The CEO's Regret: You made me your lie, I become your Loss-Chapter 79: Yield

"Then let it be quiet," Amara said, her voice steadying. "For tonight, you don’t have to be a mirror. You don’t have to be a daughter, or a rival, or a copy. You can just be... here."

Amira pulled back slightly, her eyes swollen and raw. She looked at Amara, really looked at her, not as a target, but as a witness.

"Why are you being kind? After everything? After the pain I cost you, after the lies... why are you holding me?"

Amara tucked a stray, matted hair behind Amira’s ear, a small, sad smile touching her lips. "Because I’m tired too, sister. I’m just as tired as you are."

Amira pulled back, her eyes searching Amara’s face, looking for the inevitable blade of judgment she had spent a lifetime anticipating.

Instead, she found only a mirror not of the hatred she had projected, but of the shared, hollow ache of being tired of the world.

"You are perfect just as I am, just like our mother and father," Amara said, her voice softening as she reflected on their shared history.

"You are unique, with your own flaws, but Amira, you can be whoever you want to be, not just what anyone else expects, not even our father. I love him dearly; he was truly the best father I could have asked for. But what he said to you came from his own pain, and he shouldn’t have directed that at you. I’m really sorry, Amira."

Amira let out a bitter, jagged laugh that hitched into a sob. "He called me a lying whore. That was the day he finally threw me away. He told me I had the same tainted blood as my mother. He told me that no matter what I did, I would never be a true Piers. And I believed him. God, I believed him so much I started acting the part. I became the monster he told me I was."

Amara gripped her sister’s hands, her hold firm, anchoring her. "But that’s the trap, isn’t it? If you accept his definition of you, he wins. Even now, with him gone, he’s still in your head, dictating your value. You aren’t tainted. You’re just a person who was starved for a father’s love and fed a diet of his malice instead."

"It’s too late," Amira whispered, looking down at her own trembling hands. "Look at what I’ve done. Look at how much of your life I’ve poisoned. Even if I wanted to change, even if I wanted to be... me... the damage is already carved into the wood. I’m a broken thing, Amara. Some things can’t be glued back together."

Amara leaned in, her gaze intense and unyielding. "I’m not trying to glue you back to who you were. I don’t want the girl who looks for every reason to hurt me, or the one who lied to Seb, or the one who lived in the shadow of my life. I want to know who is left when the performance stops. Because if you’re a mirror, Amira, then who is standing behind the glass?"

Amira went quiet. The room felt immense, the silence no longer terrifying, but heavy with the weight of unchosen possibilities.

"I don’t know," Amira confessed, the admission small and terrifying. "I haven’t been anyone in so long, I’m afraid that if I stop pretending, I’ll just disappear entirely."

"Then you stay here," Amara said, her voice dropping into a soft, resolute promise. "You stay here until you remember how to breathe for yourself. Not for Father, not for Seb, not even for me. Just for you."

For the first time in their lives, the hierarchy of the good daughter and the bad daughter evaporated. They weren’t sisters in the way the world saw them, they were two survivors sitting in the ruins of a house built on secrets and wanting to be just friends.

The silence in the room after that talk was heavy, not with the friction of their long-standing war, but with the fragile, wavering energy of a ceasefire. Amara continued to hold her sister, her own heart feeling lighter than it had in years, as if the truth, however painful, had acted as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting away the rot of their shared history.

Just then, the door handle turned. It was a slow, deliberate motion.

Julian stepped into the room, his hand still resting on the wood, his eyes scanning the space with the protective intensity of a man who lived to guard Amara’s peace. He had likely heard the commotion from the hall and rushed up, expecting to find an intruder or a threat.

He froze.

He didn’t see the woman who had spent months orchestrating Amara’s misery. He saw two women huddled together on the bed, one weeping, the other steady, both stripped of their armor.

"Amara?" Julian’s voice was low, his posture relaxing, but he remained at the entrance, wary. His gaze flickered to Amira, his expression hardening instinctively. "What is she doing here? Amara, I can have security remove her immediately if you want."

Amara looked up, her hand still resting on her sister’s shoulder. She saw the flash of panic in Amira’s eyes, the instinct to bolt, to become the villain he expected her to be.

"No," Amara said, her voice quiet but firm. She didn’t let go of Amira. "It’s fine, Julian."

