Page 20 of Mine, Forever

“I heard you’ve had a trying few days.”

“Days?” I exclaimed, but it came out as a croak.

“Yes, don’t you remember?” His smile was so sadistic I felt like I was going to cry.

“Where’s my family?”

“The family who don’t want you?”

Sobs wracked my body as I felt every glimmer of hope dissipate into thin air. “Why are you doing this to me?”

He didn’t answer which made me look his way. He was thinking hard, his smile gone.

“Honestly, I don’t know. You’ve awoken something in me that I had long since buried. I need to see you broken. Stop holding onto that goodness in you. Stop feeling.”

“Why me? There are plenty of broken souls out there for you to torture.”

He pushed up off his chair and sat on the side of the bed. I could feel his body heat from where I was restrained.

“Tell me why you didn’t report Giordy for what he did to you.”

“What?”

“I saw the report.”

How? I’d retracted my statement. “I was mistaken.”

“No, you weren’t. Stop protecting them!”

“It wasn’t Giordy. It was one of his friends.”

The memory had been buried deep in my soul, the way I liked it.Why was he so concerned with that part of my life?

“You should seek help for your obsession with my uncle.”

He chuckled, adding a grave growl to his tone. “Maybe I should just kill him.”

“You won’t see me stopping you.”

“Why did you retract it?”

I turned my head away from his eyes. I couldn’t bear to see those green eyes barrel into my soul. “He said if I didn’t, he would do the same to my sisters.” I closed my eyes to push out the tears that had accumulated there.

“I was fifteen by the way, and they were fourteen.”

“You did it to protect them?”

I nodded.

“But they don’t care about you. Why would you do that?”

He seemed to genuinely not understand my reasoning. I wondered if he was an only child. Of course, I would do anything to protect my little sisters. How could he not understand that?

I shrugged, but as I was restrained, it didn’t come across as nonchalant.

He pushed off the bed. “I’ll come back in a week to see you.”

“Fuck you.”

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