She was fourteen when her father took her into the company boardroom for the first time. A room full of men in suits, pens poised like daggers, eyes like empty mirrors. She remembered how they looked at her—some amused, some annoyed, all underestimating her. And she remembered her father's voice, clear and proud.
"This is my daughter," he said. "She'll be taking over when the time is right. Watch her well."
That was the moment she knew power. Real, tangible power. The kind that made grown men sit straighter in their seats, that gave her the right to interrupt them mid-sentence, and they'd smile and nod and pretend they weren't seething.
She liked it. No—she loved it.
At school, the teachers treated her with careful respect, her classmates with cautious awe. Even those who tried to talk behind her back eventually gave up. She was untouchable, like a queen wrapped in glass, watching from above as the rest of them scrambled for approval, status, scholarships.
She didn't scramble. Everything she wanted was already laid at her feet.
But power, she learned, had a cost. And its price was loneliness.
She never thought she wanted friends. People were either beneath her or useful to her. The few who tried to get close were either sycophants or spineless. She liked neither.
Until Violet.
It was a Monday when Violet arrived. Rainy, grey, and cold. The school courtyard was filled with the usual chatter until a girl with cheap shoes and a threadbare cardigan stepped in through the gates. Her uniform hung awkwardly on her frame, a size too big, clearly secondhand. She carried no umbrella and was already half-soaked.
Some of the students snickered. Others rolled their eyes. She watched it all from the stone bench near the tree, sipping warm tea from a thermos her assistant had brought.
The new girl walked with her head slightly bowed, but her eyes—sharp, calm, and strangely soft—met hers for just a second.
There was no fear in them.
It annoyed her.
"Who is she?" she asked one of her followers.
"New scholarship kid. I think her name's Violet. Came from some government school. Dirt poor," the girl laughed.
She kept watching. She thought of how easy it would be to break her. To mock the shoes, the cardigan, her posture. One well-placed comment, and Violet would be crushed before the week was over.
But she didn't say anything.
Later that day, she found Violet in the hallway, trying to find her class. A few boys had cornered her, laughing cruelly.
"Maybe you got lost, sweetheart," one sneered. "The beggar school is three blocks down."
She didn't know what made her step in. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was curiosity. Or maybe, for the first time, she felt something twist in her chest.
"Touch her again," she said, voice like glass. "And I'll have your fathers fired by morning."
They paled.
She turned to Violet, who looked up at her not with gratitude... but quiet confusion.
"I didn't ask you to save me," Violet said softly.
"No," she replied. "But now you owe me."
She walked away without waiting for an answer.
The next day, Violet left a wrapped sandwich on her desk.
No name, no note.
Just a simple, warm sandwich with the edges neatly cut.
She didn't eat it. But she didn't throw it away either.
Over the months, they became... something. Not quite friends. Not quite strangers. Violet would sit beside her at lunch sometimes, talk about the books she read, the flowers she grew on her balcony. She never asked for anything. Never begged for attention. She treated her with a strange kind of normalcy, like she wasn't a monster wrapped in velvet and gold.
And she hated it.
And yet—she sought it.
She once asked Violet why she was always so calm.
Violet shrugged. "I don't have much. But I know who I am."
"And what does that mean?" she snapped.
"It means I don't need to be rich to matter."
She scoffed.
But that night, she couldn't sleep.
One evening, when everyone had left school, she found Violet standing alone in the garden, watering a row of marigolds the school gardener had abandoned.
"They're just flowers," she said.
"They bloom even in broken soil," Violet replied. "That's enough reason to care."
She laughed. "You're ridiculous."
Violet smiled. "Maybe. But at least I feel something when I look at them."
She didn't know what came over her then—but she asked, voice unusually quiet, "Do you feel something when you look at me?"
Violet looked at her, truly looked. "Yes. I feel like... you're still waiting to become who you really are."
She didn't reply.
But that night, she watered her own rose plant for the first time in years.
Now, years later, standing on the rooftop, soaked in the same kind of rain that had welcomed Violet into her life, she pressed her palm against her heart.
It hurt. Violet had been the one good thing.
And she had ruined it.