To you, all I’ll ever be is the person who gave birth to you—a means of finding your real family—but to me you were everything I had. I tried so hard to keep you safe. I promise I fought for you?—
The door clicks, hissing as it opens. Helene stands at the threshold, looking me up and down as she says, “You may leave.”
8
KANE
Asher’s not here. I know he’s not, but he’s still part of my warring thoughts. It’s my subconscious telling me the truth I’ve known all along. Every fucking video of a lucid Delilah—hearing her moan, giggle, open her fucking legs for different men—are real.
She left me in a cell, brutalized and losing myself, again and again while she was giggling with these fuckers.
Fuckers she knew.
Fuckers she hugged in front of me.
I couldn’t stop myself from watching them after Helene left the kitchen with Lizbeth, so I’ve seen every single clip, every pixel of the only person I have ever loved playing people like she did to me.
The mask is a prison of its own because I’m trapped again with Asher in my head, whispering,“I told you.”
The metal bar between my teeth is going to have grooves from how hard I’m clenching my jaw, but he keeps fucking saying shit.
“She never loved you. She can’t. She left you then. Where is she now? Family can hurt each other—I hurt you—but we don’tdo what she did. Look at Helene. She’s helping you. She took you out of that room, didn’t she?”
Shut up.
“She opened the door because we’re family. She doesn’t want to hurt you. But Delilah did.”
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
“Where do you think she is, Kane? Why hasn’t Helene taken you to her?”
Fucking stop!
“Is she fucking someone else right now? Just like before?”
No, there has to be some lie.
My finger moves, pressing play on another clip—a new one I haven’t watched yet.
On it is my pretty girl with her face painted like a broken doll. I don’t need to look at the time stamp to know it’s from the Halloween party—the night I lost my fucking virginity and begged her to be mine is the same night I’m watching.
Only it’s notuson the screen.
Her makeup is still smudged as she stumbles over her feet, arms wrapped around some suited dickhead with his fucking hands on her ass. Another one of her father’s business associates, because he has the same cufflinks as all the others as he lays her on the bed. It’s not the visual fucking me up, it’s the weak audio playing through the speakers as she whispers, “Do you love me? Really love me?”
Every part of me burns as he says, “You’re a very pretty girl.”
She giggles.
She laughs at me.
That’s my name for her and she fucked someone else in the same night, laughing because he called her the same thing I always did.
Everything is a lie.
All of it.
She told me the videos were something they weren’t, but it’s right here in front of me. Delilah. The dickhead. Her father, nowhere in sight as she stretches out on her bed for him after she told me not to sneak back in because she didn’t want me to be caught by her parents.
