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When I was only in junior high while he, Preston, Mabel, and even Destiny had started Willow Heights, he told them all I was his equal. That there was no king in the Darling family. We were all kings, even though I wasn’t even in high school yet.
When Destiny died, it was Devlin who spent days lounging on my couch playing video games with me, just being there in case I needed to vent or scream or rage at the world.Sometimes Preston joined us, but it was Devlin who let me cry like a fucking baby on his shoulder. Preston would have called me a pussy. Preston was tough and never cried. But Devlin got it. He understood, even if she hadn’t been his girlfriend.
Devlin is the one whose presents used to sit beside mine under the tree, the one who spent every other weekend and holiday at my house because we share a mother.
Fuck.
I’m going to have to tell him about Mom.
But there’s no time, because King Dolce is dividing us into groups to search the mall looking for Royal. Suddenly, I don’t want to be near Devlin. It’s too much to process, to come to terms with. I should be happy he’s back. That’s my first reaction. Instinctual relief and utter disbelief. When he steps up beside Crystal and takes her hand, though, their body language that of two people who’ve been enjoying life as a happy couple for the past three years, another reaction threatens to erupt.
I make a joke about going with Harper, but King shuts me down like there’s no discussion to be had. Like there’s no time to argue, no time to ask my brother why he chose her over his family, even though we would have supported him. No time to ask why his happily-ever-after was more important than the dozens of Darlings who had no choice but to grieve his loss and pay the price of his actions. He left us to face the consequences while he took his girlfriend and got the fuck out of town. He was gone, without leaving a note like Mom or saying goodbye like Mabel. He let us believe he was dead.
I ball my hands into fists and follow the others into the mall. We’re assigned one wing and told to search it for Royal and his father, who might be armed and are probably cooking drugs, from what I’ve heard around town. I need to be alert. I need to keep my head in the game. Royal’s dangerous with or withouta weapon, and I don’t want to be the first face he sees if he’s already preparing to shoot someone to protect their operation.
But my head isn’t in the game. Where did that saying come from, anyway? Is it from football, a sport I loved but can no longer play because the Dolces bribed or blackmailed or threatened the coaches to boot me from the team? Would they have done that if their sister was still here, if they didn’t blame my family for her death?
I fucking grieved for them. I wondered what I could have done differently. I watched her brothers destroy my sister in ways that I can’t even think about because if I do, I won’t be the one eaten alive by my rage.
No, not eaten.
Burned alive.
Magnolia skips ahead, next to Devlin and Crystal, who are assigned to search the same wing of the mall with me. She chatters on, asking a million questions while Crystal swings a flashlight from one empty store to another. Devlin holds a gun, aiming it at the floor.
“Are you back for good?” Magnolia asks. “Because maybe we can come out of hiding. It’s so boring at Grandpa Darling’s. I swear I’m going to crack up like Sullivan pretty soon.”
She’s so fucking good, so innocent still.
I remember being that naïve. Thinking the Dolces were regular guys like us, guys who just had a little more money than other people. But they didn’t just have money. They hadrage.
I can feel my own licking inside my skin, burning along my veins like a drug. I reach into my pocket and slip out a pill, let the bitterness coat my tongue. Maybe it will calm the firestorm of fury inside me. I’ve kept it under control so well for so long. I never wanted to be like them, and I know how easy it would be to let it consume me. How easy it would be to become that kind ofperson and worse, because at this point, I must have more anger than they do.
They use violence as an outlet.
I don’t have one anymore, not since I stopped using the leash. It simmers inside me, waiting to hatch like a butterfly from a cocoon. But when it hatched, it would spread wings of fire over the whole town. Sparks would rain down until they all bore the scars my family does.
I close my eyes and take a breath, waiting for the drug to kick in. In the meantime, I hang behind the others, trying to get my tumbling thoughts and emotions under control. I tighten my fists until they ache, pressing the knuckle of my first finger to my ring finger across the gap where my middle finger used to be.
When I was almost as naïve as Magnolia, before I knew they weren’t regular people, I dared to flip them off and tell them to go fuck themselves. Chopping off appendages is all in good fun to the Dolces, and that day, Baron was in a silly goofy mood and figured he’d teach me a lesson for disrespecting them.
Luckily I’m a quick learner, and the rest of me remains intact.
Just like I learned to keep the anger at bay, never let it overtake me. I know if I fight back, like I did the first couple months after Devlin died, they’ll only hurt me more.
Except he didn’t die.
He’s alive. He’s here. He’s fine.
But I’m not fine at all.
twelve
Gloria Walton
Harper and I find Duke watching homemade porn in the abandoned mall’s tiny movie theater. Harper leaves to find her way back to Royal, but I can’t bring myself to leave after Duke tells me they have a video of me in their sick compilation. Even though it will only make it worse to see, I have to know. I wait, my heart racing, as a clip of Mabel Darling plays. I close my eyes so I won’t see her, but her screams echo in my head. I knew what they did to her, but they never did it around me. She was just for them, something they kept private to a degree. I was their party whore.
I run through the possibilities in my head, wondering which one they recorded without my knowledge. There were so many times I’ve lost count—days in the basement at school when they thought it would be fun to skip class and get a blowjob or have a quickie; nights they called for us before or during their Midnight Swans meetings to provide entertainment; parties where they shoved some random girl’s face into my pussy while they fucked her from behind, or vice versa.
