My stomach dropped as memories flooded back to my mind. The last time I was in this room was long after my father died. My mom had stayed in touch with Isaac, his childhood best friend and his business partner.
He’d given me a room in this mansion, plenty of space to spare.
I remembered the heat of the end of summer. That last couple weeks of August when the heat clings, unwilling to cede to the chill of fall.
Maura was drunk that last night, downstairs with the rest of the party. I’d been hiding up here… and then it’s all a blur. Flashes of something horrible behind my eyelids, the same ones I’d seen at The Hollow. Dread built in my stomach like a parasite wrapping itself around each of my organs.
Then my eyes caught on a dusty picture frame, set on the bookshelf full of middle-grade novels. The books I’d loved when I was just about to become a teenager.
I grabbed the frame, rubbing the dust off the top first. Then I reached for the center of the picture, revealing a little girl in plaid shorts and a pink tshirt. Me, sometime around nine years old.
I rubbed farther: Maura smiling, my dad beaming down at me with his hand on my shoulder. Another wipe showed Isaac and a woman his age — I could only assume his wife.
And then, the final wipe cleared the last face. A twelve year old girl.
Madeline.
But I knew that face, not just at twelve. The connection roared through my mind.
MadelineDominique.
Her middle name. The one she hated back then.
It’s her. Dom. It’s always been her.
A rush of memories stormed through my brain. The blood splattered on 15-year-old Dom’s face, the way her mouth moved as she yelled at me. Screaming for me to run. To find Maura and get the fuck out of the house.
The flash of the body on the ground. My feet, heavy on the stone steps as I screamed for my mom.
We never came back.
Why didn’t we ever come back? Who was that on the ground?
My feet moved me toward the door, unable to set the picture down as I tried to escape this glue trap of memories.
How did that quiet, sweet, protective kid turn into this… this fuckingmonster? The monster that had haunted my every nightmare, face covered in blood and screaming at me.
Why does she want me trapped here?
It didn’t make sense, she wanted me out of her father’s house badly that night. She was willing to scream and yell in front of all of Isaac’s rich friends.
None of it made sense.
Except one thing: I needed to get the fuck out of this place. Now.
But just as I turned on my heels, I was met by the snarling face of my worst captor.
Dom shook her head at me, using her body to push me back into the room. “You were never supposed to see this, Kiera.”
37
KIERA
“You see me now,don’t you, Viper?” Dom’s voice was all venom as her hulking frame filled the doorway, blocking my only exit.
Tears sprang to my eyes as I stumbled back. I wasn’t sure why I was crying. But in just a second, she’d managed to bring me right back to being a terrified little kid.
My instinct back then had always been to survive, no matter what I had to suffer. But as she lunged forward, digging her fingers into my arm, I had no idea how I was going to do that.
