Chapter Twenty-Five
Brianna
They had all been so worried for her after it happened, but Brianna knew they would find her in the right. She was exonerated. The shooting was in self-defense. She wasn’t even arrested, though she’d had to take several trips to the police station, and was given orders not to leave the country.
She hadn't planned on doing that in any case.
Still, even though everyone viewed her with awe, thinking she had acted purely on adrenaline to save them, Brianna didn’t bother to enlighten them by telling them they were only partially right.
After all, she still remembered what Adrien had done to her. And she’d wanted her power back.
She had been just a child at four years old. Even back then, she knew better than her parents how to tell the twins apart when Adrien starting acting exactly like Samuel, mimicking him down to the very last detail. Their parents had thought it was cute. They didn’t see anything wrong with it. Though they were loving, they weren’t always the most observant parents.
Brianna had always been a little uneasy in Adrien’s presence, and he didn’t miss it, especially since Samuel had always been her favorite person in the world. She didn’t know why, but out of nowhere, one day, Adrien tried to strangle her. They had been alone, she recalled and she had wanted to leave, but Adrien hadn’t wanted her to. So she had been annoying him. Taunting him with her four year old sassy attitude.
She recalled him screaming at her and grabbing her around the neck. She’d grabbed at his hands and scratched him, but he kept squeezing and she remembered passing out from lack of air. She remembered the pain in her chest when she woke. And she remembered the look in her brother’s eyes as he’s gripped her neck. The trauma stuck with her, and she stopped talking, stopped trying to learn the world, the way every curious child at that age would. He’d stolen her power that day. Taken her voice.
She’d wanted it back.
He ruined her life. So, even though she had killed Adrien, she felt zero regrets. Once he was gone, everything was so much easier.
She could finally breathe after fifteen years of suffocating.
It was nice.
She knew her brother, Camila, and even Morganna were all worried about her mentally, because they thought the incident would leave her even more traumatized.
Instead, Brianna held her head high and she started to improve very fast after Adrien was cremated. After those three little words, it was as if the damn shoring up her vocal cords had burst. She became a chatter box. Talking about anything and everything.
Three months after the whole incident, and Brianna looked and acted like every other nineteen year old girl.