Being a Durova never felt like a birthright—it felt like a burden.
I was born the day my mother died. Her heartbeat stopped so mine could begin. I've never been allowed to forget that. Not when Grandmother looks at me like I'm a glass she's trying not to break. Not when Father speaks my name like it's a duty, not a daughter. And definitely not when I sit at the dinner table, across from a woman who looks like my older sister but calls herself my stepmother—with lips fuller than memory and eyes that never stop calculating.
Our mansion is cold even when the sun pours through the windows. Grandmother says it's tradition. She believes warmth makes a leader weak. I'm to be the next head of the Durova family—an empire built on silence, reputation, and fear. That's what she tells me. Every morning. Every evening. Every time I breathe wrong.
Then there's her—the masterpiece—my stepsister. Skin tight, face tighter. She's had more work done than a ruined sculpture, each surgery peeling away another trace of our bloodline. She twirls through life in designer shoes and fake lashes, flaunting her chaos like it's charm. Grandmother pretends not to notice. Father never looks twice. But I see it. All of it.
And in the middle of it all, there's me—Isla Durova. The heiress. The girl with a dead mother and a title too heavy for her shoulders.
But I'm not completely alone.
I have Alice. Cherry, as some call her. My best friend. My right hand. My only real choice in a life full of obligations. She knows what I hide beneath the Durova name. She sees the cracks before they show.
And she's the only one who reminds me that I'm still human.
The only place in this house that feels even a little like mine is the rooftop terrace. It's high enough to drown out the shouting, and far enough from the rest of them that I can almost breathe like a normal person. That's where Alice finds me—legs dangling over the edge, hair dancing in the cold Russian wind like it doesn't care what surname I carry.
"Your Highness," she says with a teasing bow, offering me a peach soda like it's a royal gift.
I roll my eyes. "Don't start."
She laughs and drops beside me, opening her own bottle. "What? You don't like being treated like the future tyrant of this kingdom?"
I nudge her with my shoulder, but I'm smiling. "If I'm the tyrant, you're the weapon."
"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
Alice is more than just my best friend. She's my other half. She knows how to survive in this world of polished cruelty and backhanded smiles. Where I stay silent, she speaks. Where I freeze, she fights. She's the reason I haven't lost my mind yet.
We're mid-laugh about something shallow—some fashion disaster our stepsister paraded around in—when the sharp click of heels ruins everything.
"Found you," purrs a voice like fake sugar and venom.
I don't even have to look. Her presence drips vanity. My stepsister struts toward us in a fur coat that could pay someone's rent for a year, holding her phone like it's recording something she shouldn't be. I brace myself.
"There you are," she says with a practiced pout. "Grandmother's been looking for you. But don't worry… I covered for you." She smirks. "Sort of."
Alice stands up slowly, like a cat ready to claw. "What did you do?"
"Oh, nothing," my stepsister sings, twirling a curl around her finger. "Unless you count uploading a video of you two skipping Grandmother's weekly lecture… and calling her views outdated. Oops."
My stomach drops. "You edited that clip."
"I enhanced the truth," she says sweetly. "Just wait till she sees it."
The next thirty minutes are a blur—footsteps, raised voices, Grandmother's fury like a thunderstorm in a teacup room. I barely remember how I ended up in front of the family, the whole Durova bloodline sitting in that suffocating parlor.
"You've grown reckless," Grandmother says, eyes sharp and cold.
"I didn't—"
"Silence."
My father doesn't speak. He never does when it involves me. He just sips his drink like he's watching a movie he doesn't care about.
And then comes the sentence that changes everything.
"Perhaps it's time," Grandmother says, "that Isla gets a taste of the outside world. She will leave Russia. She will attend school—far away. Let her learn what legacy really means."
My stepsister gasps—so fake—then hides her glee behind a pressed-lip pout. She knows what this means. Knows I'll be out of the picture for months. Knows it gives her space to circle like a vulture.
She glances at me with eyes that say, I'm coming for everything you love.
Boxes were never meant to carry lives—but mine were packed by sunrise.
Alice sat on my bed, glaring at every item I folded like it had personally betrayed her. "They're seriously sending you to that place?" she asked, arms crossed.
I zipped up my third bag. "Grandmother thinks I need discipline. Strategy. Control. Apparently, I'm not worthy of the Durova name until I prove I can survive a school full of future monsters."
Alice scoffed. "She's shipping you off like a pawn."
"No," I muttered, "like a weapon still in the making."
The school wasn't on any map. It didn't need to be. Everyone in our world knew what it was: an elite institution where heirs of crime syndicates, empires, and ancient power families went to learn more than math. It wasn't about GPA—it was about manipulation, survival, and legacy.
"This school isn't just for grades," Grandmother had told me, voice colder than the Russian frost. "It's for choosing who controls the future."
So while other girls my age were shopping for notebooks and lip gloss, I was packing knives and silence.
"I hate this," Alice muttered, standing. "You don't belong in that circus of sociopaths."
I tried to laugh, but it got stuck in my throat. "Neither do they. But it's where I have to go."
Alice's voice dropped low, serious. "If they try to break you, Isla… break them first."
I nodded. Not because I was brave, but because I couldn't afford not to be.
And as the black car pulled up outside the Durova estate, my stepsister ( Steph) watched from the balcony with a smile too wide. Like she was waving goodbye to a problem she had finally erased.
But I wasn't gone.
I was just being sharpened.