Chapter 1
I was locked inside Hollow Creek Psychiatric, eyes glued to my sister’s wedding livestream.
She was glowing. Beautiful. Naive.
Then all hell broke loose.
A woman–naked, drenched in blood–crashed the scene like a horror movie. She dropped to her knees, slamming her head on the marble floor again and again.
“Lily, please! My face is ruined, my clothes are in shreds—you’ve destroyed me. I’m no threat now. Don’t send me back to the asylum. I’ll stay away from Grayson, I swear!”
My baby sister stood frozen at the altar.
Grayson Whitmore, Lily’s new husband, exploded with rage.
“Hit her,” he ordered. “Now.”
Dozens of slaps followed, brutal and fast.
All for show. All to protect that bleeding woman—Aubrey Hayes.
“She’s lived under other people’s roofs her whole life,” Grayson growled. “She’s kind, quiet. And you–you–can’t even make room for her?”
“You’ve been spoiled too long. It ends today. The Whitmores don’t keep venom.‘
The wedding died right there. The string quartet stopped. Lily was yanked away, shoved into a black car, and hauled off to some mountaintop monastery to “repent.”
When I saw her again, she wasn’t Lily anymore.
Her face was carved up. Her chest collapsed like something had been broken and never set right. Fingers curled unnaturally, twisted into angles that don’t exist in the living.
No sparkle left in her eyes.
Just silence.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I walked straight into the office of the facility director, wrapped a restraint strap around his throat, and tightened until he agreed:
Scarlett Moore was going home.
When I opened the door to our house, Mom flinched so hard she dropped her keys.
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She yanked me inside like the walls had ears.
Dad lay on the bed, stiff and still. The kind of stillness that only comes after heartbreak kills the
body before death does.
“Lily’s gone,” Mom choked. “Your father went to confront Grayson.”
He never came back whole.
Grayson didn’t even try to hide it. When he heard Lily was dead, he blinked like he hadn’t expected the game to end so fast.
Aubrey Hayes lounged beside him, lipstick perfect, venom in her smile.
“Dead?” she snorted. “That’s funny. Just got a video–she looked perfectly asleep to me.”
She tapped her phone, and there Lily was.
Still. Pale. Beautiful. Like a doll waiting to wake up.
Dad’s fist slammed the coffee table hard enough to splinter wood.
“My daughter’s body is cold in the morgue, covered in wounds! And you’re laughing?”
Grayson shot to his feet, rage darkening his eyes. “Enough! Lily’s playing victim again? What, she dragged her father into the circus now?”
“You Moores are all the same. Lies, drama, guilt games.”
Aubrey smirked from the leather sofa. “Mr. Moore, your act is embarrassing.”
Grayson didn’t flinch. Just flicked his sleeve, looked toward the door.
“Throw him out.”
The bodyguards obeyed. Fast. Efficient.
They broke both his legs before dumping him on the sidewalk.
When Mom told me the rest, I didn’t flinch. I peeled back the white sheet covering my sister’s face.
Her beauty had been turned into a battlefield.
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Scars everywhere. Her chest was hollowed out. Her limbs bent in ways that screamed: She suffered.
“She didn’t go peacefully, did she?” Mom whispered behind me, voice shaking.
No. She didn’t.
My name is Scarlett Moore. I’m Lily’s twin.
She was light. I was shadow.
She smiled at strangers. I stared them down. She laughed. I didn’t speak. People called me a freak. A psycho. A monster.
Only Lily ever treated me like I was human.
She’d save her last candy—an orange–flavored Tootsie Pop–and press it into my palm like it was
treasure.
“Try it,” she’d say. “It’s sweet, right?”
God, she smiled so easily.
Now her eyes would never open again.
When we were twelve, Northlake Prep’s headmaster’s son set his sights on her.
One day after school, a group of older boys dragged her into an alley.
I followed them quietly.
When she came running out, terrified and bruised, she never saw the blood–covered girl walking behind her.
That night, the moon was high and full.
By dawn, the headmaster’s family was dead.
Police found me sitting in the middle of it all, covered in gore, smiling as I counted the candy wrappers she used to leave behind for me.
They said I was insane.
They locked me in Hollow Creek.
The windows there had iron bars.
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Every time Lily visited, she’d press her cheek to the cold steel and grin.
“Scarlett,” she’d whisper. “The cherry blossoms on Seabrook Cove are blooming. It’s so pretty
today.”
I never spoke. But she’d always chatter on, sharing her joy with me.
The last time I saw her, she was extremely happy and told me she was getting married.
She promised to livestream it for me. “Tell me if I look beautiful in my dress!”
But the wedding never finished. They broke her before the vows could finish.
Now?
I’m free.
And whoever hurt my sister?
Will beg to die before I’m through.
