Chapter 14
Chapter 14
He frowned and opened it.
Grainy surveillance clips. An old therapy record.
The first scene was him at ten. Back row of a classroom. Alone. A few other pups throwing his backpack into a pool of water, knocking over his chair.
He remembered that time. He'd always thought it was because he didn't fit in. That he was too withdrawn. That was why they'd pushed him around.
Then the picture flipped his world upside down.
The sister who had always been his angel, his protector—
Standing outside the restroom door, quietly handing one of those pups a little gift. Smiling. "Tell him to stop sitting in the front row. He's annoying. He runs to Mom about everything. Like a little tail."
Then an audio recording.
His old childhood therapy record. It turned out his birth mother had quietly taken him to a pack behavioral clinic when he was small.
The healer's voice was gentle.
"The child being excluded isn't a personality issue. It's an internal family competition dynamic. You need to watch the control and emotional interference between your daughter and son. She's constructing an isolation structure around this pup."
He stared at the screen. His knuckles were white.
This was the wound he'd never let anyone touch. The childhood shadow. The loneliness. The depression.
And now he knew. Every bit of it had been staged by Fiona.
She was a spider at the center of a web, quietly weaving his tragedy his whole life.
His eyes darkened. Something huge was moving up inside him.
The glow of the monitor fell across his face. The madness forming in his eyes was visible.
Eventually he got up, walked to the bathroom, and turned the tap on full. He pressed cold water into his face. It didn't help. He was burning from the inside.
He finally understood. Between him and Selene, this wasn't only a misunderstanding.
It was Fiona. Fiona had destroyed everything.
Not only his childhood, his trust, his belief. But the only woman he'd ever actually loved.
He didn't close his eyes once that night.
The sky wasn't light yet. The city was still asleep.
He sat in the study staring at newly uncovered files. His spine was cold. His fingertips were numb.
He'd never felt this foreign to himself. This stupid.
He'd spent the night following the email's hints, pulling every record on his parents' car accident — sealed police files, the vehicle inspection report, the wreckage analysis from the scene.
Back then it had been closed quickly. "Mechanical failure, sudden incident." Not even the enforcers had looked for blame.
But the small details no one had scrutinized all those years ago were coming out now.
The brake system on the accident vehicle had been tampered with by an unauthorized hand three days before the crash.
The file also had a blurry surveillance still.
Damien stared at the image of a girl in a school uniform slipping into the garage.
Even with the image this grainy, he knew that face in one look. Fiona.
She'd been fourteen that year.
The glow of the monitor fell on his colorless face. His pupils were shrinking. His hands had started shaking on their own.
He'd always thought it was an accident. Fate. A bad luck day that had taken them.
But it wasn't an accident. It was human. It was murder.
His beloved "sister." The one who had arranged the funeral for his own parents, with her own hands.
He could barely breathe.
He leaned back against the chair like a man with his bones pulled out of him. The past came back in flashes.
The small girl who clung to him crying, "Big brother, I'm scared."
The Fiona who played innocent, dependent, harmless in front of him.
Now he knew.
She'd never been afraid.
She'd been acting.
He felt like he was falling into a pit.
Over and over, her image that night, curling against him, came back.
His stomach turned. He almost threw up.
Light footsteps came down from upstairs.
"Big brother?" Fiona's voice through the door, sleepy. "You still haven't slept? I had a dream. It was us as pups…"
His head snapped up. His eyes went cold to the bottom.
The door creaked open.
Fiona peered in, in her robe, still drowsy. "Big brother, why aren't you answering me? What's wrong?"
He stood slowly and walked to her. His eyes were dead.
"Fiona," he said softly, quietly poisoned. "Let me ask you something."
"Hm?" She tilted her head, confused. "What?"
"Mom and Dad's accident. Was it you?"
Her smile froze.
She blinked. "Big brother, what are you talking about?"
The next second, his hand was on her throat.
"Say it!" he roared, from the chest, like a wolf coming awake.
Fiona struggled, terrified, her face white.
"What did you do? From me getting isolated as a pup. From Mom and Dad. To killing Selene's pup. Have you been mad this whole time? Have you never seen other people as people?"
"Big brother… you're choking me…"
"You're the mad one!" His eyes were bloodshot. "I loved you. I trusted you. I treated you like family. And you're telling me you were performing the entire time?"
"Stop faking! You even knew I loved Selene. You were jealous, weren't you? You're not love. You're sick, Fiona!"