Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 148397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
But that isn’t true…
I sighed.
My fingers flew as if possessed, accessing archived memories, the keyboard unlocking far too many flashbacks from my past.
The monster called him Quincy.
I’d met him before.
Spied him as I was dragged through the mansion and past priceless things I wasn’t allowed to touch. The man growled at the young teenager lounging in the doorway. “Scram, you worthless child. I’m busy.”
My ears rang with his barked French, so different to the quietly spoken women in pinafores who brought us food and told us to behave.
Quincy glanced at me, his light green eyes cold and unreadable. “Where are you taking him?”
“To do what you refuse to do.”
“What? Learn the family trade?” His cold voice could’ve cut stone.
“At least he’s willing to sit and watch without trying to scurry away like a terrified rat.”
Quincy sniffed.
It looked as if he’d reply, but with a curl of his upper lip, he pushed off the door, shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, and strolled away.
I watched him go like always.
I kept my eyes on him even as the older man dragged me into a room where a woman hung in the centre with her mouth gagged and wrists bound.
“Sit and learn and maybe I won’t kill you with the rest.” He threw me to the side. I collapsed against a sideboard.
And the same thing that happened each time he came for me played out in awful clarity.
Her every scream. Her every sob. Her every drop of blood.
Little by little, those afternoons contaminated me. Day by day, those horrors found their way into my dreams.
And I did the only thing I could.
I boxed up those days.
I deleted all those nights.
I removed myself from my brothers and sisters in the hope I wouldn’t infect them too…
Exhaling heavily, I glanced up and noticed my beer was gone.
Dusk had fallen.
Another night was coming for me.
Where the hell is Ily?
Every afternoon, she visited Peter and the jewels, and I was grateful.
Grateful for the space to suffer the overwhelming despair and misery that only grew worse.
I couldn’t breathe anymore.
Couldn’t exist without fighting, fighting, always goddamn fighting my true nature whenever she was around.
All those black, awful urges that’d been instilled inside me when I was a kid. All those diabolical traits that I’d smothered and deleted, giving myself amnesia where I forgot the siblings I’d lived with, all so I didn’t have to remember what happened in that room with our mothers.
Tearing my hands through my hair, I trembled.
That amnesia was cracking.
The more the darkness claimed me, the faster my past came back.
It’d been two weeks since Victor left, and I remembered something new every day. The manuscript had become a channelling medium. Snippets of moments when I’d spied my older brother as I was dragged to witness yet another rape now haunted me in my sleep.
I didn’t want to remember.
I didn’t want to be this way.
I didn’t want to lie awake in the dark, gagging on the same darkness inside me.
One night last week, I’d dreamed of bathing in blood. The silky slippery sensation of red, red, red. Instead of waking up and rushing to the bathroom to heave my rotten guts up, I’d been rock fucking hard and moments away from rolling Ily onto her stomach and taking her.
Shit…I’d been close.
So damn close to letting out all the pressuring filth inside me.
I fucking hated myself.
I loathed every thought in my head.
I might’ve been bred by a monster and had him pour his curse into me one day at a time, but I didn’t want it.
I thought I did after playing Ruby Tears.
I thought I could trample on other people’s lives so I could finally be free, but the truth was?
Fuck, the truth was I’d had it right the night I’d tried to end it.
The scar on my leg taunted me to try again.
The hatred inside me spilled out to include my older brother.
I knew now why I hated him so badly. Why he conjured such rage. Why I’d taken such perverse satisfaction in disowning him.
It wasn’t because I’d turned into our father.
It was because I blamed my brother for failing me.
All those days when he’d left me at that creature’s mercy.
All those moments where he turned his back and walked away.
Back then, I was trapped.
Right now, I was trapped.
I couldn’t leave.
I couldn’t stay.
Death truly was the only answer.
Chapter Seventeen
………………………….
Ily
DOING MY BEST TO KEEP MY attention on Faiza, I listened with Mollie and Rachel. Three weeks had passed, and we’d managed to meet most days. The guards didn’t care, the cooks just rolled their eyes, and we’d made headway…but not as much as we needed to.
I rubbed at the persistent bruise in my heart. A bruise that refused to heal like the others had on my body.
Three weeks and Henri hadn’t said a damn word to me.