Page 48 of The Villain's Captive (The Villain's Duet 1)

16

Every day I recited the same sentence over and over.

I’m not crazy.

I’m not crazy.

I’m not crazy.

I wasn’t crazy. Harley was Ellie. Ellie was my little sister. But Roland kept telling me otherwise. I expected these kinds of lies from a bastard like him, but what I didn’t understand was how they got Ellie to lie. How he brainwashed Ellie into playing along, pretending she was Harley. My stepsister. That monster’s flesh and blood.

Maybe it wasn’t Ellie. The girl Roland brought in here the other day sure looked a lot like her, but he didn’t allow me to get close to her. Maybe it was a trick of the mind, my subconscious so damn desperate for Ellie to be alive I only saw what I wanted to see. I had to get Roland to let me see that little girl again so I could make sure.

What would have been worse?

Ellie pretending to be Harley, proving that Roland had brainwashed my little sister somehow?

Or Harley not being Ellie at all, proving that Roland killed her exactly the way I remembered it—throwing her body against a wall as if she were a puppet?

My stomach curdled at the thought, and I had to get up and move. Pace. Walk up and down from one wall to the other, trying to forget about the memories that crawled across my skin like insects, trying to find a way in so they could infect me. Turn me into rotten flesh like my mom.

I stood in front of the window and stared out on the street. The neighbors’ gardens and driveways needed cleaning. But I no longer had a reason to get blisters on my fingers from working for money so I could feed Ellie.

A man walked up to the stop sign across the road carrying what looked like a guitar case. I sat down on the windowsill and watched him as he adjusted his classic striped beret hat, wiping snow from the shoulders of his gray coat. He was probably one of those street performers, about to play his guitar, hoping someone would stop and drop him their change.

“Elijah?”

I looked up at the sound of my mom’s voice. It was the first time I had seen her since the day she refused to help me save Ellie, playing along with Roland’s scheme to cover up the truth.

Her hair was a mess, her eyes framed with dark circles and lines a thirty-eight-year-old woman shouldn’t have. There was almost nothing left of her—just a sack of pathetic bones and broken dreams.

She walked in and picked up the bucket I used to pee in.

“Is Roland tired of cleaning my piss?” I glowered at her. “Now he’s sending you to do it?”

“He’ll be here soon. Go take a shower.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Go take a fucking shower, Elijah. You stink. This fucking room stinks.”

“I don’t care if I stink. I’m crazy, remember?” I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall. “You’ve been smelling like vomit and piss for as long as I can remember. Maybe we are the same.”

Her tired eyes flashed, and she walked up to me, nostrils flaring, lips curled and exposing her decayed teeth. “You little bastard.”

She hit me, her palm leaving a red-hot sting on my cheek. “Ungrateful little shit.”

“Ungrateful?” I didn’t cower away. At the age of ten, I was already taller than she was. “Tell me, Mom. What should I be grateful for, exactly?” I stepped up to her, and she inched back. “The fact that you haven’t been a mother to Ellie and me since Dad died?”

“Elijah.”

“The fact that you chose drugs over us? Getting high rather than feeding your own children?”

“Shut up,” she warned with a hiss, yet continued to slither back as I stalked closer.

“Or should I be thankful that you allowed your psycho husband to kill Ellie, and pretend like I’m the crazy one?”

Her bottom lip trembled, her eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears. Usually when Ellie’s eyes saddened, tears slipping down her cheeks, I’d feel this immense need inside me to comfort her. To do whatever I could to make whatever was hurting her okay again. But with my mom, staring at her sorrow-filled irises…I felt. Nothing.

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