dinner.

Straightbacked. Only because it's rude to make your elders worry. Not because the food smelled that good.

Coralie ignored my resistance, scooted right up against me, and started loading my plate.

Chapter 8 The tenderest cheek of the fish, the very center of the baked pumpkin, all of it got snatched onto my plate. Mr.

Lin reached in with his chopsticks a few times and came up with nothing.

He looked at his eversweet, everobedient younger girl, then at me and my heaping bowl, and set his chopsticks down, defeated. "What's going on here?" At Mr.

Lin's question, Coralie glanced at me first. I said nothing, which she took as permission, and turned to explain the whole thing to her father. Mr. Lin took that in silence.

His standing in this household had taken a visible hit, but once he'd heard the whole story out, he thought it over for a moment. "Regan, was it.

I've had a few dealings with her father. He wasn't exactly honest, so we stopped working together." "I won't brand the girl just for her father's character.

But keep it in mind, Cora. Never hurts to watch your back." Look at that. Listen to that. Heaven above, discerner of good and evil.

I shoveled in a huge bite of fish and shot Coralie, the little traitor, a pointed sideeye. Knowing she was in the wrong, Coralie loaded another fat piece of fish onto my plate.

Vindicated at last, I was about to dig in properly when Mr. Lin's next offhand line nearly made me choke. "Come to think of it, we almost walked into a trap the Chens set that time.

Sal Shen was the one who tipped me off." I sat bolt upright with an audible snap. Sal Shen. My uncultured old man. I'd nearly forgotten about him. But Mr.

Lin said my dad helped him out. My dad. Doing someone a good turn.

Isn't he the one who's been losing sleep and going bald trying to swallow the Lin company whole? "So this Sal Shen... decent guy, huh." I scraped the barrel for the right words and still couldn't force out anything close to kind. "That one time, sure.

The old snake schemed for ages to eat our company. Lucky your dad here has the experience!" Mr. Lin was a little heated now.

He forgot Regan entirely and threw open the floodgates. "I don't like making enemies. More friends, more roads, that's just business.

But this Sal Shen latched on like a bulldog and would not let go. Dead set on going toetotoe with me." "He pushed me far enough that I ran his background.

Couldn't dig up a thing worth using." Of course you couldn't.

If some businessman could pull my old man's file that easily, he'd have no business running the underworld. "No real weaknesses on him.

Only thing anyone's heard is he's got a daughter. Guards her like the pupils of his own eyes. Kept her sealed away her whole life.

Nobody outside his own men has ever laid eyes on her." The pupil of his eyes, in the flesh, took a guilty sip of soup and scalded her tongue. "Did it burn you, Baby?" Coralie had been watching me the whole time and pounced to help. "Quick, drink something cold!" I meant to hold out a little longer, let her stew in it, but the sting on my tongue was too much and I took the glass in the end.

Forget it. Softening, I caught that pitiful little puppy look in her eyes. I'll be around from now on. That Regan doesn't stand a chance of turning anything over.

Chapter 9 I didn't think Regan was dumb enough to try recruiting me onto her side. The next day at lunch she sat herself down next to Coralie and me, uninvited.

I had a mouthful of ribs and was busy spitting out a bone, so I didn't get the "get lost" out in time. "Baby, I think there might be a little misunderstanding between us.

Could we talk? Just the two of us?" All earnest. Then she slid her eyes over to Coralie. After yesterday, Coralie didn't dare fall in line for her anymore.

She gnawed on a halfstalk of something green and looked to me for rescue. "...Eat that too.

No picking." I fished my own carrots out and dropped them on her side of the tray, then stood and jerked my chin at Regan. "Over there." "But you don't even like carrots, Ba—" came Coralie's small protest behind me.

I walked fast and pretended not to hear. Regan and I sat down across from each other at a corner table. "Coralie's hard to deal with, isn't she." That was her opener.

I raised a brow at her, mildly surprised, then caught up. She'd misread the way I'd snapped at Coralie a minute ago. I decided to sit tight and see where she was going with this.

When I didn't answer, Regan must have figured she'd nailed it. Her smile went sweeter. "You stepped in for her in front of everyone yesterday, so I knew.

