Chapter 4

The burns cover most of my body, and the pain keeps me awake at night. Every time Byron comes, he lets out a heavy sigh.

He asked me whether I finally understood how high the price was.

"Marcella is innocent. She's different from Kevin. You can't just take out your hatred for Kevin on—"

Innocent?

I lay there on my stomach while Byron dressed my wounds, as gentle as could be, just like back when we used to keep each other warm.

Kevin is a devil. He never treated us like human beings at all.

Even knowing I was the fake heiress, he still wanted to squeeze every use out of me. I hate him, but I've been timid my whole life.

I'm mute, a person shoved to the margins. But brother, you dragged me into the abyss—and now you want to reach for the light?

"Don't go making trouble for Marcella anymore, all right? Be good."

Ha.

Am I the one making trouble for Marcella?

But right as Byron finished speaking, he got a phone call, and his face went white in an instant.

"Claire Henson, you're a lunatic!"

Byron rushed off in a panic, and I had no idea what had happened.

But he pinned all the blame on me.

Marcella, covered in blood, was wheeled into the emergency room while Byron paced anxiously up and down the corridor.

He'd never believed in God or any higher power, but now he began to pray. He said she was his only sister, that she'd suffered out in the countryside before and had only just come home.

"Please, God, watch over Marcella."

"Did I do something wrong—did I keep her from the family love she deserved? Should I never have killed Kevin?"

After a whole night in emergency care, the bullet they removed from Marcella's body was the exact same model as the pistol Byron had given me.

That night, Byron went mad and dragged me, wounds and all, off the bed.

He demanded answers, savage with fury.

"Why? Just because you were afraid she'd steal me away, you got so jealous you lost your mind?"

"Claire, you used to be so good, so obedient. Why?"

How does he have the nerve to ask me why?

I collapsed on the floor, in too much pain to even shed a tear, and I signed with my hands.

Brother, you're the one who taught me—when someone bullies you, you pay them back...

"But I never taught you to slaughter innocent people..."

Innocent? Do you really believe Marcella is innocent?

Slap.

The first time Byron hit me, it was because of Marcella.

My cheek burned, but the tears didn't fall; they pooled in my eyes as I stared at him.

Byron was thrown into a panic. "I'm sorry, Claire. I was just too frantic. The person you are now feels like a stranger to me."

"You need to calm down."

After that day, Byron never came to see me again, and he never signed the consent form for my surgery either.

He stayed at Marcella's side the whole time, tending to her with painstaking care, even cooking for her with his own hands.

The public-opinion campaign painted Marcella as an angel, one who could purify a man dragged down to the depths of hell like Byron.

People online even called them the most opposite pair of siblings there ever was.

Byron, who always kept to himself, actually agreed to appear on Marcella's new talk show.

From across the crowd, I watched him smile with such doting fondness as a reporter asked why he was appearing on the show.

"Well, Marcella's my little sister. If I don't spoil her, who am I going to spoil?"

"But we know you have another sister."

"Her? She made a mistake recently. She needs to be reformed."

In front of the media, Byron said he happened to have something to announce: he admitted that my mental illness was faked.

"I won't cover for her any longer. Someone has to answer for the lives of those eighteen girls."

He'd gathered the evidence himself to send me to prison.

The public was in an uproar.

Everyone praised Byron for putting justice above blood. And just as they were basking in all that praise—

I pressed a switch, and the big screen suddenly began playing a string of little clips.

An instant later, Marcella shrieked like a madwoman. "Turn it off! Turn it off right now! Who did this? Step forward!"

"Marcella? You did all of this?"

Brother, do you still think she's innocent?