## SORRY, SIS##

 Episode 20: The Calculation

She thought she was safe thousands of miles away in France. She didn't know her little brother was about to start chipping away at her perfect facade.

I leaned back against my pillows, my laptop screen illuminating the dark room. It took me less than an hour of sorting through her friends' tags to find it: a locked, private profile with a fake name, but a very familiar silhouette in the display picture.

I set up a clean, burner profile with a high-end aesthetic that matched the Paris crowd, and hit the request button. Within twenty minutes, the notification popped up. Request accepted.

I immediately scrolled through her feed, and there it was—a fresh post uploaded just an hour ago from a nightclub in Paris. She was holding a cocktail, laughing, and sitting just a little too close to an attractive guy whose hand was casually draped over the back of her chair.

My finger hovered over the screenshot button. A cold, toxic rush of victory flooded my veins. I could send this to Vance right now. I could end her.

But as I looked at the image, I paused.

My red-flag mind slowed down, calculating the chessboard. If I sent him this heavy, undeniable proof of a betrayal right now, the relationship would instantly explode. Vance would leave the house. He would pack his bags out of pure grief and shame, cancel the apartment lease, and vanish from my life forever to heal his broken heart.

I couldn't do that. I couldn't destroy their relationship completely yet, because Maya was my only permanent bridge to him. That was the exact reason I had kept my mouth shut all those other times I caught her sneaking around. I couldn't just expose her; I needed Vance to be completely, hopelessly in love with me first. I needed him to be so attached to me that when the truth finally came out, he wouldn't run away. He would just run straight into my arms.

I didn't need a nuclear bomb. I needed something light. Something subtle that would planting a seed of doubt in Vance’s head, making him feel less guilty about the things we were doing in this house, without severing our connection.

I cropped the photo carefully, cutting out the other man entirely, but leaving the unmistakable edge of a male jacket sleeve and an unfamiliar watch catching the club lights right next to her shoulder. It was just enough to look suspicious. Just enough to make a protective boyfriend wonder who she was with.

I saved the cropped image to my phone, a dark, victorious smirk curling my lips.

Tomorrow morning, I would casually leave my phone open on the kitchen counter while Vance was making coffee. I would let the seed of doubt plant itself right into his brilliant, green-flag mind.

The countdown to my graduation was ticking. And Vance was running out of time to fight the inevitable.