Chapter 308: [4.126] Mrs. Valentine, They Found It

Harlow blinked. Her vision was blurry. Probably allergies.

"But—"

"You’re the one who makes people feel safe," Isaiah continued. "You’re the one who remembers everyone’s names and everyone’s coffee orders and everyone’s favorite things. You’re the one who stays up until three in the morning making waffles because you want breakfast to be perfect. You’re the one who sewed a heart for me and gave it away like it was nothing, like you didn’t spend hours making something beautiful just so I’d have something to hold onto."

His thumb brushed across her cheek. Harlow realized she was crying after all. So much for sunshine.

"I see you," Isaiah said. "Not the brand. Not the Instagram. Not the performance. I see Harlow, who loves her sisters so much she forgot to love herself. Who carries the whole family’s emotions because nobody asked her to stop. Who smiles until her face hurts because she thinks that’s the only way anyone will stay."

Harlow’s chest cracked open.

She’d spent years building walls. Not the obvious kind, like Sabrina’s silence or Cassidy’s aggression or Vivienne’s control. Harlow’s walls were made of brightness. Of warmth. Of being so aggressively positive that nobody thought to ask what was underneath.

Isaiah had seen through all of it.

"I’m scared," she whispered. "I’m so scared all the time. Of losing you. Of losing my sisters. Of Mother taking everything away. Of waking up one day and realizing that the happy version of me was the only version anyone wanted, and the real me isn’t good enough."

"The real you is more than good enough."

"How do you know?"

Isaiah smiled. It was a small smile, tired around the edges, but genuine in a way that made Harlow’s heart ache.

"Because the real you is the one who’s crying in a hallway about cookies and feelings. The real you is the one who gets scared and keeps going anyway. The real you is the one I want to know better." He paused. "When it’s your turn. When we have our time together. I want to see everything. Not just the sunshine. The storms too."

Harlow laughed. It came out wet and broken, but it was real. The first real laugh she’d had in days.

"I’m a mess," she said.

"Join the club. We have jackets."

She laughed again, harder this time, and Isaiah’s arms tightened around her once more. They stood there in the hallway, two people holding each other while the school moved around them, while students passed and lockers slammed and the clock ticked closer to Thursday and everything that waited on the other side.

Harlow didn’t know what would happen when Isaiah sat across from her mother in that office with the Italian marble desk. She didn’t know if their careful rotation would survive, if their fragile family would hold together, if any of them would come out the other side unscathed.

But right now, in this moment, she had this.

She had Isaiah’s arms around her. She had his voice in her ear telling her she was enough. She had the steady beat of his heart against her cheek, proof that he was here, that he was real, that he wasn’t running away.

It wasn’t everything.

But it was something.

Harlow pulled back eventually, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and trying to reassemble her smile. It came easier now. Still a little shaky, but closer to the genuine article than the mask she’d been wearing all day.

"I probably look terrible," she said.

"You look like someone who just had a hard conversation."

"That’s a diplomatic way of saying I look terrible."

Isaiah reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was simple and intimate and made Harlow’s stomach flip all over again.

"You look beautiful," he said. "You always look beautiful. Even when you’re crying about being extra."

Harlow’s face went hot.

Before she could respond, before she could think of something clever or deflecting or appropriately Harlow-ish to say, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the screen.

A text from Vivienne.

"Emergency meeting. Sabrina’s room. Now. Mother moved the Thursday meeting up."

Harlow’s blood went cold.

"What is it?" Isaiah asked, reading the shift in her expression.

She showed him the phone. Watched his face as he absorbed the words. Saw the exact moment the information landed, the way his jaw tightened and his eyes went dark and distant.

"Moved up to when?"

Another text came through. This one from Cassidy.

"Tomorrow. 3pm. She’s not waiting. Get to Sabrina’s room now."

Harlow looked up at Isaiah.

His expression had changed. The warmth from a moment ago was still there, buried underneath, but the surface had gone sharp and focused. Battle-ready. Like a soldier who’d just heard the war was starting a day early.

"Go," he said. "I’ll be right behind you."

Harlow didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want to let go of the fragile connection they’d just built in this hallway, didn’t want to step back into the chaos of her family and the approaching storm of her mother’s attention.

But she was a Valentine sister.

She didn’t get to want.

She turned and ran.

The hallways blurred past her as she moved, her mind racing faster than her feet. Tomorrow. Mother had moved the meeting to tomorrow. Twenty-four hours instead of forty-four. Half the time to prepare, half the time to strategize, half the time to figure out how to keep the boy she was falling for from being destroyed by the woman who had already destroyed so much.

She reached Sabrina’s room breathless and flushed, pushing through the door to find her sisters already assembled. Vivienne stood by the window with her tablet clutched against her chest. Cassidy sat on the edge of Sabrina’s bed, her leg bouncing with nervous energy. And Sabrina herself was in the center of the room, holding a letter in her hands.

A letter with a familiar seal. A letter that looked old and weathered. A letter that made Sabrina’s face go pale in a way Harlow had never seen before.

"What’s happening?" Harlow asked.

Sabrina looked up. Her purple eyes were wide. Scared. Human in a way that Sabrina almost never allowed herself to be.

"Father left another letter," she said. "Hidden in his study. Behind the photograph wall. I found it this morning while looking for something else."

Vivienne’s voice was sharp. "What does it say?"

Sabrina’s hands trembled around the paper.

"It says that Mother isn’t supposed to inherit anything. It says the will everyone knows about is a fake." Her voice cracked. "It says Father left everything to us. All four of us. Equally. And he left proof."

The room went silent.

And then the door opened behind Harlow, and Mrs. Tanaka stepped through, her face expressionless, her phone already raised to her ear.

"Mrs. Valentine," the housekeeper said into the phone, her eyes locked on Sabrina’s letter. "They found it."