The Lacrimosa (Clear View Country Club)

Chapter 1 - Yara

YARA

Some people had tragedy singing in their blood from the very first moment they took breath, screaming into the void, unable to stop the air from shattering their lungs that very first time, unaware that the pain wouldn't stop.

It only grew.

Consuming.

Destroying.

Making them see the world with different eyes.

There were sins and tragedies carved into the very bones of my being, hiding in the darkest parts of my soul, marking me forever.

There was not a cure strong enough to remove them.

There was not remedy that could ever remove the stain from my soul.

The stain I was born with, spreading through my body year after year, only getting stronger, harder to shake off.

There were sweet nothings whispered in my ears late at night when the world slept and the only other sound I could hear was the sound of my soul shattering over and over and over again, because the misery I was born into kept reminding me that I shouldn't have been born at all.

I was an unwanted child, the burden on my parents, the one they would've rather seen gone than having to take care of me.

It wasn't my fault my blood burned when they tried to touch me, or that my screams were louder than the hatred spewing from their mouths.

I learned a long time ago that the people who were supposed to love you sometimes turned into the people that hated you the most, but even after eighteen years I still had no idea how to remove them from my heart without ripping out the parts I needed to survive.

It was really funny, how a human heart worked. I sometimes thought it was connected to the soul we were supposed to have, or maybe it was the soul, and every single time I tried to remove the pieces that cut through me like shards of glass, I simply couldn't.

Perhaps I couldn't because a part of me still hoped they would love me the way I wanted to be loved, or that maybe they would look at me one day and realize I was everything they ever wanted.

I wasn't the one to often think about things I couldn't have, but today felt like the walls were closing in on me and like the very air I breathed was too heavy on my lungs.

Maybe they would have loved me if I wasn't a murderer even before I took my first breath.

Maybe they would have cared if I didn't kill my unborn brother while still in the womb of my mother.

Perhaps this life would have been easier to live if my twin managed to survive my corrupted soul, but he wasn't strong enough.

He couldn't survive the darkness swallowing him for eight months.

Some days it felt as if I lived only half a life because my other half never got to experience the clear, crisp air or the sunshine on his face.

Had he survived, my mother would have loved me.

She would have cared for me. She wouldn't have dragged me across the country to this fucking town, just to get remarried to a man she knew less than a year.

But some decisions in life had a tendency to screw everything you ever wanted, especially when they weren't decisions you made. Not that my darling mother cared what I wanted.

My life wasn't my own.

My dreams didn't matter.

Everything I was. Everything I ever wanted to be belonged to her, and she used it like a whip, trying to control my life even after I had turned eighteen.

I wanted to be surprised when she came to me less than eight months ago, with the biggest fucking grin on her face, parading a massive ring on her finger, talking about the "best man she had ever met" and spewing bullshit about getting married.

You either had to be extremely ignorant or extremely stupid to fail to realize that her new man was as loaded as they came, which was why I ended up getting dragged to this motherfucking place, where everyone seemed to know everyone.

They tied the knot seven months ago, and no matter how much I protested, or how much I begged to go to the college in Washington State, she wasn't budging. You'd think she didn't want me so far away because she wanted her only daughter close by, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

One part of the fucking truth was that my mother suddenly became obsessed with image, the way people of Saint Bipal's would perceive her, and having her daughter going to the school on the other side of the country was absolutely not acceptable.

The other, the more fucked up part of that truth was that my mother was a controlling bitch, and unless I did what she wanted me to do I would never see the money my father had left me for college.

There's absolutely no need for you to go all the way there, when there's St. Bipal's University right here, she’d said after I brought it up again, just a week after their wedding, with the full support from William.

I couldn’t fight both of them. I couldn’t get them to see reason and with hearts in his eyes, William couldn’t see the viper standing right next to him. He thought my mother was the best thing since fondue was invented and there was no changing his mind.

Xavier will be back for the new school year, he can show you around and introduce you to people, William added, cementing my fucking fate.

Right, Xavier—my new stepbrother.

Xavier motherfucking Thornton, who seemed to have only two hobbies—fucking through the campus or torturing me.

It seemed that both of those brought him happiness, and every single time I told him to fuck right off, that wicked smile he seemed to carry only around me popped back on, finding a new way to mess with me, to break me piece by piece.

I had no idea why I was here today, standing in the living room of the massive house we now lived in, watching the party happening around me and feeling like a creep. The back of my neck tingled, alerting me of the presence of one person I did not want to see.

I knew if I stayed in my room, Xavier would just find a way to pull me out and it would end up being more painful than pretending to participate in something I wanted no part in.

He didn’t want me here—not really, but not playing by his rules brought consequences I wasn’t ready to face today.

Long fingers skittered over my neck just as his breath washed over my ear, and even though I couldn't see him, I could almost feel that fucking smile of his.

"Having fun, stepsister?" he asked, chuckling darkly as those fingers went down my arm, all the way to my hand, eliciting tingles I didn't want to think about.

I didn't want to think about all the times I caught him fucking random girls at the pool at the backside of the house either, mostly because it was disgusting, but also.

.. Also because it made me feel some sort of way, and there was no way in hell I'd willingly analyze those feelings.

"You seem tense." The fucker laughed. "Maybe I should help you relax a bit, hmmm? "

His teeth descended on my earlobe before I jumped away, narrowing my eyes at him.

Dark, tousled hair and a pair of even darker eyes, Xavier Thornton looked like a fallen God, and he knew it. A smirk danced on his lips while the darkness in those eyes dragged over my body, from my shoulders to my feet and way back up, landing back on my eyes.

Xavier behaved like someone who didn't give a fuck about anything, but I saw the shadows hiding behind those irises. I saw the anger directed at me, the pity, the disgust, and I knew that the games he played were just a prelude to something bigger.

He wasn't here when his father married, and it didn't take me long to realize why. When his father told him about the marriage, Xavier lost it.

Some say he attacked his own father, not that I can blame him. His mother died less than a year before our parents got married, but I never understood why I was the one deserving of his anger. I didn't even want to be here, but that didn't matter to the bully in front of me.

"You're such a massive dick," I spat out, wrapping my arms around me, feeling the icy tendrils of fury directed at me.

Just like every single other time, Xavier didn't back down.

He took a step closer, those black eyebrows rising just as his fingers dragged through my hair.

"I do have a massive dick, stepsister," he drawled, playing with a strand of my hair, wrapping it around his finger.

His eyes were transfixed, his thumb rubbing against it as if he couldn't stop himself.

But I could.

I backed up all the way to the couch pushed against the wall to make more space for the makeshift dance floor not too far from us.

The back of my knees hit the soft surface, and before I could regain balance, I plopped down like a hot potato, grinding my teeth.

My hands shook, like they always did, when I looked back at the man in front of me.

Xavier was three years older than me, but the menacing scowl he wore whenever our parents weren't around was enough to make him seem even older. He prowled toward me, slowly, leisurely, knowing that I had nowhere to go.

None of these people were my friends.

None of them would help me if I screamed. I knew because I already tried a month ago during one of the parties on campus. No one even batted an eyelash at us, or the hand wrapped around my throat, pinning me to the wall.

The only two friends I've made since I came to this goddamn place and since the classes started were Violet and Noah, and neither one of them were here tonight. Why would they be? This party was made for the Elite, or whatever the fuck they called themselves.

My mother and William were God knows where, traveling around the globe for the past month and I had no idea when they would be back, which meant I was left all alone with my stepbrother from hell.