46. Reign
CHAPTER 46
Reign
T alking about Raina used to warm my core, filling me with a sense of comfort and joy. Now, it left me hollow and consumed by anger. Those memories once joyous, now a painful ache, a reminder of what I lost and the emptiness that remained. The once silent threat of her knowledge soon turned to screams reaching octaves that pierced my eardrums.
The one person I’d worked so hard to protect was careless, willing to throw me to the ocean rocks. To the wolves, like I was nothing.
“ W hat did you do, Reign?” Her shriek cut through the air like a knife. “How could you do this to me?” Her blue eyes, which matched my own, stared into me with a seething hatred.
She stood in my flat after disowning me for years. “How could I do what?” I asked her, completely bored. She didn’t deserve a single bit more of the energy I'd given her throughout the years.
“You know what the fuck you did,” she spat her words. Spittle flung from her full lips. “You cut me off. Give me what you owe me.”
I shook my head, unable to fulfill her wish. It was true; I did cut her off. There was a generous chunk of money from the estate of our family. Our father’s passing brought me nothing short of peace and the funding to pay my way through school debt free. For a conniving piece of shit, he made sure to have several stashes of money set aside for us.
And I was splitting it evenly with my sister.
Until I wasn't.
“You don’t need the money. It’s safely stored away for you for when you get yourself together,” I told her. And it was true. My sister was a fucking piece of work, but she was still my flesh and blood. And though she hated me, I still had an inkling of feeling left for her, even if it dwindled swiftly.
“I need it now,” she barked through clenched teeth poking a boney finger in my face. “You took the only parent I cared about, and now you're taking the money, too?” Her voice raised. “I mean, who the fuck do you think you are?”
I took her hand in mine. It was much smaller, soft, and frail. Like that of an elderly person. It saddened me to my core. “I think I’m your brother. And I have to work soon. So,” I waved my hand as I spoke, dismissing her. I was fed up with her lies.
“You’ve always been useless,” she said under her breath. “Worthless fucking mama’s boy that couldn’t get over losing her.” It was as if she wedged a knife through my lung.
“Raina,” I gritted out. “Just go.”
“Yeah, I’ll go,” she mocked me. “Straight to the police and tell them my piece of shit brother butchered our father.” She laughed, dancing out of the flat. “Then you’ll rot in prison, where your crazy ass belongs, and I’ll make sure not to put a damn dime on your books.”
As if I’d want her pity money in my imaginary commissary account. Ridiculous.
The sister that I loved was gone. I always understood that I meant very little to her, but she reached new lows every interaction.
Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to years. She continued to make her idle threats, never following through. I figured she’d long forgotten about me until she reached out requesting to meet me in the city. She wanted to meet for dinner, talk things out with the only family she had left.
And like an idiot, I went.
“Thanks for getting me.” She smiled wide from the passenger seat. “I wanted to be on better terms with you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said as I drove. Unease rendered me silent.
“So,” she shifted. “I really could use the money you have saved for me to start over.”
I nodded along, flicking my glance to her in the passenger seat before focusing back on the road.
She continued, “I mean, it's the least you can do after taking my only family from me.”
And it was comments like that that helped me understand that she was never going to change.
“He was a scum of a person, Raina,” I growled the words through clenched teeth. “What part of that do you forget?” I let out an exasperated breath. “And last I checked, I was your family, too.”
“I would’ve rather had him.”
“Figures. The rotted apple never falls far from the vile tree.” I snorted. My sister could never appreciate anything I’d done for her. She’d always hold this over my head, and my patience wore thinner than her pale skin.
Her face morphed into the ugly, angry woman she’d grown up to be. “I still plan to snitch on you.” Her fist landed on my cheek knocking me off guard, my head cracked against the window with a wet smack. Blood dripped in my vision from my split brow bone; pain blossomed in my cheek from her sharp knuckles.
“Dad may have had his faults, but he was an honorable man. You’ve always been a sadistic fuck. I saw your face when you lied through your teeth to the cops about what happened. You loved killing him.” Tears poured over and down her cheeks.
The car swerved and I managed to correct it back in the right lane before crashing, killing us both. Though, that would’ve been a pleasurable and fitting end.
Raina wore her hatred for me proudly.
