“—for your own good.” Antony touches her cheek.
“Is he always this overprotective of you?” Mackenzie giggles. “I mean,obviouslyhe was. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be alive now, not with all the people who wanted you dead. But as long as you were still alive, still the ghost of Malloy Manor, it meant my enemies hadn’t made their move.” She kisses Antony’s cheek. “You did the best you could, babe, but you haven’t taken care of things like I would. You weren’tproactive. So I came back to make everything right again. Starting with Brentwood. He was so surprised when I showed up for tea, and too busy staring at my tits to notice the drugs I put in his drink. Antony wassopissed when he found out what I did—”
“—you’re too impulsive, doll. It’s your greatest flaw. Claudia was sniffing around, and I couldn’t have her find out the truth before I became Imperator.”
“Luckily, Antony had the clever idea to make it look like Brutus killed Brentwood. And I took his gun,” she rubs her shoulder. “It wassoheavy. It hurt my arm when it kicked back. I was so close to you and Noah, but I still couldn’t hit you.”
“You shouldn’t have tried,” Antony coos. “You were such an adorable klutz. I had everything under control.”
They’re both insane.
Mackenzie pouts again. “I was just so tired ofwaiting. Of being the good little girl while my sister livedmylife. And I wanted to find the treasure before you did. Practically every day you were at school I snuck in and searched for it – I used the maintenance shed at first, but then you locked it up, so I started using this tunnel.” She wrinkles her nose. “I hate it down here. It’s so filthy. And there are spiders. But it would all be worth it if I could find the treasure. I saw all the things you’d done tomyhouse. You let an animal sleep in my bed. There was fur everywhere. Muddy pawprints on the marble. Scratches in the Hermes sofa. Such disrespect for my things. All my favorite dolls broken. I needed to teach you a lesson,” she smiles, miming her slicing the knife into Queen Boudica.
My veins surge with rage. I try to throw myself out of the coffin. I imagine my fingers sliding around my sister’s neck and squeezing the life out of her for what she did to my kitty. But of course it’s only in my warped, grey-tinged mind. I’m glued in place, weighed down by the drug that’s slowly dragging me into oblivion.
“You should have seen Claudia after you sliced that fleabag cat of hers.” Antony kisses the top of Mackenzie’s head. “She went to war against an innocent boy. She was so easy to fool.”
Alec LeMarque was far from innocent.
“The only reason I agreed to go to Germany was to give my babe time to search the house top to bottom,” Antony says. “But she still couldn’t find the treasure. We were starting to think Howard might’ve been telling the truth.”
I remember walking into the house after getting back from Germany and everything feeling strange, just slightly out of place. I put it down to jet lag, but it washer. That’s been the only time she slipped up, the only hint that something wasn’t right before she showed up at Vault and at school pretending to be me.
Antony peers down at me, his breath hot on my cheek. “You’re still conscious in there, aren’t you? You’re hearing every word of this but you can’t do a thing. How does it feel, Claudia? How does it feel to be completely helpless? And we have so much more time left with you before we kill you. I kept telling Mackenzie to be patient, that I’d make sure she’d be able to savor this moment once it arrived. She’s been waiting so long, you see. So long for her real life to begin.”
Antony kisses Mackenzie’s head again. “I kept telling her to stay away, that you’d get yourself killed within a week of stepping outside that house. But you kept fucking making trouble, getting the wrong side of every story, telling those boys the truth about you, digging us deeper and deeper into this mess. Meanwhile, I solidified power so I could advance to Imperator and Mackenzie got rid of Brutus, but then you fucking show up at Saturnalia and declare yourself the new ruler of August.”
“Antony was sopissed,” Mackenzie giggles. “You should have seen him storming around, slamming doors, cursing your name to any god that would listen. But I pointed out that this was all actually perfect. We just had to be patient a little longer. We let you build our empire for us. And you’ve done even better than we ever could have imagined.”
“And while you were alive, standing in the firing line, my babe was safe,” Antony says. “I decided to see how long you’d last, how much of your father’s empire you could reclaim before someone took you out. Which was inevitable with the chaos you were bringing down.”
“You were so distracted with your plans for world domination and your little harem and your hatred of Brutus that you didn’t notice us maneuvering you behind the scenes,” Mackenzie grins. “If you knew all the times I’ve pretended to be you, steered you in the direction of your own self-destruction. I’ve even fooled your boyfriend into kissing me.”
Eli saw right through you. Because he loves me. He protects me—
He used to love me.
The loneliness hits me like a brick, shattering the rage and hurt that’s keeping me conscious. Eli’s not coming for me. No one will save me now. The pain of it hurtstoo much. It’s more than pain – it’s a brittle emptiness in my bones. Grey oblivion wobbles on the edge of my vision, and I long to commit to it, to sail over the edge of the world and never come back.
Eli, Noah, Gabe, I’m so so sorry.
“Brutus was such a convenient scapegoat,” Antony says as he leans over the coffin. “All I had to do was add that note to Brentwood’s body, and you created an entire mythology about him in your mind. In reality, he had no idea you were still alive. He didn’t even know what you looked like. I just wanted to fuck with you. I wanted you topay.”
He didn’t even know what you looked like.
Antony leans right over me, his body filling the space I need to keep breathing. His lips brush mine, and even though I can’t feel his touch, something in that kiss, in his crushing presence, stirs a darkness inside me, a locked box I’d pushed beneath the surface bobbing on the edge of my consciousness.
“How do you think it felt,cousin, being around you every day knowing you were living the life I was supposed to have, that my Mackenzie should have had?” Antony rasps against my lips. “Youwere the impostor. It was never supposed to be you, but you mocked me with her face. And one day, I got tired of pretending. I got tired of waiting to have my chance with her. You know what teenage hormones are like. I was goingcrazy. I couldn’t be inside her, but I had the perfect Mackenzie sex doll right down the hall from me.”
No. Please, no.
The chains shatter, the box of secrets in my mind blows open, and Antony’s scent assaults me. His heavy body presses against mine, the way it had done that night when he pinned me to the bed.
The scream starts in my toes and rises up through my body until even my skin itself is screaming. A scream that can’t leave my lips, that struggles against the drug for freedom as I writhe in the truth of what he says.
It wasn’t Brutus in my room that night. It wasn’t my uncle who violated me.
It was Antony.
