Part 2He Calls Me Sister

My head was spinning, but a heavy weight pressed down on my body, pinning me in place.

I frowned, my eyelids fluttering open.

The ceiling that greeted me was familiar, yet achingly distant. I froze.

I wasn’t dead?

Where had Liam taken me? This wasn’t a hospital, and it wasn’t the bedroom where he had kept me chained for seven years. It looked… it looked like the home we once shared. My childhood home.

Rip.

The sound of tearing fabric was followed by a rush of cool air against my chest. A hand, with long, elegant fingers, covered my breast. A violent tremor shot through me, my skin erupting in goosebumps. My gaze darted down, and I fell into a pair of crimson-red eyes.

A much younger Liam, his eyes clouded with a feverish haze, his breathing ragged and heavy. One scorching kiss, then another, landed just above my heart.

A bolt of lightning split my mind in two, leaving me shaking uncontrollably.

This… this was the night. The night my mother drugged him.

My eyes scanned the room, the familiar furniture, the posters on the wall. I was sure of it. This was that exact night.

Only last time, I had been knocked out cold by a painkiller my mother gave me for a stomachache, sleeping through the entire catastrophe. I hadn’t been able to stop the mistake from happening.

But this time, by some divine mercy, I was awake.

“Liam! Liam, calm down!” I cried out, my voice raw with panic. “Look at me! It’s Ava, your sister!”

His body went rigid.

He lifted his head, his red-rimmed eyes staring at me in a fog of confusion for a few seconds, his brow furrowed.

But I had severely underestimated my mother’s determination to “succeed, by any means necessary.” She had poured nearly half a bottle of high-proof liquor down his throat. That, combined with the “special ingredient” she’d mixed in, meant his moment of clarity didn’t last three seconds before it was completely overwhelmed.

His hand slid down the curve of my waist, fumbling, desperate, and clumsy as it snagged the waistband of my underwear—