Ethan's POV
I knew something was wrong the moment I walked into the Sunday family brunch and Olivia's seat was empty.
"Where's Liv?" I asked, trying to keep my tone casual as I poured myself coffee.
Mother looked up from her poached eggs, smiling. "Oh, didn't she tell you? She's been offered a position at our London branch. Senior Vice President of European Operations. Isn't that wonderful?"
The coffee cup froze halfway to my lips. "London."
"Yes! She'll be managing the entire European portfolio. It's a tremendous opportunity for her career." Mother beamed with pride. "Your father and I are so pleased. She leaves next week."
Next week.
The cup shattered in my hand.
"Ethan!" Mother gasped as coffee splattered across the white tablecloth. "Are you alright?"
"Fine." I grabbed a napkin, barely feeling the hot liquid burning my skin. "When did she apply for this position?"
"A few months ago, apparently. She wanted to make sure everything was finalized before telling us. You know how Olivia is—always so thoughtful, not wanting to get our hopes up."
Thoughtful. That's what Mother thought this was.
I knew better.
Olivia was running. From me.
I tried calling her seventeen times that day. Every call went straight to voicemail.
"Ethan, I can't talk right now. I'll call you back."
"Ethan, I'm in a meeting."
"Ethan, please stop calling."
Finally, on the eighteenth attempt, she answered.
"What do you want?" Her voice was tired, defeated.
"London? Really, Olivia?"
"You're running away."
"I'm accepting a career opportunity," she said carefully. "Something you should understand, being CEO and all."
"Don't play games with me. This is about what I said in the car."
"This is about a lot of things." I heard her take a shaky breath. "I can't do this anymore, Ethan. I can't live under your constant surveillance. I can't watch you destroy every relationship I try to have. I need space."
"Space." I laughed bitterly. "You need an entire ocean between us for space?"
"Yes. I do."
The finality in her voice made something crack inside my chest. "You're not going."
"I wasn't asking for permission."
"Olivia—"
"Goodbye, Ethan."
She hung up.
I stared at my phone, rage and desperation warring inside me. She thought she could leave? Just pack up and disappear across the Atlantic?
She had no idea who she was dealing with.
I spent the next three days trying to sabotage the transfer. I called in favors, pressured board members, even considered fabricating a reason why the London office couldn't take her.
But Father caught wind of my interference.
"My office. Now." His voice on the intercom was ice-cold.
I found him behind his desk, his expression thunderous. "Want to explain why I'm getting calls from three board members about you trying to block Olivia's transfer?"
"It's a bad business decision. She's too valuable here—"
"Cut the bullshit, Ethan." He slammed his hand on the desk. "This isn't about business. This is about whatever sick obsession you've developed with your sister."
My blood ran cold. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you?" He pulled out a folder, tossing it across the desk. "David Chen. Marcus Rivera. James Thornton. Ryan Mitchell. Tom Patterson. Should I continue? Every single man who's shown interest in Olivia in the past year has been fired, transferred, or professionally destroyed. And every single order traced back to you."
Fuck. I'd been sloppy. Too focused on eliminating threats to notice the pattern I was leaving behind.
"I was protecting her—"
"You were isolating her." Father's voice was disgusted. "I told you to watch over her, to keep her safe. Not to drive away every potential suitor like some jealous boyfriend."
"They weren't good enough for her."
"No one is good enough for her in your eyes. And do you know why?" He leaned forward
"Because you want her for yourself."
"She's my sister," I said carefully.
"Is she?" Father's eyes narrowed. "Or is she something else to you? Something you have no right to want?"
I said nothing. What could I say? He was right.
"Let her go, Ethan." His voice softened slightly. "Let her build a life away from here, away from you. Maybe the distance will help you... recalibrate whatever's broken inside you."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I'll remove you as CEO. Don't test me on this. Olivia is my daughter, and I will protect her from anyone who threatens her happiness. Even you. Especially you."
I left his office feeling like I'd been gutted.
The day Olivia left, I didn't go to the airport. I couldn't. Watching her walk away would destroy the last shred of control I had left.
Instead, I sat in my apartment, drinking scotch and staring at my phone.
She didn't call.
She didn't text.
She just... left.
For the first time in my life, something that belonged to me was out of reach.
The first month was hell.
I threw myself into work, staying at the office until 2 AM, sleeping on the couch in my office more often than in my own bed. Anything to avoid going home to the empty silence.
Mother called weekly with updates. Olivia had found a flat in Kensington. Olivia loved her new team. Olivia had been invited to a gallery opening by a colleague named Sebastian.
That last one made me put my fist through the wall.
"Are you alright, darling?" Mother's concerned voice filtered through the phone. "That was quite a noise."
"I'm fine. Just dropped something."
"You should visit her. I think she misses you, even if she won't admit it."
Misses me. If only Mother knew how complicated that statement was.
"Maybe," I lied.
But I didn't visit. Because I didn't trust myself alone with her. Not when the distance had only sharpened my need instead of dulling it.
Six months passed. Then a year.
Olivia came home for Christmas, but she stayed with our parents and left before New Year's. I barely saw her—just a few strained hours at family dinner where she avoided my gaze and left the room whenever we were alone.
The message was clear: she wanted nothing to do with me.
It should have been a relief. It should have been a sign that I was doing the right thing by staying away.
