Chapter Ten
Maddy
I have a twin sister.
I always knew I was adopted. My parents never hid that from me. But, it honestly hasn’t crossed my mind more than a few times in my entire life.
Mom said it was a closed adoption but they were told that my birth mother had died during childbirth. There was never any mention of a twin.
Maybe that was part of the whole, closed adoption, thing, but in the end, it was all a lie.
“You know, at first I thought I was going to have a hard time telling the two of you apart,” the woman, my birth mother, says. “But I can see it as clear as day. It’s in the eyes. They look the same but there’s something different.”
“Yeah, Madison has your eyes,” I say from where I’m tied to this dang chair. “Filled with evilness and greed. Which is why your stupid plan will never work. They’re never going to believe that she’s me.”
“It will only have to work long enough for those people to crash and die,” she tells me, repeating the part of their plan where they try and take over my life as well as my parent’s money. “Once they’re dead, all of their money will be transferred to Madeline Burton. Luckily identical twins have a close genetic makeup so there won’t be any red flags when they confirm her identity.”
“Has this always been your plan?” I ask, trying not to feel hurt.
“Your dad and I planned for the long game,” the woman laughs. “He’s dead now, your father. Alcohol poisoning. Stupid bastard. But the plan remains the same. We knew that a newborn baby would be adopted by a family with a shit ton of money. And we were right. We had to make sure Maddi did everything to always keep up with you. We have watched you grow. Maddi even had to get fat because of you. She didn’t mind though.”
The woman laughs and takes a puff of her cigarette.
“However, she fucking hated those retarted kids’ classes you took. She sat in the back of the class, always disguised, and slept. She just needed a basic understanding to take over every aspect of your life.”
“It’s not going to work,” I say, ignoring her talk about my precious students that way. “They won’t fall for it.”
But I’m not so sure. When Madison left here earlier she looked, walked, acted, and talked just like me.
“You just sit there and shut up,” she yells. “The only reason you’re still alive is in case something comes up that we need to know.”
The spots of burning pain around my body remind me just how far they’ll go to get the information they need. They asked me hundreds of questions about my personal life. Names of my students, names of King’s family, my family. They even asked about Dillon. I guess Madison heard me talking on the phone with him one day.
“I didn’t stay in the college classes for very long,” my twin told me as she watched our mother press her lit cigarette into my skin when I wouldn’t talk earlier. “I didn’t want to risk getting caught. So, I never got to meet your friend. Hopefully, I will one day.”
“Blackhawk won’t be interested in you,” I told her, purposefully using his club name. “He’s in love with Mel.”
I smile at the memory of the false information I fed her. I don’t know if there will ever come a time when she will meet up with Dillon, but the second she calls him Blackhawk or refers to Molly as Mel, he’ll know something is up.
I might not be alive when the time comes, but she’ll finally be caught.
I’m not too worried about King though. He made it clear that he never wanted to see me again.
“You’re lucky I don’t shoot you between the eyes,” he had told me. “Were you so desperate for attention that you lied about why he was after you just so you could get someone to feel sorry for you? What’s wrong, Madeline, no one wants to come near that fat fucking body of yours so you hope to gain some sympathy for some sort of emotional contact? You’re not worthy of anyone’s sympathy. No one would want to touch your nasty ass when it reeks of lies.”
“It was Maddi’s idea to make you feel alone,” my mother laughs, pulling me from the memory that tore me apart. “Genius when you think about it. Everyone pulled away from you Madeline. No one believed you. Not that biker. Not even the police.”
Tears flow down my face, my burned face, but I can’t wipe them away. My hands are securely tied to the arms of the chair. They were waiting for me when I got back to my apartment. They knocked me out and I woke up wherever the heck this is, already tied up. They let me up to use the bathroom, but even then, there’s a chain on my ankle preventing me from going any further than the toilet.
I’ve been in this same position for weeks now and my body has started to scream. I want to say that I’ve lost weight, but they keep feeding me these super greasy, high fatty, foods. Something about keeping up appearances or whatever. And by feeding me, I mean that literally. This woman has threatened to blend the food and shove it into my stomach with a tube if I didn’t just eat the damn things.
It’s not like I’m going to be leaving this place alive, anyway. There is still a small sliver of hope that Dillon is going to barge through the doors any second now and take me out of this place.
I close my eyes and Dillon’s face is morphed into King’s and I can’t help but laugh. Like that man will ever come to rescue me. And, even if he did, I don’t think I could ever forgive him for what he said. For how he made me feel.
But I just want to feel wanted for a small moment. So, I open my mind to that special day. The day I thought my life was going to change for the better.
“You’ve shattered my whole fucking world, Madeline. I’ll be back, baby.”
“MOTHER, THAT FUCKING BITCH TRICKED US.”
I don’t know what that’s about, but her absolute anger makes me a happy twin.