Chapter 3

After dinner, we returned to the separate guesthouse prepared specifically for us.

The moment we stepped inside, the suppressed tension exploded.

Clara was the first to break the silence, spinning in a circle, her face alight with the blush of a girl in love.

"I'm going to marry Brandon! Did you hear that? Mrs. Albright said it herself!"

Lena, mixing paints at her easel, merely poured cold water on Clara's excitement. "We all want to marry him, don't we? But the Albrights will only choose the best one."

Clara puffed out her chest defiantly and ran over to Lena.

"Brandon has feelings for me! He's the most special to me!"

She pulled a small silver whistle from her neck, showing it off like a treasured possession.

"Last year, for my birthday, Brandon took me to the stables. This was his gift to me. He said he crafted it himself, and it's one of a kind."

Her voice was full of sweet memories.

"He also said that if I ever blew the whistle, no matter where he was, he'd come to me immediately. He even said my smile was like the first rose of spring."

We all looked at the whistle, which shimmered with a cheap, false gleam under the light.

Brandon had said similar things to every one of us girls.

Those sweet nothings were just cheap tools for his game, plucked from thin air without a second thought—low effort, high return.

Just last month, he'd told Lena that her paintings held stars like the sea, a unique artistic soul no one could truly grasp.

Then he'd turned around and told Isabella that her tea had a calming magic, an extension of her serene nature.

But Clara believed him.

She saw the whistle as irrefutable proof, convinced she was the one special person in Brandon's heart.

Isabella scoffed, turning to disappear into the bathroom, her back radiating disdain.

I looked at Clara's face, steeped in fantasy, and didn't have the heart to tell her the truth.

Some people just have to hit rock bottom before they see the truth. No words would have changed her mind.