Chapter 2

2

"You don't know the truth! My mother was the victim of the first attack! Chloe is the reason she's gone! She's a curse!"

"If she hadn't whined about a tiny fever and forced Mom to take her to the hospital, none of this would have happened!"

Quinn's emotions were spiraling out of control. He covered his face, trying to suppress the grief he had carried for years.

By the end, he was screaming. He sounded like a wounded animal crying out for its mother.

"Because of her, I don't have a mother anymore! Why would I protect a murderer?"

"There wasn't even a body left! My father and I had to bury an empty casket just to have a place to mourn!"

As Quinn cried, I wept with him. I felt like I couldn't breathe, even in death.

For years, every time I knelt by that river, these were the words I had to hear. My father called me a monster and a killer.

Quinn hated me for being sick that night. They believed I had personally destroyed our perfect family.

They used to hold my head underwater in that river, asking me why I wasn't the one who died. They wanted me to know that Mom was the only one who mattered.

But they forgot. I was once the little girl they treated like a princess.

The people around him sighed heavily. "The past is the past. You have to cherish the living. You are siblings."

"I said she's not worth it!"

The light in my eyes faded. If Quinn knew I was dead, would he be happy? Would he finally forgive me?

"Sir! we searched the riverbank! There's no one here!" an officer shouted.

"But we found a lot of messy footprints. And this strawberry hairpin."

Quinn had made that hairpin for me. It had a tiny GPS tracker hidden inside it.

Once, when he forgot to pick me up from school, I got lost. The family and the police searched for six months before finding me in a den of traffickers.

I never forgot Quinn's guilt-ridden eyes back then. He had sworn to protect me from being hurt ever again.

But that love had turned into a blade. And that blade had sent me back to hell.

Quinn barely glanced at the hairpin. He walked forward to check the ground, his expression skeptical.

My heart pounded with a flicker of hope. I wasn't kneeling there like I usually was, and my hairpin was on the ground. Surely he would notice something was wrong?

If he just mentioned it to the police, maybe… maybe they could still find what was left of me.

"Quinn! Where is your sister? Could she be missing?"

The people around him grew alert. It was easy to connect my disappearance with the drifter attacks.

My heart was in my throat. But Quinn just sneered and showed them his call log.

"Her? Missing? That brat is probably hiding somewhere. She called me this morning to cry and play the victim!"

"She loves lying. She's probably staging this whole thing to get attention. Killing my mom wasn't enough for her!"

I hovered around them, desperate to be heard. I wanted to scream that I wasn't lying! I was telling the truth!

Why wouldn't he believe me? But I couldn't speak, and Quinn became more convinced of his own theory.

He looked like he wanted to drag me out of hiding just to humiliate me in front of everyone.