Part 1He Calls Me Sister

Liam was, for all intents and purposes, my brother. In reality, he was the boy my parents raised to be my husband.

After my father died, my mother, terrified Liam would abandon us, did the unthinkable. She drugged him and locked him in my room. That one act of desperation cost him his one true love, the girl who was his sun, his moon, and all his stars.

In the life that followed, he chained my mother in the basement like an animal.

And he spent his nights making sure I couldn't live, but wouldn't die.

“We’re never going to be apart, Ava,” he’d whisper, his voice a venomous caress.

“Isn’t this what you wanted, my dear little sister?”

I opened my eyes to the sight of my own blood pooling around me.

And then I was back. Back to the moment it all began, with his body pressing down on mine…

* * *

A guttural sound escaped my throat.

A scorching weight crushed me, a storm of kisses landing on the delicate skin of my neck. The iron chain around my ankle sang its cold, metallic song with every thrust of his body, a rhythm of my despair.

Liam’s fingers tightened around my throat, a cruel smile twisting his handsome face. “A hunger strike, Ava? Is that your latest little game?” he hissed. “For every day you refuse to eat, I’ll make your mother’s life twice as miserable. Let’s see what breaks first. Your spirit… or her bones.”

“Liam.”

My eyes, dull and lifeless, shifted to meet his. I spoke his name, and the word hung in the air between us.

His movements froze. His voice, when he spoke again, was laced with ice. “What did you just call me?”

Never before. Not then, not in the life that came after. In more than twenty years, I had never once called him by his given name without a title. From the time I was a little girl, I knew I was destined to marry him. You don’t call your future husband ‘brother.’

But today… I wanted to.

“Brother,” I whispered, a faint, hollow smile touching my lips as my gaze drifted into nothingness. “Seven years, Liam. Hasn’t it been long enough?”

From the day he married me, the day he took complete control of the company my father left behind, this brutal revenge had stretched on for seven agonizing years. In the beginning, I fought. I demanded a divorce, offered reparations, tried to end my own life in a dozen different ways. But in the end, I was forced to surrender.

He held my mother’s life in his hands.

If I was compliant, her dog’s life in the basement became marginally more bearable.

So, this hunger strike wasn’t a protest.

It was simply… that I couldn’t eat.

I never knew late-stage stomach cancer could be this excruciating.

“Enough?” Liam’s lip curled into a sneer. He gripped my chin, forcing a thin, tasteless porridge between my teeth. “Ava, what you owe me can never be repaid in this lifetime. You and your mother were so afraid I’d leave you, weren’t you? Well, I promise you this: we will never be apart. Are you satisfied now… sister?”

I choked down half the bowl before my body rebelled, spewing the contents back out.

Liam’s face darkened. He flipped me over with a violent shove, his fingers tangling brutally in my long hair. “You won’t eat? Fine! Then we’ll just keep going.”

Forced to my knees on the bed, I endured his punishing conquest, a tearing pain that was both physical and spiritual. I bore it until the churning, metallic taste in my stomach could no longer be contained.

Blood, bright and crimson, spilled from my lips, staining the pristine white sheets.

His voice, suddenly laced with panic, echoed in my ears. His hands moved frantically, trying to wipe away the blood that only seemed to multiply. “Ava! Ava, what’s wrong with you?!”

My body collapsed. I stared up at the dazzling crystal chandelier, a laugh of pure liberation bubbling up from my chest.

“Liam… we’re even now,” I gasped, my vision blurring. “Let my mother go.”