Fourth Debt by Pepper Winters, now you can read online.
FUNNY HOW LIFE plays practical jokes.
The past few days—that had to be a fucking joke, right?
No logical answer would make sense of what I’d seen, heard, and lived the past seventy-two hours.
My sister.
My best friend and twin.
This was what she’d been living with? This was how she’d been treated?
This was what she wanted to return to?
Motherfucking why? Why would she ever want to return to this insanity?
We’d been raised in a broken home, chained to an empire that absorbed us right from birth. But we were kept safe, warm, and loved. We grew up together. We shared everything.
But now…I had no fucking clue who my sister was.
But then she came to me.
A woman I never knew existed.
The most stunning creature I’d ever seen.
Only she didn’t come to me on feet or wings of an angel. She rolled into my life and demanded my help.
And for better or for worse…
I helped her.
“LET ME GO!”
Daniel cackled like a mad hyena, his fingers stabbing into my bicep. Without breaking his stride, he stole me further away from the parlour and into the bowels of the house.
I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go anywhere with him.
“Take me back!”
He can’t be dead!
Just because he lay unmoving and bloody didn’t mean he was gone.
That’s exactly what it means.
I shook my head¸ dislodging those awful thoughts. He’s alive. He had to be.
I couldn’t tolerate any other answer. I refused to live in a world where evil triumphed over good. That wasn’t right—life couldn’t be that cruel.
It’s always been that way.
My mind filled with images of my mother. My father’s desolation. My broken childhood. Evil had puppeteered us from day one. Why should now be any different?
He’s not dead!
I swallowed a sob.
Please don’t be dead…