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nAs Nora walked away with one of her hand pulling the ragged doll she met her brother Daniel.

n“Did you hear her scream?” the boy asked her to which Nora only nodded. He then whispered, “I think she’s a ghost,” the boy scared his younger sibling.

n“G-ghost?” the little girl asked wide eyed in fear.

n*”Yes. Why do you think he didn’t take her with her? He’s left her here so that she can take away all of us,” he laughed before going to his room. *

nThe girl stood there absoultely petrified with what her brother said before going back to where her mother was. Opening the door wide this time, she stepped in.

n“Mother?” Nora called standing behind the woman.

n*”Hmm, Nora? What are you doing out of your bed, child?” Helen asked, running her hand over her daughters head. Her mother spoke in a quiet voice to her so that it wouldn’t disturb the girl resting on bed. *

n“I am scared, mother. Could you tuck me into bed please?”

n*”Oh sweetie. Why don’t you ask daddy to do it today? Your sister isn’t doing very well and it looks like she needs someone with her right now,” when Nora looked down, she saw that her mother was holding the girl’s hand. She didn’t like it. Nora wanted to come in terms that she had got a sister now but she didn’t like it that this new sister of hers was taking away all the affection of her mother from her. *

n*With days that passed by her mother spent more time with the girl than she spent with her. It wasn’t an arguable fact as the girl that was brought into their house always seemed so scared and often well sick due to which Helen Curtis poured her hours to look after the fragile girl. But Nora being young, took it in an entire different way. In the child’s eyes, her mother was being stolen by another girl of her age. It was her mother, her family and with every week that passed by, Nora considered Heidi to be no family of hers. *

nHeidi had always taken away things from her. She was the woman who robbed her happiness. It was as if people were charmed by her.

n“You have been very quiet,” she heard Dorian speak, “I brought you something,” he threw a box on the bed.

nBending forward, Nora picked the box. Opening it with eager fingers, she saw it was necklace.

n“This is beautiful,” she thanked him.

n“I thought so too. I will see you later then,” Nora waited for him to say something more, something of greater value or at least kiss her before he left the room but he did nothing sort of that.

nOnce she looked back down at the delicate piece of jewellery her mood brightened up again.

nIt was alright, thought Nora to herself, she had the Duke to help her in bringing down Heidi along with the high class of vampires. And it wasn’t that she was sitting being just pretty. Her family might have underestimated her but that didn’t mean she did too. A woman’s hate and revenge was boundless. She couldn’t believe that her so called sister had already made a friend there. She had fallen in love with Dorian Scathlok and she knew to trap a man like him was difficult and would take time but it sometimes felt that he prioritized her sister. Nora disliked Heidi to an extent that she had gone to the point of killing her. With the contacts the Duke Scathlok had, she had used them cleverly to get the required insights to know about her sister and her current surroundings. The men she had finally gathered to do the deed with the help of her uncle by feeding lies to them didn’t work well. Unfortunately, Heidi’s luck was stronger than she expected that the day she calculated went awry because Heidi hadn’t gone to the Meyers mansion that day and the men had killed a maid instead.

nHeidi was a small pawn in the plan the Duke devised and even if she was gone, there wouldn’t be any loss as the Dorian would come up with an alternative task. She wanted her gone and that was all that mattered to her.

nShe fell back on the bed while taking a deep breath from the mattress. She would search for another plan, thought Nora with a devious smile on her lips.

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