They weren't born into love.
They were born into a home of cold hands and colder eyes—a place where affection was a resource spent only on sons.
From the beginning, Nia and Liv were treated like extras in a story already written.
Two girls, after two boys. No joy. No blessing. Just a pair of matching blankets and a tired sigh.
> "At least they can share things," their mother said.
Serene, their mother, was elegance sculpted in ice—smiles for outsiders, silence for her daughters.
Arshad, their father, measured everything in value. And the twins never added up.
He called them "the extras" more than once.
He thought it was honest. They never forgot it.
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At their 10th birthday, it happened again.
One cake. Chocolate. Decorated with a soccer theme—because Zehan and Kavian liked it.
Nia didn't.
Liv did.
So Nia smiled and said,
> "It's our favorite."
She always did that—for Liv.
If the world gave them nothing, they gave each other everything.
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They stopped waiting for love and built their own instead.
Whispers at night. Doodles on notebooks.
A secret journal labeled "Our Real Life"—because the life outside their room wasn't real.
At thirteen, they stitched accessories out of broken zippers and circuit scraps.
At sixteen, they pitched their first sustainable design.
By twenty-one, they launched NL Studio—a fashion-tech brand for the bold, the unheard, the unseen.
Their debut sold out in two days.
A viral jacket design reached influencers overnight.
By month's end, they had one million followers and a waitlist two months long.
The world finally noticed them.
Their family didn't.
> "Don't let it distract you," Arshad warned. "Trends fade."
> "Try not to sound too loud in interviews," Serene added. "It's not ladylike."
Only Kavian cared enough to be angry.
> "So they give you funding just because you're twins with a story?"
"No," Liv answered once, smiling. "They give us funding because we earned it."
They never shouted.
They never needed to.
Because they had each other.
They always had.
---
At night, even in a high-rise studio apartment filled with glowing prototypes and sketchpads, they lay side by side—hands brushing in the dark.
> "We did it," Liv whispered.
"And we did it loud," Nia replied.
But no matter how loud they built their world...
They never heard the sound of betrayal until it was far too late.
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