Captured - Cara Wylde Page 0,18

play all day while they took their rifles and disappeared into the woods until dinner time. Sometimes they brough back rabbits or pheasants, and my mom and my aunt would cook them the next day. Many times, though, they brought bigger game and threw it into the shed. For many years, I stayed away from that shed. I didn’t know what was in there, I didn’t know what they did when they locked themselves in there for hours, but I could feel it was something awful. As I grew older, I started to see my parents, my aunt, my uncle, and my cousins for who they were: murderers. I understood that the pretty animals mounted on the walls of the lake house and back home were not fake. They were real. I… I tried to talk to them. But I never had any say in the matter.” She huffed. “Or on any matter, in fact. I never had any say when it came to who I was, the family I belonged to, the name Bishop and what it stood for, nor when it came to what I ate, the way I dressed, what I studied. I had the friends they wanted me to have, I spent my time the way they wanted me to spend it, and when I tried to say ‘no’, when I made even the slightest attempt to stand up for myself, they shut me down, threatened to disown me, to cut me out of their will. Now I know I should’ve seen their threats for what they were: empty. I never wanted their wealth, anyway. Never wanted their legacy. They thought they meant something. They thought that if they threatened me, they scared me.” She shook her head. “I see that now. I know now what true fear is, and that wasn’t it. I was weak. I should have fought for what I believed in, and if I couldn’t change them, then I should’ve run away. I should’ve run away…”

I cocked an eyebrow. What a sad, sad story. Usually, I was more empathetic, but not now. Not tonight, when my brother’s body had just burned to ashes before my eyes.

“Woe is you,” I mocked. She tensed up, and that gave me a small sense of satisfaction. “So privileged. You were born in a wealthy family, in the city. You had everything you could wish for. Good food, expensive clothes, jewelry… am I right? Did your father buy you a new necklace or bracelet for your birthday every year?” I stared at her, but she didn’t say a word. “He did, of course. Education. Private schools, right? The world at your feet. And what did you do with it?” I leaned in so she could feel how disgusted I was with her little story. “Nothing. You did nothing. You watched them butcher creature after creature, kill the animals of the forest like they had no souls. And you did nothing. You wallowed in self pity and felt better for it, didn’t you? You decided you were the poor victim and you had no power, no control over your life. And now you come to me with this bullshit. Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?”

“N-no…”

“Because I don’t!” I yelled. I stood up, angry, and kicked at the ground. A couple of rocks flew a few feet away.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured and started crying.

I sighed. Tears. That was something I couldn’t deal with.

“Stop it.”

“I know they were horrible, okay? But they didn’t deserve to die like that. You could’ve… You could’ve just killed them faster, I guess.”

I crouched down, leaning so close to her that she couldn’t avoid my gaze.

“I disagree. This is not only about my brother, you see? This isn’t only about killing a human being. Which he was, by the way, in case you still had doubts.”

“I’ve never doubted that…”

“This is about all the blood they spilled. They deserved to die, and they deserved the way they died, too. Now, are you going to argue with me about it?”

She bit her bottom lip, and oh God, how could that simple gesture soften me inside? She didn’t say anything, and just stared at me with those blue eyes of hers. Her chin trembled slightly, and her cheeks were wet with tears. I sighed, cursing myself in my head. The fire had died down completely, and she seemed to be cold again. Her limbs must have fallen asleep from the unnatural position in which she’d