Chapter 196: This Shirt Is Expensive

Savannah “Chloe?” The name slipped out of my mouth before I could tame the disbelief clawing up my throat. For weeks—maybe months—I’d secretly clung to the hunch that she might be alive. That perhaps she had staged her disappearance, that she wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere. A dark, guilty part of me had even imagined finding her in a place exactly like this: a cheap, dingy apartment filled with lowlife criminals. But imagining something and seeing it were two different monsters entirely. My world tilted. Because there she was—my sister—sitting cross-legged on the bed like she hadn’t torn our family apart piece by piece. She smirked. “Hello, Sav.” My breath caught in my chest. “You’re alive. You’re—Chloe, you’re alive.” She rolled her eyes like I’d just told her the sky was blue. Her arms folded across her chest, her posture annoyingly nonchalant. She wore a fitted white top and dark blue skinny jeans. Nothing about her was disheveled or distressed, not even her hair. She looked good.