“Fine. Once a week at a time, date, and location of your choosing.” He stood abruptly, his frame radiating barely suppressed anger. “We’re done here.”

He left without another glance at me or his wife.

Caroline took his sudden departure in stride. “In the future, you and Penelope will meet elsewhere,” she said, flicking her eyes over me. “I have no interest in bringing you into our home again. As you can see, your presence has a way of creating strife.”

I ignored her jab and focused on the first part. “In the future?”

Does that mean…? My stomach flipped with a sudden surge of hope.

Caroline smiled thinly. “You may want to stay in the room for a bit longer.”

Then she, too, left, but she’d barely departed before a familiar girlish voice squealed, “Sloane!”

I turned my head in time to get tackled by a small blond blur. Pen’s arms wrapped around my waist, and a rush of pure, indescribable relief filled my lungs.

I hugged her back, my chest so tight it hurt to breathe.

“Hey, Pen.” I smiled past the swell of emotion in my throat. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” She looked up at me, her eyes shimmering with tears. She looked a lot thinner than the last time I’d seen her. While I was glad to see her again, we needed to have a talk about her hunger strike—after I finished squeezing the hell out of her. “I didn’t think I was going to see you or Rhea again,” she said in a small voice.

My heart broke at the vulnerability in the words.

“Trust me. I would’ve found a way to see you again, one way or another.” I meant it. My father and Caroline couldn’t have stopped me from seeing Pen forever. I would’ve found a way around their stonewalling, though this was a much better alternative than other, perhaps less ethical alternatives.

I didn’t think I was going to see you or Rhea again. The last part of Pen’s sentence registered, and a furrow dug between my brows. What did she—

A flash of movement caught the corner of my eye. I turned, taking in the woman hovering in the doorway.

“Rhea!” I gasped. “You’re back.”

Pen’s old nanny smiled, looking tired but satisfied. “I’m back,” she confirmed. “Mrs. Kensington called me after the new year. Penny put up such a fuss that the nanny they’d hired after me quit.”

“That new nanny sucked,” Pen said. “She didn’t even know that Blackcastle is a soccer team.”

The remaining tension broke, and there were hugs and tears all around as the three of us reunited for the first time since November. Well, not tears from me—I hadn’t been able to cry again since I reconciled with Xavier. I suspected I’d emptied the well so thoroughly it’d take another twenty-odd years before the phenomenon happened again.

However, the joy of seeing Pen again didn’t stop me from scolding her about her hunger strike. It wasn’t healthy, especially not for someone with her condition.

“What’s this I hear about you refusing to eat?”

She slunk down in her seat. “I didn’t refuse to eat. I simply skipped a few meals and threatened to skip more unless they let me see you.”

“You shouldn’t do that, Pen,” I said gently. “Your health is the most important thing, and skipping meals can be seriously harmful.”

“But they took you and Rhea away, and the threats worked!” she protested. “See? Look at us.” She gestured at our trio. “Honestly, I should’ve tried that tactic sooner. Then we wouldn’t have had to sneak around for so many years.”

I sighed while Rhea shook her head. There was no arguing with Pen; she won every time.

“What do you want to do today?” I asked, switching topics. As long as she ate regularly going forward, there was no use dwelling on what was already done. “I took off work, so I’m all yours.” I’d planned on going into the office that afternoon, but I’d just emailed Jillian to tell her I wouldn’t be in.

Pen pursed her lips, her little face scrunched in thought. “I want to watch a movie.”

My eyebrows shot up. She rarely wanted to do something as calm as watching a movie. She watched soccer games, but that was different. “A movie? Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She gave a definitive nod. “I don’t want to get tired too fast.”

“Then a movie it is.”

We decamped to the screening room, where I put on a cartoon about fairy princesses and filled her in on what’d happened since we last talked. I omitted the non-kid-friendly parts; there were some things about my life that Pen never needed to know.

“Did Xavier hurt you?” she asked. “Because I told him I’d sic Mary on him if he did.”

“He did briefly, but he didn’t mean it, and he apologized.” I paused, my brow creasing. “Who’s Mary?”

“A haunted Victorian doll.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t have a Victorian doll. They creep you out.”

“I know.” Pen’s grin was pure mischief. “But he doesn’t know that.”

I couldn’t help it; I burst into laughter. She was definitely going to be a handful when she grew up.

Pen made it through the entire movie before her energy flagged. Now that our visits were out in the open, she didn’t protest as much as she usually did when we said goodbye.

I told Rhea to call me in the next few days so we could schedule our next visit, and I waited for them to disappear into Pen’s room before I left.

I made it halfway through the foyer when the front door opened, and I came face-to-face with my other sister.

Georgia and I froze at the same time.

She was impeccably groomed, per usual, but I detected shadows beneath her slightly bloodshot eyes. Her baby bump was finally showing, but that hadn’t stopped her from wearing three-inch heels or blitzing through Madison Avenue; her arms were laden with shopping bags from a dozen designer stores.

“Moving back home into the viper’s nest?” I asked. “How sentimental.”

Georgia sniffed and tossed her hair, but her eyes darted left and right like she’d rather be anywhere else except here. “I’m staying here while our townhouse is getting renovated. The fumes are bad for the baby,” she said, emphasizing the last word like I cared that she was pregnant and I wasn’t.

Bullshit. She was too much of a control freak not to nitpick renovations from as close quarters as possible. But if the townhouse wasn’t getting renovated, then why…

“Is Bentley staying here too?” I asked on a hunch. Georgia’s eye twitched, proving my hunch correct.

I didn’t know what happened after she left my office, but obviously, it was enough for her to move back home for however long. She still wore her wedding ring, but that didn’t mean much. Plenty of people wore their wedding rings long after the love behind them had dissolved.

Instead of feeling triumphant or vindicated by the evidence of their relationship troubles, I felt…nothing. Because, simply put, I didn’t care. Not anymore.

“You might think you did something by playing that audio in your office, but you didn’t,” she said when I brushed past her. “Bentley and I are weathering a few issues at this time, but we’ll never leave each other. I will always be the one he chose over you.” I looked at her, with her perfect hair and expensive clothes and diamond ring, and felt something I never thought I’d feel toward her: pity.

I’d grown up jealous and resentful of Georgia for being our father’s favorite and for playing the perfect daughter and socialite so well when I’d struggled to do the same. She’d always gotten what she wanted, and I’d thought that was something to be envied. It wasn’t until now that I realized my jealousy had been misplaced because Georgia was never happy with what she had; she was only happy when she took things away from other people. She spent her life trying to win invisible competitions with others because it made her feel superior when, in reality, her power plays were the ultimate sign of insecurity.