40
Isa
The face staring back at me shouldn’t have reminded me of myself. There was nothing of me that still lived in her, despite the identical features. Her face was contorted with malice when I stepped into the basement where Rafe evidently kept his torture victims, her hands bound behind her back and secured to the chair in the center of the stark room.
“You don’t have to do this,mi reina,” Rafe said, lingering at my spine. As soon as I’d learned my sister was still alive, determination drove me to see her. To look her in the eye and make sure she saw with her own eyes that I lived.
That I’d escaped the clutches of the fate she’d sacrificed me to.
“I do,” I said, nodding at him. He kissed my forehead gently, sighing as he retreated up the stairs and left me with the twin who didn’t deserve my kindness.
She didn’t deserve my mercy. But even looking at her and remembering how much I’d recently wanted to feel my knife cut through her skin and into the heart that beat within her chest, my hands shook as I stared at her.
“Well?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. “Has the wife of a criminal come to kill me?”
“Does this make us even?” I asked instead. “Can wefinallymove on from this ridiculous feud over an accident that happened thirteen years ago? I nearly caused your death with my choice. You have now returned the favor.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, leaning onto the table at the opposite end of the room and staring at her across the empty space. Her brow furrowed in confusion, as if she couldn’t quite wrap her head around the question.
“We will never be even,” she said, leaning forward in the metal chair as much as the binds at her wrists and on her arms allowed. “I will never forgive you for not listening to me, and for pretending to be so fucking perfect for so long. Precious fucking Isa could do no wrong, and Mom did nothing but remind me of that every day of our lives.”
“Mom loved you,” I said, clenching my eyes shut. “But you won’t have to worry about feeling like she’s judging you anymore, will you?”
“What are you talking about?” Odina whispered, shock crossing her features. I hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that she’d been taken before she could learn the truth. That she had no clue our mother had died on the same day Rafe sacrificed her to save me.
“She’s gone, Odina. Dima planted a bomb on the car. You know, the man you were so keen to work with? He murdered our mother in cold blood, just to break down the gates at the house in Chicago,” I explained.
“What was she even doing there? It was the middle of the night,” Odina protested.
“She was coming to getyou. I couldn’t let you drive yourself home when you were trashed.”
“You’re trying to blame this on me?” she asked, sniffling back tears as a tiny sliver of humanity and love for our mother showed through. In all the years she’d wasted yelling and screaming at our parents, the unusual emotion caught me off guard.
“No,” I said. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Because you know it’syours,” Odina hissed, her face twisting with cruelty all over again. “You brought them into our lives—”
“Actually, Mom did,” I corrected. “The man who threw us into the river was there because he was keeping an eye on Mom. She knew too much information about his business and his family to just walk away. He was deranged and twisted, but all of this began before we were even born, Odina. Thatstilldoesn’t make it her fault. It’s no one’s fault except for the sick bastards who tried to hurt us or kill us.”
She sighed, hanging her head forward as if she could block out the logic in my words. Nothing mattered to her, not when she was so blinded by her own rage that she couldn’t see straight. “What do you want?”
“I want my sister back. The one I had when we were little,” I murmured, uncrossing my arms and shifting them down to clutch the edge of the table. “Is she anywhere in there?”
“No,” Odina snarled. “You killed her.”
I nodded, exhaustion creeping in through the last clinging emotion I’d tried to share with her. To salvage whatever still remained after the years of being torn apart. “Okay.”
I stood, straightening my body and making my way to the stairs. I grasped the railing at the bottom, taking that first step and leaving her behind.
“Where are you going?” she asked, something akin to panic leaking into her voice. I knew she worried what would happen to her if I left her death to Rafe, but she didn't know it wouldn’t come to that. I’d never be able to forget the knowledge that he’d killed my only sibling.
Even if she deserved it.
“Just fucking kill me, you stupid bitch!” she screamed as I came closer to the top of the stairs.
I paused, turning to look back down at her, with all the pity I felt over the uncertainty in her future. “I’m not the monster you want me to be, Odina. I’m not like you,” I said, turning the knob on the door. I stepped out as she screamed after me, plunging her into darkness as the overhead lights switched off.
“Isa! You don’t deserve a single fucking thing that you have! I hope your husband slits your throat and fucks his next wife on your corpse!”
I closed the door, and I walked away from the ghosts of my past, leaving them with the sister determined to live in her own misery.