Another picture follows. Then another.
Ant scoring. Ant injecting her, the view caught through a shattered window.
“I had her followed. Every time she left the house in those last months, someone was trailing her. I kept cutting off her source of funding, but it didn’t matter.”
Another photo lands on the pile. Ant wears a thin jacket, arms hugging himself to keep out the cold. Addie gets into a car a few metres in front of him.
“This is your brotherhelping,” he says to Evie, eyes still fixed to me. “Pimping her out to any punter who could afford it. Making her fund his habit on her back.”
The repulsion hits me; stronger than ever. My body recoils from the thought of touch, of skin, of tongues and teeth and hair. Of fluids and panting and writhing and the twist of limbs.
Metallic spit coats my tongue. The wound in my wrist burns like acid.
I crush Evie’s hand, tighter and tighter. The bones and tendons groan and grind and strain until she tugs, and I release her… wiping my palm against my jeans leg, lip curling as I try to rid myself of her touch.
“Six times he sent her out that night. You’d know what that feels like, wouldn’t you?” My father finally breaks his gaze to sneer at Evie. No emotion for Addie beyond using her degradation as a taunt. “Even the nastiest whore would have trouble living with herself after that many punters in a row.”
The photos keep floating to land on the pile. My breathing is audibly strained. I recoil from the sound but make another and another, my chest pulling in a desperate bid for air.
Evie’s brother whoring out my sister.
Evie’s brother twisting her mind, feeding her drugs, fuelling her addiction.
Reshaping her from the fun older sister who never used to mind me tagging along on her adventures into someone bent and corrupted, swallowing love and vomiting hate.
“I’ve been generous with your family,” Blaine says, moving towards Evie. He takes a step forward at the same time I take a step away. “Wouldn’t you agree? Fifty thousand for an uneducated stripper with no real prospects.” His voice softens, dropping so low it’s barely audible. “You took the money. Why couldn’t you just leave?”
“I gave it back.”
“Isn’t that nice? You gave it back. Was that before or after you decided my son was a better prospect?”
My head jerks up at that, echoes of a lecture I’ve heard a thousand times before but never really internalised. But now I hear it. Worse, I see it standing beside me.
What was it she said as she packed up her things, preparatory to leaving? Completely indifferent to the fact that I needed her to stay.‘I need something that’smine.’
You offered her double to stay.
You offered her money and suddenly she’s ‘in love.’
“Maddox,” Evie pleads, her vocals distressed, eyes shimmering with tears. “You don’t have to listen to this. You can come home with me. Ant will explain. It won’t be how it looks.”
She reaches out her hand, but I recoil, inching farther away. My face overheats, cheeks burning with shame at how easily I was fooled as the horrendous weight bears down upon me.
“Vale will take you home,” my dad says, nodding to the man. “Stay. Leave. I really don’t care. But never go anywhere near my son again.”
“Maddox, please.”
Her voice is car keys on a new paint job. The burst stitches on an infected wound.
Ant ruined my sister while she stands there, making excuses.
While you pay for him to get well, she rots in her grave.
And that’s the thought which has me turning, staring blankly at the girl I thought was my future. She can’t even meet my eyes as I say, “You knew? You knew all of this and never thought to tell me?”
I want her to deny it. I wait for her to claim innocence, for her to be as outraged at her brother’s behaviour as I am.
“He loved her, too.”
