I didn’t like that motherfucker’s tone of voice and quite frankly, I was tired and wanted a nap.
“What was that?” I asked as I turned to face the man.
His eyes widened. “You look just like the woman that—”
Jax held up his hand, stopping the man in his tracks. “Let us through. Her sister can talk some sense into her.”
The guards looked me up and down as they shook their heads, and at that moment, I hated being related to that bitch. I was nothing like her. Nothing like my sister one fucking bit, and yet there I was, being equivocated to her because we were twins. The hole in my heart suddenly didn’t feel as big as it once did. The mystery of who my sister might have been was demolished the second she knocked me out and stole my goddamn clothes. I wanted that woman’s head on a pike just like the guys did.
Yet, there was a small, idealistic part of me that felt for Rachel as well.
We all did what she had done. All she did was create a life for herself that she needed in order to survive. It wasn’t her fault that she had been born with hemophilia. It wasn’t her fault that she had become too much of a burden to adopt. It wasn’t her fault that she bounced around between foster homes before being dumped on the street at the ripe young age of eighteen. All of that shit had been done to her, and all she had done was attempt to survive the only way she knew how.
“All right,” the security guard said as he stepped off to the side, “but the second your sister becomes volatile, we’re putting a bullet in her and ending this. We can’t hang up the only hospital in the area for whatever the hell she’s demanding.”
“It won’t take long,” I said as I slipped past the man.
“Thanks,” Jax murmured, following me inside.
The second the automatic doors closed behind us, it sealed off the chaos. The sounds of people screaming and crying and throwing fits in exchange for services muted itself into nothing but a dull roar, and the silence of the tiled emergency room unnerved me. Jax hovered at my side, his head on a swivel as we searched for any signs of people in distress. But, outside of some drunk slouched in the corner with puke staining the front of his shirt, there was no one else in the E.R.
Except for her, that is.
“Well, well, well,” Rachel said in a weakened voice as she came through the metal double doors that separated the waiting room from the rest of the hospital, “if it isn’t sister dearest.”
She was pale from her blood loss, still dripping down her leg. “You need medical attention, Rachel, but this isn’t the way to get it.”
My sister leveled a shaking gun at my head. “I knew you’d come. Miss Goodie Two-Shoes. Miss Has to be Perfect in Every Way. Can’t miss being the good little girl that you are, can you?”
I took a step toward her, only for Jax to grab my arm. “Brielle?”
I slowly panned my gaze over my shoulder at him. “Does this break whatever promise you made to Dee?”
He shook his head. “No.”
I yanked my arm away from his grasp. “Then, don’t you dare touch me again.”
Rachel let out a breathless chuckle. “Yeah, fuck men, am I right?”
I turned my attention back to her. “I’m going to come closer, all right?”
“If you do, I’ll shoot.”
“If you wanted to shoot me,” I said as I slowly crept closer, “you would have already done so. But you need me alive for my organs, don’t you?”
Her eyes widened. “How do you—”
“What do you need?” I asked.
“What?” Jax asked.
Rachel searched my stare. “They should’ve taken me, too, you know. That’s what they always encourage.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“I heard it my whole fucking life,” she said as her lower lip quivered. “I heard all of those motherfuckers encourage people to adopt siblings, not individual kids. And I watched as so many siblings were adopted into amazing homes. But not me. Not with my sibling.”
“You should have been with me.”
