Raising the Villainess

The pen was already in my hand when the red letters floated across my vision.

[Not her! The sweet one's cute, sure but she's got zero sense. She burns the whole family fortune down for a boy!]

[Look at the corner. That dark little girl glaring at everyone. That's your future business queen terrifying now, but give her a scrap of love and she turns into the fiercest guard dog your family will ever have.]

[Choose the villain, not the heroine! This life, I want to watch her rewrite her whole rotten fate!]

My grip stopped on the pen.

I looked past the crowd of children, to the corner. A small girl sat with her arms locked around her knees, eyes hard as a cornered wolf's.

I set the pen down. I smiled at the director.

"That one too. I'll take her."

Years from now, the whole world would watch how this ended my "villain" walking a con man straight into a prison cell, my "heroine" smiling as she pressed play on a recording. From the second I put that pen down, someone else was holding the script.

Chapter 1

Director Harriet clearly hadn't seen that coming. She followed my finger and her face pinched.

"Anne, she's... a difficult child. A family adopted her before. Sent her back in two days. Said she wouldn't sleep, just sat up watching them in the dark. Gave them the creeps." She hesitated. "Are you sure you don't want to think about Candy instead?"

Candy was the sweet one. She heard her name and blinked up at me, wide-eyed, innocent, genuinely hard not to love.

But the letters in front of me had lost their minds.

[Two-faced alert! Candy's already turning on the waterworks. Last life this exact move got the adoptive mother to throw her own daughter out on the street.]

[Anne isn't dangerous, she's scared! She stays up guarding the family. Those idiots just couldn't see it!]

So that was the deal.

A villainess-gets-her-glow-up story crossed with a bossy-CEO romance. Great. Two scripts in one.

I walked over to Anne and crouched down.

Her head snapped up. Black-and-white eyes, all guard, a small animal deciding whether to bite.

"I'm not going with you." Her voice came out rough, cold in a way no kid that age should own.

I dug a White Rabbit candy out of my pocket, peeled the wrapper, and held it to her lips.

"Come home with me. Anybody messes with you, I'll go knock their teeth in. That includes the crybaby over there."

Anne froze. Her eyes locked on the candy. Her throat moved.

Beside her, at the word crybaby, Candy's eyes flooded on cue.

The letters went wild.

[HOLD UP. This mom is savage. I'm obsessed.]

[Handled both of them in one sentence. THIS is the mother a leading-lady script deserves.]

I laughed and tucked the candy into Anne's mouth, then reached over and ruffled Candy's hair too.

"Quit crying. You're coming too. House could use a little noise."

The paperwork went through fast. My husband, a man of very few words and absolute obedience, took one small hand each, and we brought two wildly different children home.

Our place was a detached house with a yard.

"Whoa! It's huge!" Candy spun in circles the second she was through the door, a happy little butterfly.

Anne just stood in the doorway. Silent. Both hands clamped on her battered backpack, eyes sweeping the room for exits.

I moved to reach for her hand and a line of blood-red text bled across my vision, so bright it stung.

[Host. Don't let this quiet fool you. In the original story, the first month these two share a home is exactly where Anne breaks for good. The clock's already running.]

Chapter 2

The letters started up again.

[Look at Anne flinch at everything. She's been through so much. My heart.]

[Candy adjusts fast, though. Almost a little too fine with all this, no?]

I crouched to hand them slippers.

"This is your home now. Two bedrooms upstairs, both face south. Pick one each, or share your call."

"I want the pink one!" Candy called out, not shy about it.

Anne pressed her lips together. "Whatever's fine. I can take the storage room."

My eyebrows went down. I flicked her lightly on the forehead.

"Don't talk nonsense. Nobody in this house sleeps in a storage room. Candy took pink, so the blue one's yours. And if you hate both, I'll call a crew tomorrow and gut the whole thing."

Anne cupped her forehead and stared at me like I'd short-circuited.

Like no one had ever been this rough with her and somehow it landed as warmth.

That night, I left the hallway light on. On purpose.

When I got up for water around midnight, Anne's door stood open a crack.

Through the gap I saw the small shape. Not on the soft bed. On the floor, wrapped in her blanket, facing the door a sharpened pencil clutched in one fist.

The letters blurred with tears.

[God. She's protecting herself. And she's protecting this new home too.]

I let out a slow breath, pretended I'd seen nothing, and just said loudly on my way past:

"Honey, you lock up the doors and windows? Our alarm's wired straight to the police. Not even a fly gets in here."

Inside the room, the small body eased.

Life got loud after that.

Candy was sweet, knew how to charm, and had the neighbors wrapped around her finger in a week.

Anne kept to herself, eyes always shadowed. The neighbors called her "the strange one" behind our backs.

Then came that weekend, a month in.

I was in the kitchen with a pot of soup when a crash tore through the living room.

Then Candy, screaming her lungs out.

I ran in. My favorite porcelain vase lay shattered across the floor. Candy sat in the wreckage sobbing, a thin cut opened across one finger.

