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When I first found her, I wanted her to hurt the same way I was as that boy who lost the mother who never cared about him. That same boy who then murdered his own father just to prove how much he wanted to be loved, how much he cared about his mother, even when she did not.
That same boy always remembered the words that little girl said.
Hate is a sin.
Everyone is here to do good.
I just had to believe in myself.
So I did.
I believed in myself to make the wrong things in this world right again.
I took her words to heart and wielded them as a weapon of justice.
But it cost me the only thing I cared so much about.
Her love.
I sit by my bed in which Amelia lies, still resting like Sleeping Beauty. But my kisses wouldn’t wake her up because they’d poison her already weakened soul.
I did this.
I made her endure pain beyond imagination.
I did it because when I first found her after all those years, I blamed her. I blamed her for loving her parents, for putting ideas into my head. And I wanted her to be perfect. This image of her inside my head was that of a perfect human being, spotless, clean, sinless in every way.
And it felt so damn wrong … that I had to crush that image by making her sins a reality.
By forcing her to commit a crime.
But I never realized Chris had already pushed her so far.
That he would make her do something even she had not anticipated. Something so bad she forced herself to forget just so she could cope.
And I couldn’t let her go to jail for it.
Instead, I did what I had always done with any sinner.
I brought her here, into my lair, just to punish her for her sins.
Just so I could tell myself she deserved it.
Just so I could make her whole …
So I could make her mine.
And by doing so, I lost the most valuable thing she ever gave me: Her trust.
I clench my fists and lower my head between my shoulders, muttering some words no one should hear. Right then, a groan emanates from her body, and I look up. Her eyes flutter, and I reach for her hand.
“Amelia. I’m here,” I whisper.
Her cold hand instantly retracts. She chooses her cold hands over the warmth I could give her, and it stings. “What happened?”
“You fainted,” I say. “I’ll get a doctor.”
“No,” she says, and she quickly crawls against the headboard.
I reach for her again, but she retracts her hand. “Please, let me help you.”
“I don’t trust you,” she says, the words as frigid as ice injected straight into the veins.
“I know you don’t …” I swallow. “But I am still asking you to please let me help you. I am begging you.”
“Why should I?” she hisses, and she looks away. “I only fainted.”
“It could be something bad,” I say.
She folds her arms. “So? Don’t pretend you care.”
“I do,” I say.
“If you did, you wouldn’t have wanted to make me sin,” she retorts.
The pain in my heart only grows and grows. “That’s true. I did do that to you. I won’t lie about it. It’s why I brought you down into that old dungeon so you could hear it from Tiffany’s mouth instead,” I say, licking my lips.
“Why would you?”
“Because you asked for the truth, and I wanted to give it to you. I owed you that much,” I say. “And I am embarrassed and ashamed, and I know none of it is right. And I have no justification. I was selfish and greedy.” I grab her arm. “I was wrong. And I apologize.”
Her face contorts as she mulls over my words. “Why are you telling me this? What do you want from me? You think I can forgive you just like that?”
“No, I—”
“I murdered someone, Eli,” she says through gritted teeth. “And yes, I know that was my own choice, that I made that decision, somehow. But you made him cheat on me just so I would see what a dickhead he was.”
I lower my head and let the hair drape over my eyes again as I don’t want her to see the agony poisoning me from the inside out. “I know. I did all that. I wanted you to sin so I could bring you in.”
“So you could break me,” she says.
I look up into her eyes. “So I could make you mine.”
“That’s not what you told me when you first brought me here,” she hisses.
I suck in a breath. “Because I was lying to myself. Because I blamed you for the fact that I murdered my own father for what he had done to both my mother and me.”
She stares at me in shock. “So you … wanted me to feel the same thing?”
