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Keres looks at me, his rough edges smoothing over him. “It was simple hypnosis. As if dealing with addiction, I didn’t take her memories away. I simply made her feel like she didn’t need them after the incident.” He stands, going straight for the whiskey stand and pouring himself a glass. “If she gains them back, she will know everything, King. Everything. Are you sure you want that?” He turns to face me, his eyes going to my father. “It would make her a liability. She’s not known this life. Ever. She doesn’t know the code we live by nor has she been acquainted with her duty as a Kournikova. Her father was weak against her, and her mother was merely a civilian whore.”
“You can’t do that, P. Our parents will know.” P shrugged her small shoulders, a smirk that raged mischief dangling off the edge of her soft lips.
“So what?” she said. “As long as I stay top in my class, Momma doesn’t care what I do during the day.”
I looked at her closely. P was always mischief. She liked to tease people, torment them, and enrage them all at once, right before she’d charm their pants off. Hoping when she’s old enough, it won’t be literally. You see, Persephone Hendry was handcrafted for an Axton. Not just any Axton—me. She was named after a great Greek Goddess who was married to Hades, where they both ruled the underworld. She was born to be a pain in the ass. But my ass, that is.
“P, please stop doing that!” Dove whispered, her small frame coming into the room. Dove and Persephone Hendry were identical twins in every sense of the word, but their looks was where their similarities ended. Dove was demure. She was the peace to which P was the havoc. In peace there would always lie havoc with these two.
P kept swinging higher and higher on the aged swing that hung by rusted nails in the old tree at their house.
“P!” I barked when she only kicked up higher. I shuffled around the front of her swing, anger simmering below the surface. I glared at her. “Fucking slow down.”
She laughed so loudly that her giggles reverberated around the small forest that surrounded us, and probably over the beach at the front. “You’re both too careful.”
“The fuck I am!” I yelled. She knew damn well how not careful I was, but being reckless with myself was different than being reckless with her, which I would not be.
P rolled her eyes and slowed the swing until it finally came to a stop. She took three steps forward until her little hand clasped over my clenched fist.
“King, you can’t always be angry at the world.” For a nine-year-old, she was too smart. Smarter than my eleven.
I brought my calloused knuckles up to her soft cheeks. “As long as you’re walking in it vulnerable, I fucking will.”
She leaned into my hand, just as her mom came rushing out onto the porch. “King, your mom and dad want you home for dinner.”
I left after that, and that was the final time I ever saw Persephone Hendry. It was the day I began to mourn her, only I was mourning the wrong sister. My world ended that day, my mind caving in, shutting everyone out. I’m fuckin’ reeling that she’s alive, but I know I’ve fucked up, and once she gains her memories back, I’m even more fucked, because she’s going to remember everything about us and be even more hurt by the shit I’ve put her through lately.
“I need to know what happened, Keaton,” I whisper softly. “I understand why you would lie and say that—”
“It wasn’t a lie.” He takes a seat beside me on the sofa, handing me a glass of something brown. “I’m your half-brother, Persephone.” I wince at that name. “Sorry, would you rather I call you Dove? Just feels weird calling you that now that I know you’re not her.” I pause, tilting my head and examining his features. I don’t think we look anything alike, but then again, he looks a lot like his father. Maybe our mother was like me. What a mess. Everything I thought I knew about my heritage, my family, was all an illusion. My mother wasn’t my real mother. It made sense with her detachment from me.
“What did she look like?” I ask, my eyes zeroing in on the lights that are illuminating near the pool outside.
“She’s still alive.”
My heart sinks.
“Listen, Persephone. Shit, is it okay to call you that?”
I shake my head, tipping my head back to take a sip. “No, it’s okay. It will take some getting used to, and I still don’t understand, but I think deep down, I always felt a disconnect to the name Dove. The name felt so—”
