Chapter2

Early the next morning, my father had kicked my door open.

“Code.” He stood in the doorway. “Two. Like you said last night.”

I sat up in bed, pressing one hand to my temple and letting my face look a little paler. I had already rehearsed the “aftereffects” of overusing my silver eyes last night.

“…The first one was Nova Mining,” I said. “Build a position at the open, and get out before two p.m. The gain won’t be huge, but it’ll be steady.” I paused, as if it took real effort to dig the next name out of my skull. “The second… Helios Pharma. Enter at two-thirty. There’ll be news before the close, and it’ll jump once.”

My father stayed where he was, staring at me for two seconds. “How much for Nova Mining?”

“Seven to nine percent. Helios Pharma was about eleven.”

He didn’t ask anything else and turned to leave.

I heard him downstairs on the phone, his voice buzzing with that impatient kind of high.

I threw off the blanket and padded to the window, listening through the wall for movement across the house—he should have already thrown the money in. I let out a breath and lay back down.

At twelve-thirty, Nova Mining had climbed 8.3%. The first one had hit.

Downstairs, my father had been humming to himself, his laughter spilling into every word as he talked on the phone. Vivian hadn’t shown up in the living room. I guessed she had been staring at the chart and doing the math—last life, she had taken losses under my father’s thumb, and this time she wouldn’t accept it quietly.

At two-twenty, Helios Pharma had suddenly started trading heavy. I closed my eyes and counted to five, and a short, sharp shout had come from downstairs—up it went.

He charged upstairs and shoved my door open.

“Beautiful, Elara! The second one hit!”

He hauled me off the bed and shook me twice. I turned my head away from his breath on my face and kept my voice deliberately low. “…My head hurts.”

“Fine, fine, rest! We keep going tomorrow.” He set me down and turned to go.

As he passed through the living room, Vivian came out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hands.

My father stopped.

“You contacted an underground broker yesterday?”

Vivian’s hand paused. “What?”

“I told you to mirror my trades. Did you short it on the side yesterday?”

The living room stayed quiet for two seconds.

Vivian clenched the coffee cup until her fingertips whitened. “…I was just controlling risk. She got it wrong last time. I was afraid she’d slip up.”

“Smack.”

A slap cracked across her face. The coffee cup crashed onto the carpet. She covered her cheek and stumbled back half a step, eyes wide.

“Slip up?” My father glared at her. “You think I don’t know how much you moved off my books through those shadow accounts? Hedging both sides? I raised two dogs in this house—and one of them is here to gnaw on my bones.”

Vivian bit down hard and said nothing, but her gaze slid past my father’s shoulder and landed on me.

I met her eyes without moving. The bruise on my cheekbone still ached. That look—resentment, fury, hatred—had been the same as last life.

My father stormed out and slammed the door. Only Vivian and I had been left.

She stared at me and walked over, one step at a time. I didn’t back away.

“You did it on purpose.” Her voice dropped to a hiss. “You knew I’d short before you gave him Helios.”

“Sis,” I said, my voice soft like I was soothing her, “I only gave him two stocks that were guaranteed to rise. You choosing to short was your choice. What did it have to do with me?”

She lifted her hand and swung for my face. I tilted my head aside, and her fingertips scraped my chin before she pulled back, turned, and went upstairs.

I slowly drew my gaze back and leaned into the sofa.

I touched my temple with two fingers—it really did ache, and my silver eyes did feel sore.

I walked to the window and glanced into the yard next door. The boy in the white T-shirt wasn’t there.

I lowered the curtain, went back to my bedroom, and fished half a roll of gauze from under my pillow, pressing it to my forehead.

I hadn’t truly pushed myself to the limit. But I needed them to believe I had.

If my father knew my eyes still had plenty of uses left, he wouldn’t value them. Once he believed my eyes were about to fail, his attention would shift to Vivian—after all, someone would have to fill the hole her short had dug.

I sat on the bed while Vivian hid in her room and my father barked orders in his study. They thought I was just a tool, a tool they could toss away once it was used up.

I needed to make them bite each other first.