Chapter 23
Maya
And just like that, I got sucked right back into his universe.
A universe where I am made to feel like a goddess. I still get the burning stares whenever we venture out to places where the elites of Graham’s circle gather, but my skin has grown thicker.
I definitely wouldn’t call our life a fairytale.
We still fight sometimes—when his possessiveness gets to be too much.
But those fights always end with a fucking that makes me forget the fight.
He is still obsessed, still fixated on me, his eyes never straying for even a second.
I love it. It makes me feel safe. It makes me feel wanted.
I know he isn’t anything resembling safe, but I guess my subconscious doesn’t understand the difference.
He appears to be a psychopath, after all, so I highly doubt he will ever be able to love me in a traditional sense.
But maybe this is my divine punishment for who I gave my heart to, and for the fact that I actively live for his obsession.
Today, he’s at work. He manages a multi-million-dollar empire, a fact I sometimes genuinely forget because of how much time he spends clinging to me.
He is needy, possessive, and entirely codependent.
And I love it. At my core, the insecure little girl I used to be still hasn’t healed, and she hasn’t left.
That broken little girl thrives on the toxic security of all this.
It makes her feel safe knowing that Graham can’t breathe without me.
It makes her feel secure knowing that no matter what happens, he will never let me go.
I grab my coffee cup and stand by the massive floor-to-ceiling window of our bedroom, watching the endless acres of land full of vibrant flowers and towering trees.
It is insane to think that just a few months ago, I was terrified I wouldn’t have a roof over my head.
Now, all of this is mine. Literally. He signed the entire mansion over in my name.
I take a slow sip of the coffee, humming softly to myself.
It’s still incredibly hard to forgive myself for the things I’ve done, whether they were intentional or not.
But I guess Graham is rubbing off on me; I’m slowly learning to live with my sins.
Learning to accept the fact that I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
A movement down by the service entrance catches my attention.
A head of chaotic brown hair mixed with bleached locks is moving quickly across the gravel.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before, but she’s wearing the standard uniform our house staff usually wears.
In her hand is a jug full of a yellowish liquid.
I watch through the glass as she takes advantage of the estate gardener walking into the mansion to collect his weekly payment. She slips in behind him. As she ducks her head, her hair slips from her face.
Valeria.
My coffee cup falls to the floor as I bolt downstairs. “Sasha! Call security! Call the guards right now!”
But it’s already too late.
I watch in horror as Valeria pours gasoline all over the wooden furniture in the foyer. The chemical stench hits my nose.
“Valeria, stop!” I scream.
The gardener attempts to tackle her to the ground, but she has the strength of a lunatic. They crash into the floor, and Valeria wrenches herself on top of him. She uncaps the rest of the jug, pouring gasoline all over.
A demonic smirk breaks across her cracked lips as she hisses, “I told you I’d get my revenge, little sister.”
Before anyone can stop her, she strikes a match.
Orange and black fire erupts. The gardener screams in agony as his leg catches fire. I curse loudly, coughing through the smoke, and force my legs to scramble back up the stairs.
I need my bag. It holds the only pieces of my old life I have left—photographs of my sister and me when we used to play together as children, and a gold locket that used to belong to my mother.
“Maya!” Valeria screams from somewhere beneath the smoke. “You aren’t escaping this!”
I will my legs to go faster, the heat licking at my heels. I burst into the bedroom, snatching my bag and throwing it over my shoulder. But before I can turn around, Valeria slams into my back.
She yanks back my hair, spinning my body around the room in circles.
Her hold on me is so tight it literally feels like my scalp is being ripped cleanly from my skull.
Blinded by pain and the choking smoke, my hand searches the surface of my vanity mid-circle.
Without thinking, I smash my handheld mirror backward against her head.
The glass shatters, and Valeria grunts, her grip loosening just enough for us to tussle onto the floor.
Valeria throws a fist forward, striking me square in the mouth, instantly busting my lip open.
I drive my fist into her face in retaliation.
The smoke has gotten so thick and heavy that the air is disappearing from the room. The world isn’t ready for a version of Graham that doesn’t have me by his side. If I die here, he will burn everything to the ground.
“I’m going to kill you!” Valeria shrieks through her bloodied teeth. “You ruined my life! You took my money!”
“You didn’t even love Graham!” I scream back, choking on a wave of black smoke. “You only loved his fucking money!”
“That’s right!” she screams. “But you still betrayed me! You’re my blood, and you opened your legs for the man who locked me away!”
“There was nothing left to betray, Valeria!” I roar, throwing my elbow into her jaw to break her hold. “You never loved me! You always saw me as your fucking enemy! You spent your whole life kicking me down!”
The fire claws its way through the bedroom door. The curtains catch instantly.
My vision starts to blur as the oxygen starves my brain. Fuck. We really are going to die like this.
I hear the desperate screams of the guards from down below, calling my name through the smoke.
