The morning light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my high-rise apartment was cold, grey, and unforgiving. On my glass coffee table sat the leather-bound document Nikolai Moretti’s lawyer had delivered precisely at eight o'clock.

Serena was sitting up in bed, her arm wrapped in white bandages, looking frail, pale, and entirely stripped of her former glamour.

When the door opened and I walked in, she flinched, pulling the hospital blanket up to her chin.

"Evelyn..." she whispered, her voice hoarse and trembling. "You... you saved my life."

I walked over to the side of her bed, looking down at her. There was no rage left in my heart for her. Only pity.

"I didn't save your life because I love you, Serena," I said calmly. "I saved your life because you were an idiot who let two evil men use you like a puppet."

Serena began to cry, fat tears rolling down her hollow cheeks. "I didn't know, Evelyn! I swear I didn't know about Julian’s debts! He told me he loved me! He told me you were cold, that you didn't care about family, that you only cared about work!"

"And you believed him because it made you feel special," I said flatly.

I pulled a single plane ticket and a thick packet of trust documents from my purse, laying them on her bedside table.

"What is this?" Serena wept.

"A one-way ticket to a quiet village in Tuscany," I said. "And a monthly allowance from the Moretti-Hart foundation. It is enough for you to live comfortably for the rest of your life. But you will never return to Chicago. You will never speak to the press. And you will never use the name Hart or Moretti again."

Serena looked at the ticket, then up at me, her eyes filled with desperate remorse. "Evelyn... can you ever forgive me?"

I looked at my little sister for a long moment.

"I forgive you, Serena," I said quietly. "Because holding onto hatred for you requires feeling something for you. And I feel nothing."

I turned on my heel and walked out of the room, leaving her crying softly into her hands, completely alone with her choices.

Down in the hospital lobby, my mother was sitting on a waiting bench, looking ragged, aged by twenty years in three months. When she saw me walk out of the elevator, she scrambled to her feet, running toward me.

"Evelyn! How is she?! Is Serena going to be okay?!" my mother begged, grabbing my coat sleeve.

I slowly looked down at her hands on my coat, then raised my eyes to meet hers.

"Serena is leaving for Italy, Mother," I said calmly. "And you are going back to Indiana to live with Arthur in your small house."

"Evelyn... please!" my mother sobbed, falling to her knees on the polished hospital floor, clutching at my dress. "We are your parents! You can't leave us with nothing! We gave you everything!"

"You gave me a cold room, a heavy workload, and a front-row seat to my own humiliation," I replied, stepping out of her grasp. "Be grateful I let you keep the house in Indiana. If Nikolai had his way, you’d be sitting in a federal prison for corporate fraud."

I walked past her out the glass automatic doors into the bright, warm afternoon sunshine.

Waiting at the curb was Nikolai’s black Maybach.

Nikolai stood by the open passenger door, holding a bouquet of fresh dark red roses, a soft smile gracing his handsome face.

I walked up to him, took the roses, and inhaled their sweet, rich scent.