Chapter 3
That evening, after I settled Leo to sleep, Caleb pushed open the door and walked in.
The facade he wore during the day was gone, replaced by raw, naked jealousy.
“Liam Stone, why didn’t you just die out there? Why did you have to come back?!”
He hissed, his face twisted in a snarl.
“To steal Sera from me, to steal Mom and Dad’s affection?!”
I watched him calmly, like he was nothing more than a petulant clown.
“I didn’t come back to fight you for anything. This home, too, take it all if you want. I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?”
He cackled shrilly, “If you don’t care, then why is Sera still obsessed with you? If you don’t care, what’s with that red string on your wrist? Don’t think I don’t know, Sera knitted that for you herself!”
I said calmly, “The old me would have fought you. Because I thought those were the only life rafts I had.”
“But now I understand. Something that’s already rotten, no matter how tightly you cling to it, will only drag you down with it.”
My calmness completely enraged him.
“Don’t act so high and mighty! Liam Stone, don’t forget, everything you have today, I gave you! If it weren’t for me, you’d have died in the hands of traffickers!”
His words were like a sharp knife, brutally tearing open my already scarred wound.
Bleeding profusely.
When I was seven, he and I were both kidnapped.
On the run, the traffickers caught up to us.
I desperately clung to the trafficker’s leg, biting off a chunk of flesh with all my might, screaming for him to run, to go find Mom and Dad to save me.
I thought he was going for help.
In that dark, foul-smelling cellar, I was tortured beyond recognition, praying day and night for someone to save me.
I waited for a long, long time.
It wasn’t until the traffickers snatched another little girl in a pretty dress, and her family used immense power to track them down, that I was incidentally rescued.
Only when I got home did I realize Caleb hadn’t gone for help at all.
He told Mom and Dad that I’d wandered off by myself, being too playful.
When I confronted him, he cried, saying he was too scared, too scared to speak.
And my parents just held their trembling son, then turned around and blamed me: “Your brother is scared stiff. You’re back safe and sound, isn’t that enough? Why are you still holding this against him? Ultimately, wasn’t it your own fault for running off that you got kidnapped in the first place!”
From that day on, nightmares plagued me every night—the traffickers’ gruesome faces, my helpless screams.
I developed severe PTSD.
Mom and Dad finally felt a flicker of guilt towards me.
But just then, Caleb claimed he was also sick, that he had nightmares every night too.
And so, all their care and affection were once again poured onto him.
While I became the gloomy, paranoid, unlikable son.
Until Seraphina appeared.
She was my therapist. She patiently listened to all my pain, gently guiding me out of the darkness.
I clung to her like a drowning man to a straw, falling in love with her.
But that salvation soured the day Caleb started seeing her for therapy too.
She started calling me paranoid and suspicious, saying I was jealous of my brother, claiming I was just seeking sympathy.
Later, we had a huge fight because Caleb deliberately harmed my pet dog, and we got into a car accident.
I instinctively shielded her, but ended up with a leg injury, walking with a slight limp.
She embraced me, full of guilt, promising she would treat me well from then on.
I believed her.
It wasn’t until that burning cruise ship, when she chose Caleb without hesitation, leaving me alone in a despairing inferno, that I truly woke up.
A person rotten to the core could never bloom into a flower facing the sun.
I looked at the hysterical Caleb before me, my eyes ice cold.
“You’re right. Everything I am, everything I’ve become, is thanks to you.”
I said, every word dripping with ice, “So, what you owe me? I’ll collect it all back. Every single cent, with interest!”
He was stunned by the cold in my eyes, frozen in place. Finally, with a bravado that quickly faded into fear, he spat, “You just wait,” and stormed out.