“Valeria, stop this!” I whisper, as the smoke feels like it has robbed me of my voice. “Stop this madness! We’re going to burn to death!”
Valeria lets out a wild laugh. “Madness? You’re only just figuring out I’m mad, little sister?!”
She can’t do this. My life just started getting better. I just started feeling like I matter. She is going to rob Graham of the only thing that brings him light.
I pounce on her with the last bit of energy I have left, scrambling onto her stomach. I begin slapping her face, my hands flying wildly as tears of rage stream down my soot-stained cheeks.
“You can’t do this!” I scream, striking her again and again. “You always hated me! Even when I didn’t mean to hurt you, you never gave me a chance! You don’t have a single ounce of forgiveness in your goddamn heart!”
Valeria wrenches her hips upward, flipping us over. She slams me flat onto my back, choking me.
Between her chokehold and the black smoke, my lungs stop working. I can’t breathe.
“You… fucking… brought me… nothing but trauma and pain,” Valeria growls through her own violent coughing fits.
My eyes start to roll back into my head. I didn’t mean to, I try to scream, but it only comes out as a whisper. I never meant to hurt you.
I feel my body going entirely limp. I’m going to die.
Through my semi-conscious eyes, I see Valeria stumble backward, letting go of my throat. The ceiling begins to collapse. I’m really going to die.
We are both going to die here.
A strange feeling of gratitude hits me. If we are burning to ash in the next few seconds, at least we finally spoke.
We never actually communicated until now.
I’m kind of glad that before we both go to hell, we finally said the ugly truth out loud.
It released some of that pus-like resentment I had toward her. I hope it achieved the same for her.
Valeria grabs me under my arms, dragging my limp body across the burning floor toward the windows. She hurls her shoulder into the glass over and over again until it shatters.
Fresh air rushes into my face, making me gasp painfully. She’s going to throw me off. She’s going to kill me.
I’m going to miss him. I’m going to miss my devil so much. I never got to say goodbye to Graham.
Valeria wraps her arms around my waist, and together, we plunge over the ledge of the second floor. We crash hard into a section of the garden filled with imported flowers and grass. Pain explodes in my ankle and radiates up my spine.
As I take in a desperate breath of fresh air, I realize I’m alive.
Valeria didn’t push me to kill me. She saved my life.
Through the haze of pain, I feel her drag me away from the burning mansion. The estate is completely engulfed in flames.
Valeria drops me onto a patch of damp grass and collapses beside me, panting heavily.
But even as she can barely breathe, she reaches into the pocket of her stolen staff apron.
She pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes.
Stepping dangerously close to a piece of burning debris that flew from the house, she uses the roaring fire to light the tip.
She takes a long drag, smoking even as coughs rattle her frame. She slides a second cigarette between my trembling lips, using her own to light the tip.
The harsh nicotine hits my throat, and I instantly break into a coughing fit. I smoke with her anyway, having a feeling that this is going to be the last time.
“We can’t do this anymore,” I whisper.
Valeria blows the smoke through her nose, staring at the fire. “No. We can’t.”
“We trigger the absolute worst in each other, Valeria,” I say, my tears finally drying against my dirty skin. “We can never be in the same room again. We literally destroy each other.”
Both our voices are almost unrecognizable.
“I know,” she murmurs. “You’re his now, Maya. And I have nowhere left to go but that asylum. The second your psycho gets here, he’s either going to put a bullet in my head or drag me back there.”
She’s right. There is absolutely no way Graham is ever letting Valeria walk away from this. He will hunt her to the ends of the earth.
I look down at my crossbody bag, still securely looped around my frame. I unzip it, searching past my mother’s locket until I FIND the book William gave me. I pull out the papers.
My escape route. My ultimate out. My plan B if something ever went wrong with Graham.
It’s my gift to her now.
I push the papers into Valeria’s lap, along with the diamond necklace and bracelet I wore this morning. This erases any backup plan I ever had of escaping Graham. I am locking myself in his world forever, voluntarily throwing away my only key. But I can’t let him kill my sister.
“Take these,” I command softly. “You need to run right now, before his cars block the perimeter.”
Valeria looks at me with wide eyes, the dark roots of her hair framing a face that finally looks peaceful. But there’s determination in it. And I know my sister well. Nothing good ever comes from that face, to anyone but her at least. I’m glad it’s not directed at me.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispers.
“Because you’re my sister,” I say, a bitter smile breaking through my busted lip. “And because I forgive you. And I hope that you can forgive me too. Now go. Run.”
She shoves everything into her apron and takes one last drag of her cigarette. Without a final goodbye, she turns and disappears into the dark.
I got my answer. She forgave me. Or else I wouldn’t be breathing right now.
None of the guards or staff notice me yet because they’re too busy trying to find me and the other survivors inside. Headlights begin to cut through the driveway—Graham has arrived.
I close my eyes, waiting for my devil to find me in the ashes.