Prologue
Drop. Drop. Drop.
Can you hear it?
Drop. Drop. Drop.
Can you see it?
That dark, shining crimson, pooling on the cold, cracked floor?
At first, you thought it was rain, didn’t you?
Was it, though? For a moment, I thought it was too.
But rain doesn’t sting.
It doesn’t taste like iron.
It doesn’t hold the weight of promises broken and blood spilled.
The sky is my chest, the clouds my heart, and every drop that falls is my blood.
A quiet confession leaking from the inside out, spilling secrets I’d never say aloud.
You ask:
Does he love my misery?
Does he feed on my pain?
He never did.
He used to take the blows meant for me, the bruises, the fear, and the terror that hid into every corner of our damned lives.
Now he’s the one causing it.
He watches. And he smiles.
The same eyes.
The same nose, though mine is crooked now, maybe broken. His doing.
Same damned hair, face, and mouth. Once, it even smiled the way his did.
What am I even saying?
We are mirrors of each other.
We bear the same blood. My reflection. My twin. My brother.
Blood of my blood.
Now he calls me nothing. And maybe… maybe he’s right.
But everything, every cut, every shadow, every memory, leads back to her.
They say all tragedies begin with love.
Ours began with her.
That girl. That smile.
That outrageous, beautiful sin of mine.
I never thought it would come to this. Never in a million years did I imagine the one who used to spare me pain would become the one to inflict it.
Damn it.
My breath caught as his boots clicked, moving in my direction. Every step sounded like a verdict. Every echo a sentence. My hands pulled at the chains, trying to free myself, or maybe just hide my face, hoping he couldn’t sense the fear in me.
The room smelled of iron and sweat, the metallic taste covering my tongue. My chest rose and fell unevenly, like it was dancing to the sound of his steps.
Why is it so hard to breathe? Oh, right. The bastard probably broke a rib or two.
“SAY IT!” Marcus yelled in my face, and the air shattered around me.
I flinched. Looked at him through one blurry eye, the other was swollen shut.
“SAY IT, DERECK!”
I tried. I wanted to speak, to confess, to break down, to apologize, to scream. But no sound came out. Only the pounding of my heart, the pulse of rage, love, and fear tangled together, and the faint, mocking echo of every promise we’d ever shared.
Then... THUD.
He slammed the metal rod in his hand against the wall beside me.
I flinched again. I wasn’t asking him to stop. I was asking him to remember that once, he loved me too.
The scream tore itself out of me.
“F-F-F… FORGIVE ME. FORGIVE ME.”
His voice still echoes inside me, even now, in the silence between the drops, in the places pain refuses to leave.
Maybe if I tell you how it all started, you’ll understand why he had to become my enemy.
For it began long before the chains. Before the betrayal. Before her.
It began with us. Two brothers.
One oath.
One heart.
One hell we called home.
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