Page 67 of Darkest Deception

“I gave your sister a home. The least she can do is let me keep you.”

I try to fight him off, but he keeps wanting to look at my eyes. He is a good-looking man. He shouldn’t think like this.

“My dad told me no one would want me because I wasn’t pretty. But I think everyone will want you. Let me test my theory out once I try to give you a gift.”

I scream when he pulls out a knife and slowly starts to cut down my eye.

“I want to keep this eye. I want it,” he murmurs.

I breathe faster.

I need to leave.

I need to get out.

I can feel the dripping of my blood.

Fear cuts at my throat.

No.

I kick Kaden in the stomach. He falls back with a thump. He is drunk, so he is slow to get up. I run towards the window, only to be pulled back by my hair.

“You need me. You need to stay with me. I own you both!” he shouts, trying to go for my eye again, but I kick his arm. The knife drops out of his hand. I grab an empty glass bottle and smash it on his head.

The pieces fall all over the floor, and I run towards the window.

I can’t come back.

I will have to leave Nala behind and never look back.

My heart hurts. My eye hurts.

It’s so cold.

I jump through the opening, hearing the pounding steps behind me. Then I run and run and run until my legs give out. I let my body sag against the back of a building.

And when I look up, snowflakes fall on my face. The cold barely touches my burning eye.

I can’t sit around.

I can’t wait for people to think they own me for giving me something. Every. Single. Time.

To have power over me just because they gave me one small piece of themselves.

As I bleed on the empty street in London, I know I am leaving my childhood behind, one that was ripped from me, one that was trampled upon, and one that took away my kindness for people.

22

Ambrose is right.

She did ruin lives.

Then why the fuck did I follow her in my car, in a thunderstorm, to see her walk through the front doors of her house?

Why in the world did I stand under that same tree in the rain, waiting for her to switch her bedroom light on?

I’m going crazy, and she is the sole cause of it.

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