Page 9 of Maddening Fixation

She looked so impossibly small.

The distance between us was enormous.

She hadn’t fallen. She’d been thrown.

Someone had sent her over the edge of this eighth-floor window.

From that height, survival wasn’t a possibility.

My knees nearly gave way beneath me.

“No...”

The world lurched violently, the walls and shattered glass blurring together until none of it felt real.

It had to be a nightmare. It had to be. My mind clung desperately to that lie because the truth was too monstrous to survive.

Just two hours ago, I’d stood in this very room while Sarah sat by the window, absentmindedly sketching in the notebook she carried everywhere.

She’d laughed when I teased her for drawing flowers instead of the beaches we’d soon be calling home.

“I’ll draw them when we get there,” she’d said with that quiet smile only she possessed.

Two hours.

Two fucking hours.

And now...

Now she was lying broken on the ground below.

No.

No.

“Sarah!”

Her name tore from somewhere deep inside me, raw enough to shred my throat as it echoed through the mansion.

It echoed across the estate.

“My baby sister!”

I don’t remember leaving the window.

One moment I was staring down at the impossible.

The next, everything dissolved into chaos.

Voices erupted behind me. Boots thundered through the corridor as people rushed toward Sarah’s room.

My family had abandoned the ballroom and arrived within seconds.

Not with grief. Not with horror.

With anger.

Cold. Immediate. Unmistakable.