“I did,” I told her truthfully. “The same way you smiled and laughed at Mom’s and all the other victims' funerals. Protecting that foul, inbred monster of a father.” Raina wasn’t without flaw herself.
“Please. She was pathetic and left her kids instead of leaving her husband.” She waved her hand. “She doesn’t deserve my pity. And those who Father caught earned their fate.”
Nausea clawed through my stomach at her contempt.
“Dad loved me.” She softened her tone. “So what if he had outside hobbies? You had no right taking him away from me,” she sniffled. “He loved me.”
God, what the actual fuck?
I rolled my eyes.
“I hate you,” she muttered, folding her arms across her chest in the passenger seat. “I wish he slit your throat that night. A good son would’ve carried the family tradition, saying nothing. Yet you expect me to stay silent forever.” Her words didn’t even feel like real life. What kind of sick fuck would continue a tradition like that? This wasn’t Christmas at Grandma’s, this was rape and murder.
“You’re saying I should’ve let him continue murdering and raping women?” My voice rose on the last word for emphasis.
“Better than patricide.”
There truly was something fucked up in Raina. Something happened in the chemical makeup of our DNA that made us both fucked in the head.
Raina’s words echoed in my head. I couldn’t let her threats continue to dictate my life. If past me was given the choice between her or myself, I would've chosen her without fail in every lifetime, even knowing she always hated me.
But the present Reign would choose himself every single time.
I was the only one who could cleanse this vile bloodline.
And Raina was going to be next.
R eality jolted my body like an electric shock. My breathing hitched, my pulse picked up, and my limbs felt heavy. I took in my surroundings and the warm body that lay across mine. Soft curls brushed across my chest, illustrating me with their beauty.
“So,” confusion flooded her features as Anna looked up at me. “That’s why you did it?”
I shook my head, hating to relive everything. “No, not that particular instance.” I was a monster, but even I valued the only family that remained. “Raina had spent three years harassing me for money. Assaulting me, throwing our mother’s death in my face, and blaming me for every single bad thing that happened in her life. ”
Raina never failed to remind me how much she wished I was dead. And for a while, I wished it also. I too, was part of the same disgusting heritage that had destroyed so many lives.
Anna’s head tilted to the side in adorable curiosity.
“She was a miserable woman.” The corner of my lips pulled into what was probably a sinister smile. “She was in and out of rehabs the entire time. She became a different person than the sister I once knew. She stole one of my cars and totaled it. As soon as she was out of the hospital, she broke into my flat and stabbed me.” I shook my head in disgust, pointing out the nearly faded white scar that spanned my hip around to my back.
Anna’s fingers delicately traced the slightly raised flesh. “Did it hurt?” Her voice was a low whisper.
“As much as getting carved up with a knife does.” I laughed.
“I’m sorry you went through that.” She refused to meet my gaze. “I’m sorry you lost her.”
“To be honest,” I said with a heavy sigh. “I’m not.”
And I wasn’t. I may not be right in the head, but my sister treated me like the dirt on the bottom of her shoe. Worse even. I’d never regret putting her in her fucking place once and for all. She could finally rest in peace with the father she so willingly protected. But my little vixen didn’t need to know all of that. It was my story to keep locked away, hidden forever.
“I don’t understand you.” Her voice barely audible in the silence. “If your father was how you said he was,” her fingers nervously fidgeted against my skin, making me itch. “Why do you act in ways that are similar?”
I had an inkling of what she was referring to. And I still felt that way; Anna’s ‘no’ was a powerless word to me. Still meaning very little.
But just hers.
She’s the only one that made me feel like I had no control .
“I was born and raised by a monster, sweet vixen,” I told her. “Some monstrous traits were bound to slip into my DNA, wouldn’t you think?”
She sat upright, covering herself with the loose sheet strewn over our bodies. “You told me saying no was a powerless word to you.”
I nodded. “Yeah?” Wondering where this was going.
“So then, why’d you stop that first night?”
I’d never wanted anyone or anything as badly as I wanted Anna that night, which was a new experience. But something about her tears touched a part of me that I thought was long blackened and gone. Too far gone for emotion to permeate that darkness.
But she did.
“Guess I’m not as similar to him as I thought.”