The Sister Who Shot Me Got Everything I Had Chapter 02
The Missing Days
I went back to my desk to pull my report. My printer is synced to the Family cloud.
The second I opened it, a folder popped up on the shared drive.
‘GIA — Sicily.’
I almost closed it. But my finger hovered. Then I clicked.
It wasn’t proof of seven years of Mama’s “alone and suffering.” It was photographs, hundreds of them.
Birthday parties on Taormina beaches. Ski trips in Cortina. Graduation from a private academy in Palermo. Front-row opera tickets. Walls of gifts.
Mama knit Gia a scarf every winter. Papa wrote her a birthday card every year.
Matteo’s passport had Italy stamps every single school break.
I opened a video from her eighteenth birthday.
Matteo was putting a paper crown on her head. Mama was crying through the screen.
“Gia, baby, we didn’t abandon you. We just can’t bring you home yet.”
Gia, red-eyed, “Is Sienna still not ready to forgive me?”
Papa sighed on camera. “She’s still hurting, sweetheart. Give her time. When she’s stronger, we’ll bring you home.”
My hands went cold.
All those years, they hadn’t been cutting her off. They’d been there for her the whole time.
Then another picture—taken the first night after my spinal surgery. The doctor said someone had to stay through the night, watch for signs of a blood clot rising higher up my spine.
Mama said she’d cried all day. She needed rest.
Papa had business. Matteo had school.
Even Luca had ‘a family emergency’.
I remember lying there alone. Half my body numb, the other half on fire.
I checked my phone every ten minutes. Not one message.
Turns out, they were all on a video call, singing Gia happy birthday.
At the bottom of the folder, one more photo.
Gia at some recital in Milan. White dress, bouquet in her arms. And behind her, holding her coat, smiling like she was his whole world—Luca.
The caption read: “Luca says I’m the prettiest girl on the planet.”
I stared at it until my fingertips went numb.
I still remembered when Luca held my hand and swore he would never see her again. He swore he’d learn to push my chair and be my legs.
I believed him. He was the only one who never looked at me as if I was broken.
Turns out, he’d been seeing Gia every year and knew exactly what my family had planned all along.
He just never let me know.
…
This afternoon, I rolled into the meeting room ten minutes late. The ramp at the side entrance was blocked by catering crates. Nobody moved them.
Papa was already at the head of the table. The seat at his right hand—my seat, the heiress’s seat, the one he’d promised me since I was twelve—was empty and pulled out, waiting, but not for me.
I took the corner spot. Two young men at the far end snickered.
“The crippled princess,” one whispered.
I kept my hands steady on the wheels.
Halfway through, the door swung open. Gia glided in on Luca’s arm. Cream cashmere. Tan from the Sicilian sun. Long dark hair, my mother’s eyes, my father’s smile.
She took the seat at Papa’s right hand like it was always hers.
Papa stood and raised his glass.
“To my daughter. Home at last. Next Sunday, she will be presented to the Five Families as the official heiress of the Falcones.”
The room lifted their glasses.
Presented to the Five Families… The official heiress of the Falcones—everything Papa had promised he was saving for me…
They didn’t hold my seat. They were just keeping it warm.
My phone buzzed. Family group chat. A photo dropped in.
Papa, Mama, Matteo, Luca—crowded around Gia. White roses behind them. She was sitting at Papa’s oak desk in the room that used to be mine. Eyes shining with tears.
Mama’s caption: Our princess is finally home.
I stared at the photo and understood one last thing.
They never punished Gia. They were using those years to groom her into the perfect heiress—building her a throne on top of my spine.