A hand grips my wrist. “Stop making a show of yourself,” my mother hisses. Her nails dig into my skin, and I make a pained sound.
Silas’s eyes dip down. Just for a moment, I see him waver. But then his face hardens again.
“Goodbye, Anastasia,” he says coldly. “You were entertaining enough, I suppose. A little dull, truth be told. It won’t be long before we forget that you ever existed. Perhaps you’ll have more luck with your next target.”
“You don’t mean that,” I say hoarsely, staring at him.
But he doesn’t respond.
He turns his back, and then my mother is dragging me into the car, telling the agog driver to pull off as I sob, wrapping my arms around myself.
As the car pulls away, taking me far away from Oakbourne Manor.
And far away from them.
30 – Silas – ten years ago
Ican’t breathe.
Can’t breathe for the agony crushing my lungs, gripping my heart tightly and squeezing, squeezing so hard that I drop down to my knees as the car pulls away.
Taking the liar with it.
I force myself to swallow, to suck in oxygen as I stagger to my feet and run a hand over my hair in disbelief.
“What the hell just happened?”
My voice is a whisper. And it hurts, it hurts so damn much to think of that moment when I walked into my mother’s bedroom. I didn’t believe Angelica when she told me they were leaving, didn’t want to believe that Anastasia would do that to us. Tome.
But Stasi was right where Angelica said she would be. Helping herself to our mother’s jewelry.
I jog back upstairs, heading straight to the dressing room. I want to see if anything is missing.
My eyes flick across the spilled items on the floor. Stasi’s bag sits beside it, and when I check inside, it’s empty.
Another pulse of pain.
Gone. She’s gone.
This is for the best, I tell myself.She’s poison.
But my resolve wavers as I stare at the floor. Something… something doesn’t look right. Frowning, I yank open the drawers and look inside. Piles of jewelry are jumbled up in piles, not in the neat sections they’d normally be.
As if… somebody threw it back inside. In panic.
She wants me to go, and she’s threatening to say things.
I was putting it back.
I don’t want to go.
I don’t want to leave you.
And as I kneel, I see her things tossed in amongst the jewelry. As if… as if she changed her mind, before I walked in. Flipped her bag over.
My fingers brush against a familiar folded note, Stasi’s name scribbled in my spiky handwriting across the front.
There’s nothing else here. None of the clothes paid for by my father. None of the expensive bags, shoes, that he tried to give to her, only giving up when it became clear that she wasn’t interested in any of that.