Julian blinked, his analytical mind clearly racing to catch up. He looked at the two of them, then back at Amara’s face, searching for a trace of intimidation. Finding none, he slowly let go of the doorframe and stepped fully into the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

He didn’t demand an explanation. He didn’t lecture her on the danger or the history. He simply walked to the side of the bed and sat down, his presence acting as a grounding force, acknowledging that he trusted her judgment implicitly. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"She’s just... she’s exhausted, Julian," Amara whispered, leaning her head against his arm as he sat. "And so am I. I have my sister back, Julian."

Amira watched them, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow. She seemed to realize, for the first time, what Julian actually was to Amara, not a prize, not a trophy of power, but a partner. The kind of person who sat in the rubble of someone else’s nightmare without asking for a thank you.

"I didn’t think you’d believe her," Amira muttered, looking at her sister. "I expected you to throw me out. I expected you to be the good one and make me crawl."

"I’m done being the good one if it means being a saint," Amara replied, her voice tinged with a newfound, steely resolve.

"Given all that I’ve experienced in my life, I can assure you that being good isn’t really on the table for me. I could definitely use a bit of chaos. I want to embrace the colorful and fun side of life."

"I bet you could," Amira smiled.

"Well, I’ll leave you, girls, to it. I’ll see you tomorrow, Amara, and I’ll give you a call," Julian said with a gentle smile. It was as if he could read Amara’s thoughts.

He didn’t lean in for a kiss or anything; he just offered her a soft smile before walking out the door. He had to resist the urge to kiss Amara goodbye like he usually did, knowing that Amira was there. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel inadequate or start wishing she were still her sister.

The room felt different now after he left. The air was no longer thick with the smoke of old battles. It was quiet. The heavy, suffocating grief that had filled the mansion for days seemed to crack under the weight of Amara’s sudden, frantic energy. It was the kind of lightness that only comes after you’ve hit the absolute bottom.

"Come on now," Amara said, her eyes bright with a desperate sort of mischief as she tugged at Amira’s arm.

"What? I don’t want to do anything!" Amira cried, her voice thick with the remnants of her sob, her body still heavy with the exhaustion of her confession.

Amara stopped, looking at her sister with a look that was both fierce and tender. "Since we are being crazy just for tonight, let’s go all out."

Amira blinked, wiping a stray tear with the back of her hand. "What do you mean?"

Amara didn’t answer with words. Instead, she practically forced Amira into the en-suite marble bathroom, starting the warm water and ignoring Amira’s weak protests. It wasn’t just a bath; it was a washing away of the lying whore label, the island, and the shadow of the Piers’ name.

When Amira finally emerged, wrapped in a plush white robe, Amara was standing there with a pair of professional styling shears. Before Amira could recoil, the blades went snip. Amira’s long, dark brown hair fell to the floor like discarded memories.

"I always liked short hair," Amara whispered, her tongue poked out in concentration as she shaped a chic, blunt bob. She stepped back, her eyes shining. "It suits you. It makes you look like... you."

Amira looked in the mirror. For the first time, she didn’t see a copy of Amara. She saw a woman with sharp features and a haunting, modern beauty that was entirely her own. A slow smirk spread across her face. "I want red hair. Do you have dye?"

"No," Amara laughed, "but the servants can get it."

Within twenty minutes, a bewildered but obedient maid had delivered professional-grade crimson dye. The two sisters sat on the floor of the vast bedroom, towels draped over their shoulders, the scent of chemicals and rosewater filling the air.

Amara’s hands were stained pink as she carefully massaged the vibrant color into Amira’s new short cut. They weren’t talking about fathers or cliffs or dead children anymore. They were arguing over the best way to rinse and giggling like they were back in the nursery.

The sound of their laughter was genuine, high-pitched, and wild, echoing down the hallway, a sound the Pedro mansion hadn’t heard in years.

The door creaked open. Madam Pedro stood in the door, her silk robe trailing behind her. She had come prepared to fight Amira off when she heard the noise, or perhaps to comfort Amara from another nightmare.

Instead, she stopped dead.

She saw Amara, her face smeared with a smudge of red dye, doubled over in laughter because Amira had just made a ridiculous face. She saw Amira, her hair a shocking, fiery crimson, looking alive for the first time in a decade.

Madam Pedro didn’t say a word. She leaned against the doorframe, a small, stunned smile touching her lips.

She watched the two girls, no longer rivals but simply two sisters finding joy in the middle of a wreckage, filled with the hum of three people who had all, in their own ways, been defined by the same man’s shadow, now choosing to stand in the light of their own reality.