As the story goes, Stella LaRue Ricci was a difficult baby even before her birth. So much so, in fact, that she was born nearly an hour after her sister, her wails echoing up and down the hospital corridors while doctors and nurses ran around the room attempting to finish their work so the little girl could be reunited with her older sister. It wasn't until the two girls were side-by-side again, cuddled up closely and wrapped in their matching pink receiving blankets, that she quieted down. If ever there was a lesson to be learned about the girls who would, for the rest of their lives, be so connected that they would know what the other was feeling without having to be told, it was that the only person in the world who would always be able to temper Stella's emotions, it would always be Sabina. Even though they didn't know this for themselves for the first few years of their lives, Donald and Ariel were constantly reminding the both of them of how intrinsinic to both girls their bond as twins was. Over thirty-three years later, and that simple fact remains to be true.

From childhood and throughout her teen years, Stella was the more outspoken of the Ricci girls. If one had ever thought to ask her peers, they'd be quick to compare her to the likes of Cher Horowitz and Blair Waldorf. For those who knew her, though, the money, power, and status was little more than a shield she used to hide her insecurities. As the self-proclaimed Queen of the Upper East Side, she was also what one might call a party girl, and too often Stella traded in time she could have spent studying in favor of making use of one of the best fake ID's bartenders, bouncers, and even law enforcement had ever seen. Unfortunately for her, being Donald Ricci's daughter meant that most of those people knew who she was anyway, and she couldn't count the number of times a family friend from the NYPD was carting her home with a warning that had gotten so repetitive, she was able to mockingly echo them as she made herself comfortable in the passenger seat of the squad car. It was only thanks to the help of one tutor after another that she graduated at all.

In what could be considered a reversal of roles, it was college that mellowed the younger of the Ricci girls out. Maybe it was the realization that getting through the next several years with better habits and better grades could inform the rest of her life, or maybe it was the fact that she'd partied herself out in high school. Whatever the case, it didn't take her long to buckle down and focus on her studies. She still hated doing the work it involved, and there were times where she procrastinated to the point of having to pull all-nighters in order to get a paper written or to finish reading a book she'd been putting off for months, but her grades were markedly better than they ever had been and, at some point during her time at NYU, her focus shifted entirely to what it was she would do with her life once she'd earned her degree. After all, her parents' money could only go so far, and while she knew they would always be there to fall back on should she need to use that option, it felt good to know that she could be a contributing member of society if she wanted to be.

An MBA in marketing was a goal even she would never have expected herself to ever accomplish, and doing so might have meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but what it didn't mean was a guaranteed job the day after graduating. Her degree and the experience she already had through internships and part-time jobs didn't mean much when the economy was already beginning to tank and companies weren't too keen on taking on employees who were fresh out of college when they were being forced to let go of many of the same in an effort to save money. It took a couple of years, and a little bit of help from her parents, for Stella to find a job as a marketing manager with penguin random house. It was the kind of entry-level position that basically amounted to her answering phones, taking messages, and picking up lunch for her superiors, but the need she felt to be able to provide for herself - especially after spending most of her life capitalizing on the hefty trust fund that had been set up for her - meant she was grateful for it all the same.

That entry-level position lead to more responsibilities, and those responsibilities lead to one promotion after another as she proved herself to be the kind of asset any company would be grateful to have amongst their ranks. It was during those long years, when books became even more of a luxury than they had ever been before, and during a time when it seemed as if everyone was trading in physical books for the portability of e-readers, that Stella transformed into the ultimate business woman. She learned how to do it all, and was successful in helping the publishing house ensure their profit margin was always higher than the column marked expenses. There was a lot for her to be proud of when it came to her career, and that pride was never in short supply - especially not during holiday parties and family dinners - but by the time she turned thirty years old, she was forced to admit that there was something missing in her life. It wasn't that she needed a relationship, but returning to an empty penthouse at the end of the day wasn't what she wanted.

But if the string of meaningless one night stands and flash-in-the-pan relationships in her twenties had been bad, the lack of anything fulfilling in her early thirties was even worse. It seemed that all the men she got involved with weren't looking for anything substantial, and the one thing she wasn't going to do was compromise her standards. If all she was looking for was an expensive divorce a few years down the line, that was what Las Vegas was for. It was in between Tinder dates with guys whose profile pictures almost looked as if a significant other had been cropped out that Stella decided that as much as she may have wanted someone to go home to after a long day at work, she didn't need a boyfriend or a husband to feel complete. The ticking of her biological clock was another matter entirely, and shortly after her thirty-second birthday, she made the choice to take the unconventional route to motherhood by using IUI-DI. She had no problem whatsoever being a single mother, and in September of 2016, she learned that she was already expecting.

Pregnancy comes with its own set of risks and rewards all on its own, which was something that Stella learned even before she knew she was pregnant. In fact, it was the morning sickness that had clued her in to the possibility - and later confirmed by a home pregnancy test and her OB/GYN. But it was while she was pregnant that her life was turned upside down in other ways. First, it was a car accident that Sabina was in which resulted in her needing a kidney transplant that Stella was unable to give her at that time because she was pregnant. That lead to the sisters learning that the people who they'd called mom and dad for over thirty years of their lives were not who they said they were. It was easy to think, at first, that they'd been adopted and neither Donald or Ariel had wanted to tell them the truth for their own personal reasons, but after weeks of the twins pressing them for more information about their birth parents, because they would be the best match for a transplant, they learned their story was a little more insidious than that.

For most, being pregnant was a happy thing, despite the difficulties that come along with it. For Stella, it didn't quite meet that mark. Between learning that Donald and Ariel had essentially "bought" her and Sabina from someone after their own inabilities to conceive, trying to find out who they really were without knowing anything about who they would have been if they'd never come to live with the Ricci's, her concern for Sabina and the comlications she faced with her health, and wanting to stay on top of things at work, she was more exhausted and stressed than she could ever remember being in her life. But if there was anyone she would make these sacrifices for, it would always be her sister. Somehow, in the midst of all of that, she managed to set up a nursery, arrange her own baby shower, and hire a private investigator on retainer in hopes of getting the information they so desperately needed in order to live their best life. It was forty-one weeks of hard work and determination, the likes of which she'd never imagined, when her daughter was born.

There is still so much left unresolved in her life but, with help from trusted friends, and even more that Stella knows she and Sabina will have to figure out for themselves, but with the help of trusted friends, she knows that they'll get through this time. Even if it takes awhile, and despite the fact that everything she's believed about her life has been built on a lie. But she's trying to focus on the good; on the fact that she's got a daughter whose life means more to her than anything else ever could. The pride she feels over being a mother, and the love in her heart for the little girl who looks at her as if she hung the stars and moon in the sky herself, is more than enough for her to be happy with what she wakes up to every morning. For the moment, that's all that matters.