Until that party.
Until that kiss.
Until the moment—seconds or minutes later, I still wasn’t sure—when he’d pulled back with a vicious smile and showed me his phone, the video already uploaded to a cloud server I couldn’t access.
“Surprise, baby sister. Did I forget to mention we’re related?”
Five years. Five years of that moment playing on repeat in my mind. Five years of knowing he’d planned it, that I’d been seduced and trapped like some stupid animal walking into an obvious snare. Five years of him owning me with that single piece of evidence.
Barbara Davis kisses her brother.
That’s what the caption would say if he ever released it. That’s what everyone would see: me, initiating. Me, pressing close. Me, committing what looked like the worst kind of taboo, even though I hadn’t known, couldn’t have known, would never have….
“Barbara.” Sebastian’s voice cut through my spiral. “Are you listening? I asked you a question.”
“Fine,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Fine. I’ll get you the money.”
“That’s my girl. You have three days.”
“Three days? Sebastian, I need more time—”
“Three. Days. Unless you’d rather I share our little home movie with the world? Maybe send it to Dad first? I bet he’d love to see what his precious daughter gets up to when he’s not watching.”
The call ended.
I sat there holding my phone, staring at the screen as it faded to black, and felt something crack inside me. Not break—it had broken years ago. This was something worse. This was the sound of pieces grinding against each other, wearing each other down to dust.
That day five years ago had ruined everything.
Sometimes I could almost pretend it hadn’t happened. Go days or even weeks living my life, shopping with my friends, posting carefully curated photos on Instagram, playing the role of Andrew Davis’s perfect daughter. And then Sebastian would call, and I’d remember: I was owned. Trapped in a cage built from one moment of teenage stupidity and five years of systematic exploitation.
The regret churned in my gut like acid.
I remembered throwing up the first time he’d shown me the video. Right there in his apartment, barely making it to his bathroom before my stomach emptied itself. He’d laughed.Actually laughed as I knelt on his tile floor, retching and crying, while he explained exactly how this was going to work from now on.
“You’ll give me what I ask for. Money, access, information—whatever I need. And in return, your little secret stays secret. Deal?”
I’d nodded because what else could I do?
I stood up, my legs unsteady, and walked to the window. Below, the grounds of the Davis estate stretched out like a perfectly maintained lie: manicured lawns, imported rose gardens, My father’s empire, built on real estate and ruthless business practices and a complete inability to see what was happening in his own home.
Or maybe he did see and just didn’t care.
Andrew Davis wasn’t a warm man. Wasn’t a caring man. He was a machine in human form—calculating and as emotionally distant as the moon. Sebastian’s mother died of cancer before I was born. He’d remarried mine a few years later, adding my mother to the household like she was another asset to be acquired. And when she ‘allegedly’ ran away with her boyfriend, abandoning me, he’d barely blinked. Just kept working, kept building, kept accumulating wealth like it could fill whatever void existed where his heart should be.
I’d tried talking to him once about Sebastian. Worked up the courage when I was sixteen, freshly traumatized and desperate for help. But the words had died in my throat when I’d seen his face—that blank, impatient expression that said he had more important things to do than listen to teenage drama.
What would I have said anyway? “Dad, your son blackmailed me after kissing me at a party where I was drunk?” He’d ask why I was at the party. Why I was drinking. What I’d done to encourage Sebastian. And then he’d see the video and….
No.
I couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t tell anyone.
Because the truth was worse than the lie. The truth was that for five years, I’d been stealing from my own father to pay off my blackmailer. The truth was that I was complicit now, criminally liable, just as trapped by my own actions as I was by Sebastian’s original crime.
The truth was that I was drowning, and I’d forgotten how to ask for help.
My phone buzzed with a text.