You got fooled by her face too." I listened, quiet, my eyes drifting to Coralie eating alone. She was locked in mortal combat with that pile of carrots.

She poked one with her chopsticks, put it in her mouth, and her whole face scrunched into a knot half a second later. ...This idiot. Obedient to the point of despair.

If it were me, I'd have dumped that pile on the floor ten minutes ago. "You just got back to the Lin family.

You probably don't know Coralie that well yet." Regan's garbage wasn't done. "She's a lot more calculating than she looks. She used to stir up trouble between classmates on purpose.

When people caught on, nobody would go near her. I felt so bad seeing her all alone.

That's the only reason I became her friend." "And then she turned around and tried to steal my boyfriend. Started copying the way I dress and everything.

Ask anyone, they all know..." I stared at her earnest face while my head played back Coralie showing off her clip and her bow, glowing. Rae's so nice.

Back when people picked on me, she was the first one to stand up for me. When nobody else would talk to me, she was the only one who still treated me like a best friend.

The truth: Regan smeared Coralie to everyone on purpose, then stepped in as the savior once she'd been iced out. She even gives me presents. She wears the matching set.

She says we'll be best friends forever. The gifts from her "best friend." The same matching gifts, banked to become the evidence that would bury her later.

Across the way, Coralie was still dumbly choking down carrot after carrot, the ones she hated most.

I pulled my gaze back, lowered my eyes, and let my fingers tap the table, slow and idle.

Chapter 10 "After someone like that stole a decade of your life and more, don't you want to teach her a lesson?" Regan's sweet voice turned coaxing, leading me along one step at a time.

Credit where it's due, she's a master storyteller. Every piece locked into the next. Airtight. Reasonable.

Add that sweet, wellbehaved face with its little flickers of shyness, and getting people to believe her was almost too easy. But I already told her. Coralie is my sister.

I lifted my eyes and gave her a smile. Regan must have thought she'd won again. She beamed right back. "Get lost." I said it soft, straight into that smile.

Her smile cracked and froze there, ugly, caught halfway off her face.

A muscle jumped at the corner of her mouth. "Wwhat?" "You don't understand plain English?" My own smile peeled away, slow. "Get lost. Stay away from Coralie.

Try anything with her again and next time it won't be a warning this polite." Out of the corner of my eye, Coralie had finished. Not one carrot left on the tray.

She sat there, good as gold, waiting for me. I left the table and started toward her. A few steps out, I doubled back. "One more thing. Keep your dog on a leash.

Don't go assuming everyone's dying for that kind of merchandise." My gut told me the "boyfriend" Regan kept bringing up was the boy at the desk behind her. Shame.

Nice face, blind as a bat. I turned and walked off. I didn't notice the boy with the nice face, over in another corner, watching me the whole time. "Lu. Dude.

Did she just... insult you?" The guy across from him pulled out an earbud, refusing to believe it. "I'm not deaf." Silas gave him a warning look. Then why are you smiling.

The guy shrank back and, in the end, didn't dare say it out loud. "That Regan is bad news.

You stay away from her, you hear me?" I drilled it into Coralie, half threat, half warning. Coralie didn't get why. But Coralie listened.

For days she kept her distance from Regan, and when she couldn't shake her, she came running to me. I praised her for it and pulled her in even closer.

Regan couldn't find a crack to work, and she went quiet for a while. But the payback came fast. And uglier than I'd pictured. I'd figured it would be the usual tricks.

Lock someone in a bathroom. Roll up with a few lackeys to box us in. Even a step past that, I could live with.

As long as she came at me herself, took me down on her own steam, then fine. I'm outclassed. I'll tip my hat.

Instead she played dirty and brought in a few street thugs to trap Coralie and me. Not the smalltime punks from school. Real rot.

The kind that lives in the gutter, the kind that peeps up girls' skirts. Coralie threw herself in front of me and held. I gave the pack of them one cold sweep of a look.

Then, something close to regret, I glanced at Coralie, shaking in front of me, braced to die. Dad's men were close.

The second this kicked off, I probably wouldn't even get a hit in. Almost a pity. One hand closed on the folding knife in my pocket. The other pulled the mask down off my face.

Chapter 11