Chapter 3: A: Sisterly Alliance

👉 Previous decision: You chose to send the encrypted footage directly to your estranged sister Clara.

My thumbs flew across the keyboard, typing a quick message to Clara. “URGENT. Julian. Offshore. Needs eyes.”

I attached the encrypted video file, a 20-minute recording of the previous night’s ritual. My finger hovered over the ‘send’ button, then pressed down.

Hours later, my phone vibrated. It was Clara. “Meet me at the diner downtown. Alone. I have something.”

Clara, my younger sister by five years, arrived with a stack of papers. Her eyes, usually warm, were sharp and focused.

“I’ve been watching Julian for months, Evelyn,” she said, sliding a document across the chipped Formica table. “His shell companies. The sudden influx of cash.”

The paper was a sworn affidavit. It detailed how Julian’s former executive assistant, a woman named Lena, had witnessed Julian meticulously draining my accounts.

“Lena saw him backdating invoices,” Clara explained, her voice low. “Creating fake investment schemes. He specifically engineered your financial ruin.”

My hand flattened over Lena’s testimony. It laid bare Julian’s calculated malice.

“He wanted you out of the way,” Clara continued. “He told Lena you were ‘holding back his empire’ by not signing over your remaining rights.”

“He even staged some of your ‘memory lapses’,” Clara said. “Small things. Moving your keys. Changing appointments.”

A cold dread settled in my stomach, quickly replaced by a furious resolve. The gaslighting, the rituals—it was all a deliberate, cruel strategy.