17

The word bounced off the cold tile walls, sending a violent shockwave straight through my body. I stared up at her, my mind completely spinning as the room seemed to tilt. "What do you mean by that?" I whispered, my voice trembling so much the words could barely escape my throat.

Veronica’s mouth twisted into a look of pure disgust, and she shook her head slowly, looking down at me like I was a piece of garbage. "You really don't remember, do you?" She let out a sharp, mocking laugh that made my skin crawl. "For a long time, I actually thought you would recognize my voice or notice something familiar about me. I thought you'd get suspicious. I had no idea you were truly this stupid. I never should have trusted a single word that came out of your mouth."

As she spoke, the tone of her voice shifted slightly, and suddenly, the fog in my brain cleared. A memory hit me like a physical blow. The way she pulled her lips, the sharp rhythm of her speech—it wasn't Veronica at all. It was Freya. My older sister.

A heavy realization crashed over me, making it hard to breathe. I knew there had been something terribly familiar about her from the moment we met, but my brain had refused to connect the dots. The Freya I grew up with was a large, heavy-set girl with soft features and a gentle smile. The woman standing over me now was completely skinny, her bones sharp against her skin, and her eyes filled with nothing but pure malice.

"Sister Freya?" I choked out, tears instantly blinding my vision as my heart broke into a million pieces. "What did I ever do to you? I thought we loved each other. We were sisters. Why are you doing this to me?"

The mention of her real name didn't soften her features at all. Instead, it seemed to turn her into a wild animal. She yanked my hair with a sudden, vicious force, pulling my face up until our eyes locked together in a suffocatingly tight stare. "First of all, my name is Veronica," she hissed, her teeth clenched so tightly her jaw looked like stone. "Freya is dead. She died a long time ago in that house. And secondly, I am going to make absolutely sure that you pay for every single thing you did to us."

She leaned in closer, her hot breath smelling of expensive perfume and bitter hatred. "I still cannot believe I let you escape into the darkness that night. I was the exact reason you managed to slip away from Father's grip. I sacrificed everything just to unlock that door and let you run free." Her eyes flared with a sudden, painful memory. "Do you want to know why I did it? Because you looked me in the eyes and promised that you would come back for us. You swore that once you found a safe life outside of his reach, you would return and pull the rest of us out of that living hell."

She let go of my hair, only to shove my shoulder back against the wall, making my broken back flare with fresh agony. "But you never came," she sneered, her voice dropping into a dark, ragged whisper. "The next morning, Dad realized you were gone. He gathered everyone and demanded to know who had unlocked your door. I stood up. I took the entire blame for you. I covered for your escape because I genuinely loved you, Fedora. And do you know what my love got me?"

She held up her hands, her fingers trembling with a mixture of rage and trauma. "Dad began torturing me. Day after day, night after night, without a single moment of mercy. He starved me for four straight months. He locked me away in the dark and only allowed me to eat a single scraps of food once a day. That is why the fat girl you remember is gone. That is how I became this skinny, hollow ghost standing in front of you."

A tear slipped from her eye, but she brushed it away instantly, her expression hardening back into ice. "He kept screaming that I had let his most valuable object and his most dangerous weapon walk right out the front door. He said what I did would eventually cost the lives of millions of people, but I didn't care about any of the garbage he was spouting. I only cared about protecting my little sister. I endured the beatings, the hunger, the isolation. He even cut my fingers one by one to make me talk, but I stayed silent for you."

She gripped the edges of the sink, leaning her weight against it as she stared down at the floor. "And after he finally released me from that cage, I sat by the window and waited. I kept telling myself that any day now, Fedora would walk through those gates to save us. One year passed. Then two years passed. And you never showed your face. You completely abandoned us."

Her gaze snapped back to me, burning with a fire that made me want to shrink into the floorboards. "You left everyone who risked their lives to help you. You completely forgot about your promise. So, I finally found a way to escape on my own. And the very night I crossed that border, I made a solemn vow to myself. I promised that I would spend the rest of my days making your life a living, breathing hell. I swore I would take my revenge on you, no matter what it took."

She straightened her spine, a cold, empty smirk returning to her face as she looked down at my shivering form. "That is my main goal in life now. It is the only reason I wake up in the morning. I do not care what I have to do to achieve it. I do not care whose heart I break, what rules I bend, or who I have to fuck to get closer to your world. As long as it destroys you, as long as it gets back at you for what you did to me, I will gladly do it over and over again."