Chapter 314: [4.132] Four Pieces of the Same Heart

I remembered. The note in my wallet. The cream-colored paper with the ink drawing of a rose.

"I’m here," I said.

Sabrina broke the seal.

The sound of old paper tearing was louder than it should have been in that quiet room. Four sisters and one scholarship student from Philadelphia, standing in a secret room their dead father built to protect them from their living mother. If someone had told me this was my life three months ago, when the biggest thing on my mind was whether I could afford the train ticket to school, I would have laughed until I passed out.

Sabrina unfolded the letter and read it silently. Her eyes moved across the page. I watched her face for any sign of what the words contained, but Sabrina was Sabrina, and her walls held even now.

Until they didn’t.

Her hand came up to cover her mouth. Her eyes widened, then squeezed shut. A sound escaped her that I had never heard before, something between a gasp and a sob, wrenched from somewhere so deep inside her that it must have been locked away for years.

Cassidy took a step forward. Harlow reached out. Vivienne set down her tablet.

"Sabrina," I said.

She opened her eyes. Tears tracked down her cheeks, cutting paths through the careful composure she’d worn like a second skin for as long as anyone could remember. Sabrina Valentine, the ghost, the enigma, the girl who spoke in riddles and watched the world from behind a book, stood in her father’s secret room and cried without hiding it.

"He knew about Mother’s plan," she said. Her voice shook, every word costing her something visible. "Not just the will. Everything. The inheritance clause. The competition. He knew she would pit us against each other after he died."

"What did he say?" Vivienne asked. Her own voice had gone thin.

Sabrina looked down at the letter. Read from it.

"My dearest Sabrina. If you are reading this, then the worst has happened, and your mother has become the woman I feared she would become without me to remind her of who she used to be. I am sorry. I am sorry that I could not protect you in person. I am sorry that I left you to carry this weight alone. But I did not leave you without weapons."

Sabrina paused. Drew a breath that rattled in her chest.

"In this room you will find everything you need to challenge the false will your mother will create. She will tell you that only one of you can inherit. She will try to make you fight each other. She will use your insecurities against you, each of you, in the ways she knows will hurt the most. Do not let her."

Cassidy made a sound. Raw. Wounded.

Sabrina continued reading.

"You are not four separate daughters competing for one prize. You are four pieces of the same heart. My heart. And I am giving it to all of you, equally, because that is the only way love works. It does not divide. It multiplies."

Harlow was crying openly now, tears streaming down her face without any attempt to stop them. She pressed both hands against her mouth but the sounds still escaped, small broken things that filled the room.

"There is one more thing," Sabrina read. "The key I gave you opens more than this room. There is a safety deposit box at Chase Manhattan, branch 47, under the name Sabrina E. Valentine. In it you will find the original signed will, notarized and witnessed by three independent attorneys. Your mother does not know it exists. Use it when you are ready. Use it together."

Sabrina lowered the letter.

The room was very quiet.

Four sisters stood in their dead father’s sanctuary, surrounded by the evidence of his love and his fear and his desperate hope that they would find their way back to each other. They looked wrecked. All of them. Even Vivienne, whose armor had finally given way under the weight of what she was hearing. Even Cassidy, whose anger had burned itself down to something that looked a lot like grief. Even Harlow, whose sunshine had dimmed to something smaller and realer and infinitely more beautiful.

And me. Standing in the middle of them. A broke kid from Kensington with a two-toned head of hair and a wallet full of love notes, watching the four most complicated girls on the planet realize that their father had loved them enough to fight for them from beyond the grave.

I thought about Iris. About the lunches I packed at four in the morning. About the notes I left in the fridge. About every single decision I’d ever made that boiled down to the same fundamental truth: you protect the people you love, even when it costs you everything.

Richard Valentine understood that.

So did I.

"We go to the bank tomorrow morning," I said. "Before the meeting. We get the original will. We bring it to your mother’s office. And we end this."

Four pairs of identical purple eyes turned to me.

Vivienne spoke first. "The bank opens at nine. The meeting is at three. That gives us six hours to have the document authenticated and prepare our position."

"I can handle authentication," I said. "Felix’s father has lawyers on retainer who specialize in estate law. One phone call and we’ll have an expert within the hour."

Cassidy wiped her face with her sleeve. Her mascara had smeared across her cheeks in dark streaks that made her look like a raccoon who’d lost a fight. She was still the most beautiful thing in the room.

"I’m going to that meeting," she said. "I don’t care what Mother says about coming alone. I’m going and I’m bringing this letter and I’m shoving it down her throat."

"We’re all going," Harlow said. Her voice was steady despite the tears still drying on her cheeks. "Dad said to do this together. So we do it together."

Sabrina folded the letter carefully and placed it back in its envelope. She tucked it inside her sweater, against her heart, where nobody could take it from her.

Then she looked at me.

"Stay tonight," she said. "All of us. Together. In the library. Like we did when Dad was alive and we’d camp out on the floor with blankets and pillows and he’d read to us until we fell asleep."

"I remember," Harlow whispered.

"So do I," Vivienne said.

Cassidy said nothing. But she nodded.

I pulled out my phone and texted Iris.

Staying at the manor tonight. Something came up. I’ll explain tomorrow.

Her response came in eight seconds.

Is everyone okay?

I looked at the four sisters standing in a circle around their father’s desk, holding pieces of the man they’d lost, preparing for the fight of their lives against the woman who was supposed to protect them.

I typed: They will be.