Page 94 of The Secrets of a Sin

“Do it now!” Annalise demands with a shout. “She’s unworthy of existence at this point. Let God deal with her.”

My screaming intensifies, as does my desire to survive. I wasn’t going to let them murder me and ruin my chance at a happy life.

They couldn’t do this to me. They couldn’t take this away.

“Do it, goddammit!” Annalise snarls and a quick feeling of hope is taken away the second I feel the brutal slash of the knife on my throat.

I freeze.

There’s no pain. No feeling whatsoever as blood gushes onto my neck and down my chest.

“You chose wrong, little raven.” Priscilla’s heavy breaths come over me as she continues to straddle me.

I no longer fight and let my arms fall at my sides. Then with the final blow, she takes the blade and surges it into my chest.

No, I didn’t choose wrong. You did.

31

CHARLOTTE

They murdered Phoebe.

Without remorse, without a single tear shed, and without cause, they brutally killed her. Warm tears begin to fall down my cheeks as I listen to Arsen frantically thrash around on the ground and curse into the sky.

All because she was in love with a man.

They are all fucking crazy. Deranged even, with their theory that men were essentially God’s worst creation. What they had wasn’t just a group with a normal opinionated belief, what they had was a fucking cult. And Sister Mary was their Charles Manson.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off them all after they finished their confession. Annalise and Priscilla appeared delighted with their story, while Verity tried to conceal her feelings of remorse. If anything, she looked as though she no longer wanted to be there, and I was the only one who seemed to notice.

“You see, Phoebe was an enabler.” Sister Mary speaks from her imaginary podium. “And we couldn’t let people like her exist.”

“You fucking murderers!” Arsen screams at the top of his lungs, and my heart sinks watching him. His arms are now full of lacerations from his distraught movements, and his face is planted onto the concrete. “You’ll pay for what you did! You all will!”

“We will?” Sister Mary chuckles in belief. “We’ve paid enough from the treachery and pain you’ve inflicted on us women for centuries.”

“Pain and infliction?” Arsen spits. “What the fuck have I ever done to you?”

Her chin lifts, and with a sigh, she begins. “I wasn’t born with this belief. I was crafted, mended, and broken into the woman you see now. As a young girl, I was raised in a Catholic setting. My parents were poor, so they didn’t have the luxury of sending me to a prestigious school. The one I was sent to reeked of power and men, and at every corner, you’d find one lurking and waiting. They used us girls as objects as if we were unfeeling dolls that they could desecrate. It was a never-ending cycle of pain and abuse that carried on until someone finally believed our stories.” Her eyes waver as if she's recalling the events of her life. “They were sent to rot in prison, but I never felt like I received closure or the justice I needed to carry on. The sight of men appalled me, and I knew something needed to be done. Something needed to change, and that’s when I came here and was reborn.”

Regardless of her tragic past, she was still an unhinged woman with serious issues. Forming a cult with students and brainwashing them into killing another was off the charts manic, and now, they had two more victims at their mercy. It seemed fictional and almost like it was out of a movie as we sat bound to chairs like in a ritual.

But if they were capable of murder and rape, I knew anything was possible.

“And that’s when she found me.” Annalise adds as our eyes shift to her. Her bare feet cross over to where Sister Mary stands, and she proudly stands beside her. “After another painful visit from my dad, I ran into Sister Mary, who let me confide in her. I was tired of men controlling everything. Tired of them taking every goddamn thing in my life until I was ripped away from everything I knew and sent here.”

Annalise gazes at me, and her eyes linger on the black dress that still covers me. “Sister Mary understood me. Understood my outrage and hatred toward the men who wronged me. She promised that one day, I would get my revenge.” Peering over at Priscilla, she holds out her hand for her, signaling for her to come to her. “Then I met Priscilla, who clearly felt the same animosity and joined us.” Priscilla makes her way over to them and gently places her hand in Annalise’s. “And lastly, our little trickster, Verity.”

My eyes jump to Verity, who reluctantly walks towards them and stops beside Priscilla.

“You see, with just us, our faith will never reach the number of people we need it to. With that clueless Welch as Principal, I would have never been able to spread our beliefs. But now that she’s gone and I’ve taken her place, St. Catherine’s will change.” Sister Mary’s voice rises through the tops of the trees and into the night sky. “Our goal will no longer be to cure the damaged, but to embrace our defects until we can rise up and prove to society that men serve no purpose in our lives.”

It was all too much to take in. Too bizarre and off that I felt my stomach twist with the sudden urge to retch. They were going to take over the whole fucking school, along with the minds of hundreds of other young impressionable girls.

How can that even be possible?

“And you, Mr. Hale, have created somewhat of a mess in our plans.” Sister Mary ticks while Arsen chuckles darkly.

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