Chapter 73 - The Sister's Broken Bargain
"Then what is this, Isabella?" Khloe demanded, taking two strides forward, the barrel of her gun never wavering from Isabella’s forehead. "Look at me! You let Anthony beat you half to death in Massachusetts! You let Catherine hunt us across two countries! WHY?"
Isabella stood up slowly, keeping her hands visible. She reached into her trench coat, pulled out a thick, leather-bound dossier stamped with the seal of the Geneva Superior Court, and tossed it across the table.
The binder skidded across the mahogany, stopping at Khloe’s feet.
"Open it," Isabella whispered.
Khloe didn't move. I kept my gun trained on Isabella while I reached down and flipped open the leather cover with my left hand.
Inside were medical documents dating back twenty-four years. Hospital intake logs from Massachusetts General Hospital, dated the exact week Khloe and Isabella were born.
"We aren't sisters, Khloe," Isabella said, her voice finally cracking, peeling back layers of venom to reveal a wound that had festered for decades. "Our mother didn't have twins."
Khloe froze. "What are you talking about?"
"Our mother was an undocumented surrogate hired by Catherine Vance’s late husband," Isabella revealed, her eyes burning into Khloe's. "You were the biological child of the Vance dynasty—the secret first-born daughter Catherine thought had died in an incubator in 1999. The daughter Catherine ordered discarded because you were born female and couldn't inherit the trust under the old family patriarch's will."
The vault fell into a suffocating silence.
The air felt thin, cold, and toxic.
"Our mother ran," Isabella continued, tears tracing through her foundation. "She couldn't leave you to die in Catherine's clinic. So she took you, faked a twin pregnancy, and raised us together in that roach-infested two-bedroom in South Boston. Anthony wasn't the rightful heir, Khloe. *You* were. Your children aren't Anthony's bastard spawn. Grace and Leo are the sole legal inheritors of every single brick, vault, and dollar Catherine Vance possesses."
Khloe stared at the papers, her hands trembling so violently the pages fluttered. "That’s why Anthony married you... he found out."
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"Anthony found out three years ago," Isabella nodded bitterly. "He thought by keeping me close, he could manipulate the inheritance. But then he realized Catherine was planning to liquidate him too. This whole war wasn't about embryos, Khloe. It was about wiping out the only bloodline that could strip Catherine Vance of her empire."
***
