The Firstborn
In Paris, the morning light filtered through the tall windows of Clara Bellamy's apartment. At twenty-six, she carried herself with the poise of a woman determined to write her own story. She was an art curator at one of the smaller but ambitious galleries on the Left Bank, her days filled with canvases, exhibitions, and sharp conversations over espresso.
People admired her—her elegance, her wit, the effortless way she navigated Parisian society. But beneath the polish was a simmering anger, a fire that never truly cooled.
Her colleagues whispered about her temper, about the way she cut people down with a single remark if she felt cornered. She had inherited that from Isabella. The same quicksilver tongue, the same refusal to bow.
But Clara loathed the resemblance.
Her mother's voice still rang in her head sometimes: "You are mine, Clara. You are my legacy."
That legacy was the very chain Clara had been running from since she was seventeen. When she stormed out of Florence, it had been with fury pounding in her chest, swearing never to let her mother dictate her life again.
And yet—here she was, still haunted.
Her friends did not know about the letters she wrote late at night, unsent and tucked into a drawer. Letters addressed to her mother, filled with words she could never say: I hate you. I miss you. Why wasn't I enough for you to stop fighting everyone?
When news of Isabella's dealings reached her through gossip networks—whispers of schemes, of vineyards and betrayals—Clara laughed it off at soirées. But when she was alone, she wondered if the woman who had broken her childhood was still breaking herself, piece by piece.
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Marco – The Middle Child
Far from Paris, in the rainy streets of Oxford, Marco sat hunched over a desk piled with books. At twenty-four, he was studying agricultural economics, a path chosen partly for passion, partly for escape.
He had always loved the earth. As a boy in Rome, he would slip away from tutors to dig his hands into the soil, dreaming of vines, olives, and fields. His grandfather's stories of vineyards had filled him with longing. He had once told Isabella that he wanted to build a farm of his own.
Her reaction had been sharp, dismissive. "You? A farmer? You were born for more than dirt under your fingernails."
The words had cut him, though he never told her.
In Oxford, he chased that dream anyway, but quietly, modestly, unlike Isabella's flamboyant hunger for success. His life was measured: lectures, long walks through gardens, evenings spent sketching farm plans in notebooks.
Yet he carried a heaviness that no textbook could erase. The heaviness of being the forgotten child, the one neither mother nor father had fought for. His letters to Isabella had dwindled because her replies, when they came at all, were filled with demands, complaints, or thinly veiled manipulations.
Still, he kept a small photograph of her in his wallet. He didn't know why. Perhaps some part of him still wanted her to look at him and say, "You are enough."
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Emilia – The Youngest
In Milan, the nights belonged to Emilia. At twenty-one, she was a storm that refused to be contained. The city adored her recklessness: her sharp fashion sense, her whirlwind romances, her appearances at bars and underground clubs.
But beneath the glamour was a trail of wreckage. Debts, broken friendships, whispered scandals.
She drank too much, laughed too loud, and every now and then, in moments of weakness, she would slam a glass against a wall and scream her mother's name.
Because Isabella haunted her too.
Emilia had been the closest to her mother once. She remembered curling up against her chest, begging her not to leave before another trip or another fight. But Isabella had always been chasing something bigger—money, power, validation. Emilia grew older, grew angrier, until love curdled into rage.
Now, whenever someone compared her to her mother, Emilia snapped. "Don't you dare," she hissed, even though the truth was inescapable. The sharpness in her eyes, the hunger for recognition, the refusal to back down—all of it was Isabella's reflection.
Sometimes, when the city lights dimmed and silence settled over her apartment, Emilia cried herself to sleep. But no one saw that. In public, she was fire, unstoppable, untouchable.
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The Threads Between Them
Though they lived apart, the siblings were bound by an unspoken thread: the shadow of Isabella.
Clara wrote occasionally to Marco, their exchanges polite but strained. Marco, ever the mediator, sometimes reached out to Emilia, though she often ignored him. The three had not been in the same room together in years.
They each pretended the distance was their choice, but deep down, they all knew it was Isabella who had fractured them. Her ambition, her constant battles, her refusal to soften had left no safe place for them to land.
And yet, despite everything, none of them could fully sever her from their hearts.
Clara still drafted unsent letters.
Marco still carried her photograph.
Emilia still screamed her name in drunken rages.
It was as though Isabella's presence was tattooed on their souls, a mark they could never erase.
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The Crossroads
One night, Clara received a call from an old family acquaintance. The news was brief but heavy: Isabella was once again stirring trouble, chasing vineyards in Tuscany, making enemies of Elena and Luca.
Clara sat in her Paris apartment long after the call ended, staring out at the Seine. A dozen emotions twisted in her chest—anger, exhaustion, but also fear.
In Oxford, Marco heard similar whispers through academic contacts tied to agriculture. He frowned, closing his notebook. He thought of the vineyard his grandfather had once cherished, and how his mother now sought to claim it.
In Milan, Emilia laughed when she heard. "Of course she's at it again," she told a friend over cocktails. But later, alone, she kicked off her heels and whispered, "Why can't she stop?"
Each child reacted differently, but all three felt the same invisible pull: their mother was still shaping their lives, even from a distance.
And none of them knew yet whether they would one day be forced to confront her—or each other.
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Isabella's Children in Silence
That night, in Florence, Isabella sat at her vanity again, unaware that her children—scattered across Paris, Oxford, and Milan—were thinking of her at that very moment.
For all her failures as a mother, she still lived inside them, like a wound that refused to heal.
And though they would never admit it, each one of them still longed—desperately, painfully—for the day she would look at them and say the words she had never managed to give:
"I am proud of you. You are enough."
But Isabella was far too busy plotting her next move to notice the silence of the children who had once been her world.
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