After Rebirth, I Outplayed My Manipulative Older Sister Chapter 08

After Rebirth, I Outplayed My Manipulative Older Sister Chapter 08

At twenty–five, my exam prep boarding house. opened its third location across the city. 

I co–founded an education consulting firm with 

Ms. Quinn, focusing on graduate exam tutoring 

and career planning. 

Ms. Quinn brought the connections, I handled 

operations, and we split profits sixty–forty–sixty 

for me, forty for her. 

I negotiated that split myself. Ms. Quinn called me 

a business genius. 

I said I wasn’t. I’d just learned to bargain hard 

since childhood. When every compromise could 

cost you your whole life, you learn never to back. 

down an inch. 

At the company annual gala, I stood on stage in a 

charcoal gray blazer dress, delivering the annual 

report. 

Below sat over a hundred employees–tutors, 

instructors, admin, finance–and investors who’d 

flown in from out of town. 

Ms. Quinn held a glass of wine and said to the 

guests, “This is my partner. A girl who doesn’t even 

have a community college degree.” 

It didn’t sound like praise. 

But it was. 

The kind of praise that says: you don’t need a 

single piece of paper to prove your worth. 

After the gala, someone called my name in the parking lot. 

“Ms. Dalhy.” 

I turned. 

A tailored black business suit, flawless makeup, standing under a streetlamp, holding a 

half–finished glass of champagne. 

It took me two seconds to recognize her. 

Georgia. 

At twenty–five, she’d grown much thinner, her chin sharp, cheekbones prominent. The suit fit 

perfectly, yet looked awkward on her, like 

borrowed clothes. 

Her eyes were still those big, watery ones, but fine 

lines had appeared at the corners. 

“What are you doing here?” 

She stepped forward, streetlamp light falling on 

her face, lips curving slightly. It wasn’t a smile, just a muscle habit–twenty years of practice had fixed her expression into a permanent shape. 

“I was at an event next door with friends. Heard you were having your gala here, so I stopped by.” She pulled a gift bag from behind her back like magic. “Here. An opening gift.” 

I didn’t take it. “No thanks. My office isn’t short on 

pens.” 

I turned to leave, but she called after me. “Cora, do 

you still hate me?” 

Her voice was light, the same tone she’d used att 

the doorway ten years ago. 

The same as the girl at the cemetery gate ten years ago, tilting her head with that soft smile and 

asking, “Feel better now?” 

I stopped and looked back. “Hate you? Why would 

I hate you?” 

She froze for a moment. 

She pulled her car keys from her bag and pressed a button, unlocking her car. 

“I wouldn’t be who I am today without you. You’re a 

whetstone.” I met her eyes. “Do you think I’d hate a 

stone?” 

She said nothing. 

“Let me ask you something,” I said. “That afternoon in the hospital room–the day Mom. died. You stood there in front of her, waiting for her aneurysm to rupture. What were you thinking?” 

Georgia’s lips stayed curved, but her fingers. tightened around the champagne glass. 

That small movement was more honest than any expression. 

“You and your mom are really something,” she said. “One of you screaming at me in a hospital room, the other screaming at me in a parking lot. Your mom asked me the same thing right before 

she died–What do you even want?” 

She set the champagne glass on top of a nearby trash can, gently, as if afraid to break something. 

“I’ll tell you what I told her. I just wanted you both 

to know what it feels like to watch the most 

important person in your life get taken away and be powerless to stop it.” 

She set the gift bag on the ground, then walked 

away in her heels, her back straight. 

I stared at the bag on the ground, then at her 

retreating figure. 

In that moment, I understood. 

She hadn’t come to gloat or threaten. 

She didn’t have the standing for that anymore. 

She’d come to see me. To see how I was doing, whether I was broken or thriving, to see what the 

younger sister she’d outshone had become. 

She looked. And then she left. 

And I hadn’t even treated her like someone worth 

taking seriously. 

That was probably the cruelest answer she’d ever 

received.