Page 28 of Last Summer
Rounding the car, he slides into the driver's side. I can’t help staring at his veiny forearms. His dark hair is shorter on the sides than on the top. His skin is a rich tanned tone that compliments his dark features perfectly. I can’t help the way my body responds to him. He’s my savior—my hero. The car rolls slowly down the road, the gravel crunching beneath the tires. When we take the final bend, the headlights shine down on the campsite, illuminating the horrors below. Blood and gore cover the earth. This place is soaked in death.
But my eyes fall to an empty patch of dirt. A pool of blood stains the ground where I stabbed Julie. But her body and the knife are gone.
Chapter fourteen
HEREDITARY
JULIE
OneYearLater
I know what you’ve done. And I know who you are Danica, who youtrulyare.
The giggling group of girls dressed in pastel tulle raise their champagne flutes. Danica’s cheeks flush pink as she offers a timid smile. She thanks them, slinging an arm around the brunette next to her and giving the other woman a side hug. As she does, the glittering diamond on her left hand glints in the light. A beautiful bride-to-be and her maids all gathered to celebrate.
Fake fucking bitch.
If anyone should be getting to celebrate their love, their undying devotion to another soul, it should be Jonathan and me. Unless you were born alongside another human, you can never understand how deep that bond goes. He was never just my brother—he was my other half. We were made for each other—it was in our blood, in our damn DNA. But she took that from me. She murdered my lover, my brother, my everything. She stole my happily ever after. And now she thinks she gets to have hers.
I don’t think so, Danica.
Little Miss Priss played the victim. I watched it all unfold—Danica crying and sobbing like a damn baby, claiming I’d lured all of them to the woods because I was some type of psychopath. The horrors of that weekend were splashed all over the papers. The media couldn’t get enough of the salacious details of sex, drugs, and murder in the mountains. Danica was interviewed repeatedly. She told them I’d been jealous that Jonathan spent his last days alive with her. Fucking cunt couldn’t even bother to tell them the truth about what Jonathan was to me. She painted me as the unhinged and unstable sister, not a woman driven to get justice for her soulmate that had been stolen from her. Her crocodile tears and sad sap victim act worked—everyone fell for it.
Especially her knight in shining armor—Blake Thompson, the police officer who was first to arrive first at the scene. And her fiance. She plans to marry him in two days. It’s been in all the papers—‘Local Hero Cop Marries The Woman He Saved Last Summer.’
It’s bullshit.
I ran from the scene that night, carefully crawling through the woods and back to the vacant summer cabin where Jonathan and I used to sneak off to in order to fool around. The old lady that owns it never comes around anymore, leaving it not abandoned but always empty. I stayed there for months afterward, recovering and planning. I had almost achieved my revenge. Only one had slipped through my fingers. As the days went by, the fact that Danica survived, that she was out there living her life while my brother and I suffered because of her, drove me more and more crazy.
And then I saw the announcement—a wedding is a perfect place to die. I have it all worked out. This time she won’t get away.
Danica may have escaped her fate once, but I still know what she did last summer. And this time, I will get my revenge.
THE END?
