Chapter 56
DIANA
The aftermath of the welcome dinner makes my stomach twist, as I brace for what’s about to happen the second everyone has left, and the facades fall away.
Before she leaves, Stella squeezes my hand and looks back at me. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
I muster a simple, assuring smile. “I’ll be okay.”
Stella tugs me close. Her fingers pretend to adjust the collar of my dress, yet her voice is pointed.
“Keep your guard up,” she whispers. “Just because the boys are knocked down doesn’t mean they won’t use their distance to an advantage.”
Her warning lingers in my head long after she leaves with the rest of my family. It heightens in warning when bàba shuts the door behind the last guest.
He regards me and Sophia with a nonchalance that’s too unsettling to be genuine.
“I want you girls in my study in five minutes. āgōng and I wish to speak with you.” He snaps his fingers at the maids standing by. “Fetch Jonathan and Gregory, too.”
The maids nod and scurry away.
Sophia and I cast apprehensive looks at each other as bàba leaves for his study.
Sophia snatches my hand the second he’s gone, and marches me into the war room. She pushes me inside. The door shuts behind her before she whirls on me.
“Diana, what have you done?” she panics. “Why isn’t my name being dragged with Gregory and Jonathan?”
My hands grow clammy, as I try to string my words together properly.
“Look, after we argued that night, I wanted to give you a better chance at securing the life you want. Bàba hasn’t been fair with you, and I know your actions are a response to that.
” I swallow convulsively. “That’s why I erased all evidence of you plotting with Jonathan and Gregory. ”
“How did you even—” Sophia pales. “The Halloween party.”
“It was the only way I could get your phone,” I explain. “I know someone on the student council who told me you were going.”
Confusion mars her face. Her eyes dart back and forth, trying to piece everything together.
A small, hopeful smile touches my lips. “I also wanted to thank you for defending me against that Viper.”
Sophia softens. Her cold, guarded mask falls away, making her glow with a vulnerability I haven’t seen in so long. Then she hardens again. Her walls surge up, flinty and aloof as her voice. “So, all the evidence that I’ve been scheming with Jonathan and Gregory is gone?”
I feel a heavy dread in my heart, as I nod. “Yes.”
“Oh my god.” Sophia’s fingers tremble as she braces her temple, and paces back and forth.
Nervousness swells in my gut. “What…what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” She gasps. “Jonathan and Gregory are going to kill me, Diana! They’re going to think I planned this from the start and come after me!”
“After knowing what they did, no one is going to associate themselves with Jonathan and Gregory.”
“Because those slimy underground vultures they employ give a rat’s ass about who’s waving money in their face,” she snaps.
I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I was just trying to help you!”
“I never asked you to!” she protests. “I’d rather be ripped apart by the media than by Gregory and Jonathan!”
“You don’t mean that.”
“The media will eventually tire itself out. Jonathan and Gregory? They will never stop.”
I sink back. I hate how she’s right no matter how much I try to reason my way out of it.
Sophia shuts her eyes. Her breath weaves in and out before she stares back at me. Her rosy, demure beauty cracks, revealing that stubborn girl who’s been beaten down one too many times.
“Diana, I get what you’re trying to do for me.
But I need you to stay out of it. I know I make bad decisions.
I do everything I can to make sure I come out of them alive.
I’m not na?ve, though. I know I’ll have to deal with the consequences because that’s what bàba always says.
I won’t leave all of this without struggle, without pain, and I’ve accepted that. ”
Unshed tears tremble in Sophia’s eyes. Her fight to hold them back makes her cheeks flush. I remember the days when they were pudgy and pink from the blush she stole from my makeup drawer. My heart aches.
“Sophia, you don’t have to destroy yourself to get what you want.”
“It’s too late for that.” Sophia laughs. “Do you think I’m still the little sister who’ll watch Gilmore Girls with you? Who will ask you to help curl my hair? She died the same day that blade cut my hand. So, stop trying to bring her back! She’s gone!”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have attacked that Viper,” I push. “You stayed to help me when you could’ve ran. What does that say about you?”
Sophia stiffens and avoids looking at me.
“You’ve made bad decisions.” I soldier on. “But you can walk a different path now. You can be better.”
“I don’t deserve better!” she cries out. “After everything I’ve done and said to everyone who got in the way of the life I wanted, I don’t deserve any better.”
I’m so desperate to wring some sense into her, but it’s so useless when Sophia believes that her flaws make her undeserving of becoming someone better. That she’ll always be the villain in her own life.
Sophia’s face falls. “Diana, I appreciate what you did for me, I really do. But this is a fight you can’t help me win.”
Then, as she’s done for the last several years, Sophia wipes her tears, squares her shoulders, and walks out of the room.
I drop my head into my hands. I thought clearing my name and Sophia’s involvement from the scandal would make everything else fall into place.
But it’s only fractured more than it was supposed to fix.