Adison’s POV
I guide Violet toward the leather sofa in my office, my hand steady on her shoulder even as she trembles beneath my touch. She collapses into the cushions like someone who's been holding herself upright through sheer force of will.
Zachary moves to the small bar cart in the corner with quiet efficiency. Ice clinks against crystal. Water pours in a steady stream that fills the silence while Violet tries to reassemble herself.
He crosses the room and offers her the glass. She takes it with both hands, her fingers wrapping around it like an anchor.
"Thank you." Her voice comes out raspy. Damaged. She takes a long sip, then sets the glass down on the side table with careful precision. "Though I'd rather have something stronger."
"You're nineteen." Zachary's tone carries no judgment. Just fact.
Violet's head snaps up. Something flickers behind her red-rimmed eyes—defiance breaking through the devastation.
"How old are you?" The question lands sharp. Challenging.
"Thirty-five."
"Ancient." She almost smiles. Almost. "Practically fossilized."
"Practically." He doesn't rise to the bait, but something shifts in the air between them. An edge neither of them acknowledges.
I settle into the chair across from Violet, leaning forward to catch her gaze.
"Tell me what happened." My voice comes out gentle but firm. "After I left your mother's apartment."
Violet's composure fractures again. Her hands twist together in her lap, knuckles white with pressure.
"I was in the hallway." The words tumble out halting and raw. "I heard everything she told you. About Walter. About Richard. About keeping the secret for twenty-four years."
"You were listening."
"I've gotten good at listening." Something bitter crosses her face. "It's the only way I ever learned anything real in that family."
I wait. Give her space to find the next words.
"After you left, I confronted her." Violet's voice drops. "I asked her why I was never enough. Why she held Walter up as this perfect standard when he wasn't even—" She stops. Swallows hard. "When he wasn't even fully a Snyder."
"What did she say?"
"That I'm impulsive. Difficult. An embarrassment to manage." Each word lands like something she's been carrying too long. "That Walter understood responsibility while I just squandered opportunities and expected applause for my mediocrity."
The assessment hangs in the air between us. Brutal. Calculated. Designed to wound.
"So I packed a backpack and left." Violet gestures at the bag lying on the floor where it fell. "Because going back to that apartment means drowning in reminders of how little I ever mattered to her."
Zachary leans against my desk, his expression thoughtful.
"The ranch changed you." He says it like an observation. Not a compliment. "You're seeing beyond surfaces now. Valuing substance over possessions."
Violet stares at him. The words land somewhere she wasn't expecting, and I watch her struggle with how to receive them.
"I don't—" She stops. Starts again. "That's not—"
"It's a compliment." I keep my voice steady. "Take it."
She looks between us, her defenses crumbling piece by piece. Something vulnerable breaks through the sarcasm she wears like armor.
"You can stay with me." The offer leaves my mouth without hesitation. "My apartment has space. You're not going back to Victoria's."
"Adison." Zachary's voice carries a warning. Strategic caution I know too well. "She's Walter's sister."
The words land precisely where he intends them. A reminder of allegiances and bloodlines that can't be ignored.
Violet straightens. Her eyes burn with something fierce.
"Walter is my enemy too." The conviction in her voice cuts through every doubt. "More than yours, maybe. Because he's spent my entire life making me feel worthless while my mother was hiding the fact that he wasn't even what everyone thought he was."
I lean forward, catching her gaze directly.
"Not your enemy." My voice carries weight. Intention. "Our brother is our enemy."
The correction settles between us like a binding contract. Violet's breath catches, and I watch understanding dawn across her tear-streaked face.
Our brother. Not hers alone. Not mine alone. Ours.
"Everything ahead carries risk." Zachary pushes off the desk, his expression hardening into strategy. "If Walter discovers you've allied with Adison, he'll retaliate. Against both of you."
"Let him try." Violet stands, wiping her face with the back of her hand. The girl who collapsed in my doorway is gone, replaced by something harder. Something certain. "I'm ready for war."
I watch her stand there—backpack on the floor, mascara streaked across her cheeks, posture rigid with newfound conviction—and something clicks into place.
I know this girl.
Not because I've spent weeks with her at the ranch. Not because we've bonded over shared trauma or mutual enemies.
I know her because I've been her.
The one dismissed. The one deemed insufficient. The one who had to claw her way toward recognition while everyone around her measured her worth against impossible standards.
She annoyed me at the ranch. Frustrated me with her games and manipulations and desperate attempts to prove something to people who would never see her clearly.
But standing here in my office, choosing alliance over family, choosing truth over comfort—she's not that girl anymore.
She's someone I recognize in ways that matter.
"Then we prepare together." I stand, crossing to where she's planted herself like a flag. "All three of us."
Zachary nods once. Strategic acceptance.
Violet's hands stop shaking. Her spine straightens with something I haven't seen in her before—purpose that runs deeper than rebellion. Conviction that doesn't need performance to validate it.
"Where do we start?" Her voice comes out steady now. Clear.
I glance at Zachary, then back to Violet.
"With everything Walter doesn't know we know." My voice hardens into the tone I use in boardrooms. The one that makes grown men reassess their positions. "And then we dismantle his strategy piece by piece until he understands what it costs to threaten a family."
The word lands deliberately. Intentional.
Family.
Not blood. Not an obligation. But choice.
Violet's eyes shine with something that might be tears or might be steel.
"Good." She picks up her backpack, shouldering it with new purpose. "Because I'm done being the weak link everyone overlooks."
I watch her stand there—broken open and rebuilt in the span of an afternoon—and I know exactly what comes next.
War. Strategy. Alliance forged in the fire of shared enemies and mutual survival.
Walter wanted to destroy me.
He's about to discover he created something far more dangerous instead.