“Three years before you graduated, he pitched the idea, and I told him no. By that point, I was well aware of what I’d been fooled into.” She flexes her jaw. “I also learned the only way out of my life is by death, and not just me. Anyone you love goes first until you’re left alone and praying they come along and take you quickly. They can’t trust that their secret dies with you. When you’ve seen the sights I have, you learn to condition yourself early to disconnect from it.”
My hand rubs up and over my face. “If you’re looking for sympathy—”
“I don’t want it, Indie. I’m telling you something that I’ve wanted to scream from the moment I thought you were in danger. Barry had gone to the Montgomerys to ask for you to be initiated. I knew from his plans it meant you’d be forced to marry one of them. When I tried to stop him…he had our dad killed on deployment. That was my first lesson.”
Louisa mentions our father’s death so coldly, yet the mere mention of his name always feels like a stab to the heart.
Seems she’sdisconnectedfrom that too.
She glances up at the sky, squeezing her eyes shut briefly with a look of disgust. “The only reason I found out about Dad was because Barry told me drunk one night. That’s why I rarely come by Mom’s house. It’s why I never call you. I distanced myself to protect you both. But then…”
“Don’t even think about making up a lie, Louisa. I’ll leave you out in the middle of nowhere, bleeding out.”
She shakes her head at me, and it only annoys me further. If she was in my shoes, she wouldn’t trust a word I say either. Hesitation isn’t something Louisa ever displays, so excuse me for seeing right through her bullshit.
She drops her voice low and firm. “I’m going to assume you’re aware that Omnia killed Saint’s mom.”
Ice trickles down my spine.
Saint and Malcolm changed their surnames before moving here. He wiped any trace of there being a connection between the two. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Louisa sees through me. “You’ve never been good at lying, Indie.”
I scoff. “You’d be surprised at what I’ve become good at to keep people safe.”
She takes her hands out her pocket, interlocking her fingers, and I notice her wedding band is gone. “When you and Saint got together, Barry kept asking why I’d allowed you to get in a relationship. He’d made it clear that me saying no to you joining wasn’t anything he cared about. That made the Judge look into him, because when he approves something, he expects it. He found out exactly who Saint’s mom was…They thought I purposely got you two together as a fuck you to them. That I’d found the perfect opportunity to disrespect them. That year Ileft? I had to because of what they did to me, and when I got back, you and Saint had just broken up. Morgan had randomly appeared with Mom. I didn’t know he was there to keep an eye on everything. Make sure I’d learned my second lesson.”
I can’t help but ask, “What did they do to you?”
She takes a deep breath, and it feels like she’s stolen my own. “You weren’t the first sibling that spent time in that cell.”
My muscles tighten as I whisper, “That was you?”
The indents on the wall, counting the days. I remembered as the ‘L’ scraped into them. The other letter, it would have been the beginning of a ‘K’.
No, it couldn’t have been.
She swiftly changes the subject when I notice her eyes glass over. “When Mom said you had a bad breakup, I just assumed they planted something to push you apart. I didn’t…I didn’t know Conrad raped you.”
She’s lying, Indie.
Don’t let her fool you.
She’s good at it, remember?
“I’m sorry, Indie. I really am, If I’d have known…I would have taken us away the minute I got back, you and Mom. I wouldn’t have stood by and done nothing. You’re my little sister, and I love you. All I ever did was try to keep you out of this life.”
My words are intended to sound unbothered, laced with a venom a snake would envy, but the way she’s looking at me…It’s so vulnerable, it manages to poke a hole in my armour. “You did a really good job at that, didn’t you?”
Destruction seems to follow her everywhere she goes.
She’s the reason our family is torn apart.
Why I’m so lost in a darkness I can’t see out of it, how Mom has had a fucking Omnia member roleplaying her boyfriend, when all along he’s been keeping an eye on us as a warning to Louisa.
Everything is a colossal fuck-up.
She clears her throat. “I don’t expect your forgiveness, not now, or ever. I just needed you to know the truth. I’m not the monster you think I am. Barry has been prepping me for this life since university. I knew nothing else outside of it, and I didn’t know how to get out without everyone else coming with me.”
