Chapter 4

The gallery was empty now, save for me and Mr. Sterling. My friends had offered to stay, to help, but I had sent them home. I needed to be alone with the wreckage. I knelt on the cold concrete floor, my fingers tracing the bent and broken lines of my sculpture. It was a physical ache, a reflection of the deep, internal damage they had inflicted.

"I can get a restoration expert in here tomorrow," Mr. Sterling said softly from the doorway. "She's very good. She might be able to save it."

"It doesn't matter," I whispered, not looking up. "They'll just find another way to break it."

I finally stood up, dusting off my hands. The fight had gone out of me, replaced by a chilling clarity. I had to get away from them, but just leaving wasn't enough. I had to dismantle the entire lie they had built.

I spent the next day in the hospital. I hadn't realized it during the chaos, but when the mover shoved me, I had fallen against the sharp corner of a display pedestal. A deep, throbbing pain in my side had grown steadily worse through the night. The doctor said I had a cracked rib. He gave me painkillers and told me to rest.

Rest. The irony was bitter.

I sat on the stiff paper of the examination table, alone, the sterile white of the room feeling like an extension of the emptiness inside me. My phone buzzed with a series of missed calls and texts from Olivia. `Where are you? Mom is worried.` `Sarah, call me back.` `This is very childish.`

I ignored them all. Her concern was a performance, a box to be checked. She didn't care if I was hurt. She only cared that I was off-script, not playing my assigned role as the grateful, silent sister.

A memory surfaced, unbidden. I was ten years old and had fallen out of a tree, breaking my arm. My father had been frantic. He had rushed me to the hospital himself, holding my hand the whole way, telling me how brave I was. He had sat by my bed until the cast was set, his big, warm hand stroking my hair. `I'll always protect you,` he had whispered. `Nobody hurts my little girl.`

Where was that man when he wrote his will? Where was he when Olivia and David were whispering poison in his ear? The memory, once a source of comfort, now felt like another betrayal. It was a promise he hadn't kept.

Mr. Sterling picked me up from the hospital. He didn't ask many questions, just drove me back to my apartment and made sure I was settled on my couch with a cup of tea.

"You were right, Sarah," he said, his voice grim. "They are more ruthless than I imagined."

"They're not just ruthless," I said, my voice flat from the painkillers and exhaustion. "They're thorough. This wasn't just about sabotaging my show. It was about discrediting me completely. If I try to challenge them about the auction, who will believe me? The unstable, jealous sister who had a hysterical breakdown and destroyed her own gallery?"

"We have the truth on our side," he insisted.

"The truth needs proof," I countered. "Right now, all we have is your word against theirs. And they have the full weight of my father's reputation behind them."

It was in that moment of despair that I finally understood. I saw the whole pattern, a lifetime of small sabotages and subtle manipulations I had never recognized before. The art school application that went "missing" in the mail. The gallery owner who suddenly lost interest after a "chance" lunch with Olivia. The collector who backed out of a major purchase at the last minute. It had been happening for years. Olivia had been methodically clipping my wings, ensuring I could never fly high enough to cast a shadow on her.

My phone buzzed again. It was a notification from Instagram. Olivia had posted a new photo. It was a picture of her and David, all smiles, clinking champagne glasses. The caption read: `Celebrating a successful night! So grateful for all the love and support. The official auction catalogue is out tomorrow! The world will finally see what a genius my father was. #Legacy #Family #ArtWorld`

She was celebrating. While I was in a hospital getting my rib taped, she was drinking champagne and toasting her victory.

I looked at the picture of her smug, triumphant face. The pain in my side flared, sharp and hot, but it was nothing compared to the ice that filled my veins. The last vestiges of sisterly affection, the last echoes of a shared childhood, died in that moment. I saw her not as my sister, but as my enemy. She had underestimated me. She thought that because she could break my art, she could break my spirit.

She was wrong. I picked up my phone and opened Mr. Sterling's contact information.

"We're going to get that proof," I said, my voice low and hard. "We're going to get into that storage unit."