Instead, it felt like dying slowly.
Eighteen months after she left, I was in a board meeting when my phone buzzed with a text from Mother.
Call me immediately. Family emergency.
I excused myself, my heart pounding. Was it Olivia? Was she hurt?
"What's wrong?" I demanded the moment Mother answered.
"It's about Olivia." Her voice was strange. Shaken. "There's been a... discovery. Your father and I need you to come home immediately. We need to discuss something as a family."
"What kind of discovery?"
"Not over the phone. Just come home. We've already called Olivia back from London. She'll be here tomorrow."
The call ended, and I stood in the hallway
Something had happened. Something big enough to call Olivia home after all this time.
The next day, I arrived at the family estate to find my parents in the living room with a young woman I'd never seen before.
She was beautiful—dark hair like Mother's, sharp cheekbones like Father's. She looked like she belonged in our family portrait.
More than Olivia ever had.
The thought struck me suddenly.
Olivia had always stood out. Her features softer, her coloring slightly different. We'd all dismissed it as genetic variation.
But looking at this stranger who could have been our parents' clone...
"Ethan, this is Charlotte Montgomery," Father said heavily. "Sit down. We have something to tell you."
I sat, my mind racing.
"Twenty years ago, there was a mistake at the hospital," Mother began, tears streaming down her face. "Charlotte and Olivia were born on the same day, in the same hospital. And somehow, they were... switched."
"What are you saying?"
"Charlotte is our biological daughter." Father's voice cracked. "Olivia is not."
Not our daughter.
Not my sister.
NOT. MY. SISTER.
The words echoed in my head like a prayer, like a curse, like the answer to every dark wish I'd made in the past thirteen years.
"Does Olivia know?" My voice came out hoarse.
"She'll be here within the hour. We wanted to tell you first, prepare you—"
But I wasn't listening anymore.
Because everything had just changed.
Every moral boundary I'd been fighting against, every line I'd refused to cross, every reason I'd had to stay away—all of it crumbled to dust.
Olivia wasn't my sister.
She never had been.
She was just... Olivia.
And she was mine.
I heard her car pull up the driveway exactly an hour later.Heard her voice, confused and concerned, asking Mother what was wrong.
And then I heard the crying.
Charlotte, sobbing as our parents explained the situation. Olivia's shocked silence. The pain in Mother's voice as she apologized over and over for not knowing, for raising the wrong daughter.
I should have been in there. Should have been providing support, playing the role of the dutiful son.
But all I could think about was cornering Olivia alone. Finally telling her the truth. Finally taking what should have been mine from the beginning.
When the initial explanations were over, when Charlotte had cried herself out and our parents were discussing next steps, I found Olivia trying to slip out the back door.
"Going somewhere?"
She turned around, her face pale
need air."
"We need to talk."
"I can't talk to you right now, Ethan. I just found out my entire life has been a lie—"
"Come with me." I caught her wrist, pulling her toward my old study. "Five minutes."
"Ethan, I really can't—"
But I was already closing the door behind us, locking it with a decisive click.
She backed up against the wall, looking trapped and fragile and so fucking beautiful it hurt.
"Do you know how long I've been waiting for this?"
"Waiting for what?"
"For you to not be my sister anymore."
"Ethan, we grew up together. We were raised as siblings—"
"We were never siblings. Not where it counted." I closed the distance between us, backed her against the wall with my hands on either side of her head. "Do you think I didn't notice how you looked at me? How you trembled every time I got close? How you ran away the moment you realized I wanted you?"
"This is insane—"
"Is it? Or is it the sanest thing either of us has felt in years?" My hand came up to cup her face, and she shuddered.
cup her face, and she shuddered. "There's nothing wrong with us now, Liv. No blood relation. No moral boundary. Just two people who want each other."
"You're delusional if you think—"
"Am I?" I leaned in close, my lips barely brushing her ear. "Tell me you don't feel it. Tell me these past two years in London, you haven't thought about me. About us. About what could be if we stopped fighting this."
Her silence was answer enough.
"I can't," she whispered. "Even if we're not biologically related, we were still raised as family. It's still wrong."
"I don't care about wrong anymore." My thumb traced her lower lip, and her pupils dilated. "I've been in hell for two years, Olivia. Knowing you were an ocean away, possibly with other men, living a life I wasn't part of. Do you have any idea what that did to me?"
"That's not my problem. You're the one who—"
"Who loves you?" The confession tore out of me. "Who's been in love with you since you were thirteen years old and I was sixteen? Who's spent every day since then trying to be good enough, worthy enough, patient enough?"
Tears slipped down her cheeks. "Don't do this."
"It's already done." I captured her mouth with mine.
She fought me before melting against me, her hands fisting in my shirt, her mouth opening under mine like she'd been starving for this too.
God, she tasted really good.
When we finally broke apart, both breathing hard, her eyes were wild with panic. "I can't stay here. I have to go back to London—"
"No."
"Ethan—"
"You're not leaving me again." My grip on her waist tightened. "I let you run once. I won't make that mistake twice."
"You can't keep me here against my will—"
"Watch me."
And I meant it. Now that the universe had finally given me what I wanted—what I'd been denied for thirteen agonizing years—I wasn't letting her go.
Not for anything.
Not for anyone.
She was mine now.
Finally, completely mine