The Bitter Vintage: A Toast to My Own Executioner

Room 402 wasn't a wine cellar. It was a shrine.

As the heavy oak door creaked open, the smell of aged cork and expensive dust filled my lungs. I reached for the first bottle I saw—a 1996 Krug, my father’s favorite vintage. The glass felt heavy in my hand, a cold weight that mirrored the sinking feeling in my chest.

I poured a glass, but I wasn't drinking alone.

"You always did have your father's taste for the finer things, Elena," a voice whispered from the darkness.

I froze. That voice. It wasn't Leo’s, and it wasn't Arthur’s. It was the voice from the voice note—the voice of a ghost. A woman stepped into the dim light of the cellar, wearing a silk dress that cost more than my first car. She looked like me, but with eyes that had seen the underside of hell and liked the view.

My sister, Sofia.

"They told me you died in the Alps," I whispered, the wine trembling in the glass.

"And they told me you were the one who cut the brake lines," Sofia replied, her smile as sharp as a razor. She held up her own glass, the amber liquid catching the low light. "Arthur didn't destroy our family, little sister. He just provided the capital. I provided the blueprint."

The dog-blood irony nearly made me laugh. I had spent three years ruining men who were merely pawns in a sibling rivalry I didn't even know existed. Sofia hadn't been kidnapped; she had been the CEO in the shadows, using Leo and Arthur to test my "survival instincts."

"Cheers to the winner," Sofia said, clinking her glass against mine. "The Sterling empire is gone, but the 'Vance' legacy? It’s just getting started. And now that you’ve cleared the board of all the men... it’s just you and me."

I took a sip. It was bitter. Not because the wine was old, but because I realized the poison wasn't in the bottle.

The poison was in our blood.