Anne stood off to the side. A shard in her hand. Face blank.

"What happened here?" My voice dropped.

The letters detonated.

[HERE IT COMES. The scene! In the original, the heroine smashes the vase herself and pins it on the other girl gets her locked away three days and breaks her for good!]

[Mom, you HAVE to see through this. Do not fall for those tears!]

My stomach sank. I looked at Candy.

Candy hiccupped and pointed at Anne. "Big sister... she pushed me, that's why it broke... but I don't blame her. Mom, please don't yell at her."

Beautiful. Retreat as an attack.

I turned to Anne. "Did you push her?"

Anne's fingers tightened on the shard. Blood welled up in her palm. She gave a short, cold laugh.

"If I say I didn't would you believe me?"

Chapter 3

The look in her eyes was pure despair. Like she'd already seen how this ended for her.

I crossed the room, took Anne's hand, pried her fingers open, and threw the shard away.

Then I got the bandages from the kit. Anne first. Candy second.

Only when that was done did I speak, slow and easy.

"There's a camera in this house. Right next to the TV. Three-sixty degrees. No blind spots."

The air froze solid.

Candy's crying cut off mid-breath. The color drained out of her face.

Anne's head jerked up, something startled flickering through her eyes.

There was no camera, of course. Just a little ornament on the shelf.

But it was enough.

I held Candy's gaze. My voice went flat and serious. "I'll give you one more chance. Start over. What happened?"

Candy trembled and dropped her head. "It was me... I wanted the candy jar up on the shelf, and I knocked it over by accident... I was scared you'd yell at me..."

The candy jar. Half the reason this house always smelled like sugar.

I sighed and rested my hand on Anne's head. Felt her go rigid under my palm.

"Anne. Why didn't you defend yourself just now?"

She turned her face away. Her voice came out muffled. "No one believes me anyway."

"I do."

I said it like a door slamming shut.

"In this house, if you tell me it wasn't you, I believe you. But the day I catch someone lying to me that won't be as simple as a broken vase."

That night, for the first time, Anne came and sat on the couch on her own. Kept her distance, way down at the far end. But her eyes never left me.

The letters were cheering.

[YES. Mom is a force. Anne's armor finally cracked!]

[Candy needs straightening out, though. Or she's trouble later.]

To fix Candy's habits, and to loosen whatever was knotted up in Anne, I built a strict house points system.

Chores, good grades, telling the truth, points. Lying or dodging blame, double points off.

Points bought wishes.

At first Candy couldn't stand it. She kept trying to charm her way out of trouble.

But I don't bend. I even recruited my husband into an official Anti-Pouting Alliance.

Anne, on the other hand, turned into a points machine.

She swept, she washed dishes, she came first on every test all without a word.

Six months in, she came to me holding a hundred saved-up points.

"I want to cash in a wish."

"Go ahead."

She hesitated a long time before it came out, small and quiet. "I want... the lock on my room changed. The kind you can bolt from the inside."

Something in my chest twisted.

Still. Still that scared for her safety.

"Done. And not just the lock Mom's getting you a full LEGO castle set too. Deal?"

Anne's eyes lit for half a second. The corner of her mouth lifted. The first small smile since she'd come to this house.

Gone in an instant. But it stopped me cold, like the first thaw breaking through ice.

As for Candy after I docked her points three times and locked her favorite doll in the cabinet while she watched, she finally wised up.

She started clumsily helping Anne wipe down the tables. Usually made a bigger mess. But she stopped throwing people under the bus, at least.

That night, once both girls were asleep, a line of text I hadn't seen in a while drifted up in front of me.

[You straightened both girls out, Host. Nicely done. But have you ever stopped to think in the original script, the thing that destroyed the two of them was never the two of them?]

Chapter 4

One day I caught the two of them muttering out on the balcony.

Candy: "Sis, I don't get this problem. Teach me? I'll send you half my points through the gift function."

Anne, cold: "Who wants your points. Hand it here. God, you're hopeless, you can't even do this."

The words were all disdain. But the explaining never once stopped.

I stood there watching, and honestly, I almost cried.

Who says the wicked little villainess and the goody-two-shoes heroine can't live in peace?

Looked pretty peaceful to me.

I was about to smile and a line of text cut across my sight, dark and dull red.

[Don't celebrate yet, Host. These nine years are borrowed calm. In the original script the real blade is still out there, being sharpened at the door, just waiting for them to grow up.]

The ladle stopped halfway to the bowl.

Right. The sweeter Candy got, the tighter the wire pulled in my chest.

Time ran like water. Nine years, gone in a blink.

Both girls were in high school now.

Anne had grown into a cool, untouchable ice queen the school's famous genius, worshipped from a distance and letting no one close.

Candy had bloomed too. Willowy, sweet-faced, everyone's idea of the campus beauty, always trailed by a pack of boys tripping over themselves.

That night at dinner, the letters started screaming.

