She had her mother’s eyes.
“Don’t be sad, Papa. I don’t like seeing you sad.”
I reached out and cupped her cheek, my thumb brushing her smooth skin. She leaned into my hand without hesitation.
“I’m sorry, my little golden one,” I whispered. “Amara… she doesn’t know what she does.”
Aria nodded slowly. “I know.”
“We have to kill her,” Dimitros insisted. His voice was calm, but there was steel beneath it.
“That’s our mother,” Aria protested weakly.
“Not anymore it’s not. Her body is here, but her mind…” He shook his head. “It’s gone.”
I wished he’d never witnessed his mother’s cruelty. He should be a carefree teenager, not being woken up in the middle of the night to the sounds of his sister’s screams as his mother tried to suffocate her.
And it was my fault that he would never be a “normal” kid.
Mine and my mad wife’s.
“You can’t do that, Papa. Neither can you, Dimitros,” Aria protested. Though she had only turned nine a few weeks ago, she spoke with the solemn clarity of someone far older. “We should send her back to the hospital. And you, Papa… you should stop visiting her.”
Dimitros exhaled deeply, his anger dimming when he looked at his sister. “She’s bringing devastation to our family,” he said, gentler now. “Something needs to be done.”
We had tried to shield Aria from the ugliness of this world. We nearly succeeded, but it caught up to us in our own home. I had failed.
I met Dimitros’s gaze, the message in it unmistakable.
Only then did my eyes drift to the fresh slash across his face. The doctor had come in the middle of the night to stitch it closed, but even he’d conceded what we already suspected: it would scar.
It would be a permanent reminder of what his own mother had done to him. My wife had crossed one line too many when she tried to murdermychildren last night. They stopped being hers a long time ago, and despite my commitment that had never wavered when it came to her well-being, this arrangement couldn’t work indefinitely.
“I’ll handle it, Dimitros.”
My chest rose and fell as if the words themselves had weight, but he understood the command hidden beneath them.
His jaw tightened, but then he nodded, accepting my final decision.
He wouldn’t touch his mother.
I could never condemn my son to a lifetime of carrying that burden. I would do it. And I alone would live with the sin.
After all, what was one more sin on the ever-growing list staining my soul?
FIVE
VIOLET
The plane ticket sat next to my passport on my kitchen counter, along with instructions for the housekeeper who would be checking in to dust and water my plants. How sad that I was in my thirties, and the only person I needed to notify of my upcoming trip was the person who cleaned my house.
When my parents buried the empty casket with my sister’s name on it, they buried me with it. At least in their minds. From that day on, they withheld everything: their courtesy, their money, and certainly the influence their name carried.
I hadn’t seen them since.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t want or need anything from them. That chapter had ended for me.
What they hadn’t counted on was my grandfather, who had always been unpredictable and fickle. He died four years after we buried Lily, but it was the reading of his will that sent shockwaves through the family. Every cent of the generational fortune, every asset, and every estate he owned had been left tome. The condo I now stood in. The house where my parents still lived in. All of it.
