Chapter 3

Right after the words left Vanessa's mouth, Scott shoved her hard and snapped, "What nonsense are you talking about?"

Caught off guard, Vanessa stumbled backward and scraped her arm against the edge of a cheap table, leaving a bloody gash.

I panickedly lunged forward to catch her, but my hands passed straight through her body. I still wasn't used to being dead, even after two years.

Jordan burst into loud, terrified wails, but no one came forward to comfort him. Both Scott and Devin were too busy fussing over Nicole.

Once they managed to soothe her, Devin turned to Vanessa with a dark expression. "You know how weak Nicole is, yet you still upset her on purpose. You're really just as vicious as Shirley."

Vanessa slowly got to her feet. The hatred in her eyes intensified when she heard his taunts. "If saying a couple of words to her makes me vicious, what about everything you did to Shirley? Doesn't that make you 100 times worse?"

She pointed at Nicole and laughed until tears welled up in her eyes. "Look at her. She has rosy cheeks and doesn't look sick at all, yet the Shirley you call vicious was skin and bones when she died. She didn't even have enough money to cover emergency treatment when she bled out."

"That's a lie!" Devin shot back without a second thought. "We never took away Shirley's cards, even when we were punishing her."

He sounded completely certain, but I could see his hands shaking uncontrollably. Even a flicker of complicated emotion flashed in Scott's eyes.

Were they worried about me?

I shook my head and immediately dismissed the thought.

The first time they forced me to give Nicole blood, they had reacted the same way when they saw how pale my lips were, but they eventually got used to it.

Whenever I resisted and refused to donate, Scott would say, "It's just a little blood, and you'll recover after a bowl of chicken soup. Stop being so dramatic."

When I went to Devin and showed him my bruised arms from the frequent blood draws, he simply said, "Bruises fade in a few days. You've been doing this for a year now, so how are you still not used to it?"

But when I was injured and needed a blood transfusion to survive, the two of them stepped in to stop Nicole from giving her blood to me.

"Giving blood takes a massive toll on the body," they had said. "We spent two weeks nursing you back to health when you'd just scratched your finger. There's no way we'd ever let you do something that could hurt you.

"Shirley is healthy and strong. She'll survive a minor injury like that."

I couldn't stand the way they were blind to my suffering, trying to force me to be just like them, accustomed to sacrificing everything for Nicole. So after leaving the hospital, I ran away from home, but they tracked me down and dragged me back.

For the next two years, they kept me under tight lock and key, for fear that if I escaped, Nicole would lose her blood bank.

After three years of blood transfusions, Nicole was finally nursed back to health. While Devin and Scott happily threw a huge celebration for her, I weighed less than 90 pounds and was admitted to the hospital, but they never cared at all.

As I lay alone in the hospital bed, Nicole entered the room.

She looked radiant, and there was a triumphant smile on her face as she said, "Neither Scott nor Devin cares about you anymore, Shirley. There's no point in you staying with the Webers, so why don't I help you disappear for good?"

With that, she picked up a fruit knife from the bedside table and stabbed her shoulder.

Scott and Devin rushed into the room. Under Nicole's calculated frame-up, I became a murderer who had attempted to kill her.

Refusing to believe a single word I said no matter how much I sobbed and explained, they sent me to a psychiatric hospital that night.

I desperately fought against it and gripped Devin's arm tightly, begging through tears, "We grew up together, Devin. Can't you trust me one more time?"

Devin shot me an indifferent look and pried my fingers off, one after the other. "You've hurt Nicole way too many times, Shirley. How am I supposed to trust you?"

I screamed for Scott, but he wouldn't even spare me a cold glance.

With that, they walked away and left me abandoned in the dark, hopeless psychiatric hospital.

I was locked away with psychotic patients and suffered brutal beatings every single day. Whenever I tried to escape, I was punished with electric shocks.

It wasn't until four months later that I had a chance to knock out a nurse delivering medication and escape.

Vanessa had sorrow written all over her face as she looked at Devin and asked, "Do you know why Shirley hated you so much yet still chose to give birth to your son?"