[ALERT. ALERT. The male lead is about to show up!]

[Rhys Gu, the scumbag who flips Candy's brain to romance mode and drives the whole family into bankruptcy, he's transferring in!]

[In the original, Rhys goes after Anne first, gets bored, then works on Candy. The sisters turn on each other over him. Anne breaks bad and takes her revenge, Candy runs off for "love"!]

My chopsticks jerked. The braised pork nearly hit the table.

Rhys Gu?

That legendary trust-fund prince? The walking thirst trap every girl loses her mind over?

I pulled in a breath and looked at my two daughters, heads together over some variety show.

No way was one rotten apple spoiling the two good pots of soup I'd spent nine years cooking.

I cleared my throat. "So. Hear you've got a new transfer starting tomorrow?"

Candy, chopsticks in her teeth: "Yeah! Supposedly super hot, and rich. Whole school's losing it."

Anne, not looking up: "Boring. You could do two more physics sets in that time."

I nodded, satisfied, and dropped the biggest rib onto Anne's plate.

"Anne's right. Men just slow down your draw. Especially the hot rich ones nine times out of ten, a player."

Candy pouted. "Mom, that's such a bias. What if it's real love?"

I gave a cold laugh. "Real love? Can real love put food on the table? Get you into college? Buy you a house?"

Candy stuck out her tongue and dropped it.

But I knew. A teenage flutter doesn't go quiet on a few sentences.

To lock things down, I went back to my old trade signing up as a school "volunteer."

Under cover of the PTA, I planted more than a few eyes around that campus.

The intel came within days.

This Rhys kid was a piece of work.

First thing, he bought out the whole campus store, drinks for the entire class everyone but Anne. Because, he said, the way she looked at him rubbed him wrong.

After school, I sat parked across from the gate, watching from a distance.

A boy in a school uniform hacked up six ways to Sunday, bag slung off one shoulder, had planted himself right in front of Candy.

Chapter 5

That signature smirk of his. The oily, punchable one. It made my fist curl.

The letters were screaming too.

[THAT smirk! It's greasy as hell, but on a high-school girl? Instant kill.]

[Candy's blushing! Oh no, oh no, it's starting!]

Rhys planted a hand on the wall and boxed Candy in.

"Hey, sweetheart. Word is you're the hottest girl in school. How about you be my girlfriend?"

Candy had clearly never met anything like this. She went stiff as a spooked rabbit, face red as an apple left too long on the branch.

"You get back"

"And if I don't?" Rhys leaned in closer.

I had my hand on the car door, about to launch myself out when a backpack came screaming through the air.

Crack.

Dead center, right on the back of his skull.

Rhys pitched forward, clutching his head. "Who the hell's tired of living?"

Anne stepped out of the corner, face like ice, a thick SAT prep workbook still in one hand.

She walked up, grabbed Candy, and pulled her behind her back.

"I'm her sister. Want to date her? Finish this workbook first. Accuracy under ninety percent, you're out."

Rhys laughed, furious. "Who even are you? Since when is this your business?"

Anne's eyes went cold. She looked at him like something scraped off a shoe.

"I'm your daddy."

The whole place went dead silent.

Rhys's face went red, then blotchy. His mouth opened. Nothing came out. He just stared at her.

Even I sat there stunned.

My ice-cold Anne, the one who only ever had her head down over problem sets when did she learn to talk like that?

The letters were nothing but [holy].

[QUEEN. Take my knees, take them all!]

[NOW we're talking! I ship it, I ship it so hard icy big sister and dumb-sweet little sister!]

Rhys, clearly, was livid.

From that day on, he came for Anne.

Dead rat in her desk. A tripped foot in gym. Rumors down every hallway.

Every petty, vicious little trick a boy could think of.

But here's the thing Anne didn't spare any of it a glance.

The rat went in the trash without a flicker on her face. Tripped, she got up, brushed off, kept running. The rumors didn't even earn eye contact.

Candy, on the other hand, was furious.

More than once I caught her crying under her blanket. Not for herself. For her sister.

"Mom, that Rhys is horrible! I'm telling a teacher!" she reported, eyes rimmed red.

I patted her head. "A rich kid like that, teachers won't come down too hard. Don't worry, though. Your sister's got a plan."

And sure enough, Anne's counterstrike came fast.

Midterms. Rhys ran his mouth said he'd beat Anne, and when he did, she'd call him daddy in front of everyone.

Results came out. Anne topped every board with a perfect score. Rhys landed dead last.

The whole class crowded the ranking board. Someone snapped a photo. There it was, plain for everyone Anne's name at the top, Rhys's name hanging off the very bottom, a mile of empty ranks between them.

Anne carried her results sheet across the room, in front of the whole class, right up to his desk.

"Go on. Say it."

His face went a blotchy purple.

"You you cheated!"

Anne gave a thin, contemptuous smile, picked up the test sheet off his desk, and ran her eyes down it.

Chapter 6