****Trigger Warning***** 

Pain.

Cold.

Wet.

Those were the first three sensations that registered in my foggy and heavy mind.

My eyes would not open.

My body would not move.

Where am I? Dreaming?

Mal.

He had been with me. It was at the brownstone. What had we been doing? Something had been happening, and he was ... he was ... goddamn it. I couldn't remember what was going on.

Think. Concentrate.

My mind was dense.

I forced my thoughts to try and focus on one detail at a time, to try putting them together in a semblance of order so I could emerge from this cloudy shroud my brain was being smothered under. It was like pulling myself through the mud.

You can't move. Why?

The surface under me was rough. Maybe carpet. It was scratchy and barely cushioned my knees. My bare knees. My legs were bare, and the jeans I thought I had been wearing were missing. A gust of freezing air blew over my body, helping me realize that my jeans weren't the only thing absent from my body.

I was completely naked.

Don't panic.

I could feel some kind of binding around the back of my knees. It was thick and sticky. Duct tape. My upper body was bent forward with something digging into my chest. The same scratchy material pressed into me.

My mouth felt like I had been chewing on cotton balls, my skull throbbing with the erratic beat of my panicking heart, my neck strained and unable to hold up my head. I couldn't feel my arms.

Where are my arms?

They were also bound, needles stabbing beneath the skin, any feeling draining quickly from them.

With great effort, I forced my eyes open. I immediately wish I hadn't.

It was indeed duct tape that was trapping me. I was positioned backward in some kind of tall office chair. My weight was resting on my knees, folded under me, and taped down to the bottom of the seat. My torso was bound to the top of the seat, arms crossed around the back and taped together at the wrists.

My breathing quickened as it sank in exactly how vulnerable my body was in a position like this.

Groaning, I lifted my head. I had to stay calm. I had to ignore the pain, discomfort, and fear. Focus on my surroundings. Figure out where I was. How would I be able to escape?

I whimpered as my prison became clearer around me.

The room was vast. My guess was some kind of long abandoned warehouse. The cement floors were wet, puddles collecting everywhere, some the result of slowly melting snow piles. Gusts of wind blew in from the random assortment of holes in the gaping steel ceiling, metal beams bent, and some fallen, crisscrossing each other in the deep shadows of the space. There were no lights, long ago burnt out and wrecked by the elements. The only reason I could see anything was the bright moonlight shining down and a source of warm, glowing light coming from behind me.

Behind me.

Someone shifted.

"How do you like your new home?"

I twisted, or at least tried to, but I couldn't see him. The height of the chair made it unsteady and top-heavy. It started to roll and tip from my jerky movement. I shrieked when the balance shifted.

Stephen righted the chair, standing behind me out of sight. His hand was rough on my shoulder and then caressed up my neck.

"It's a bit of a fixer-upper, I know. It was all we could find that was isolated enough to hide you."

"Get your disgusting hands off me."

His fingers twisted in my hair and yanked my head backward violently. "But the view from back here is phenomenal." His other hand cupped between my legs.

"Don't touch me!"

He laughed. "Or what? What are you going to do about it?"

Nothing. There was nothing I could do to stop him from pawing at my exposed flesh. The only comfort I had was that it was as cold and frigid as the rest of me. If he was hoping for a warm welcome, he wouldn't find it between my legs.

It didn't seem to bother him. His fingers kept rubbing and playing with me, and his moan was the sickest sound to ever invade my ears. I gagged at the noise.

He leaned down and licked the side of my face. "Now you're all mine to do whatever I want with."

I jerked in his grip, snapping my teeth at his face, hoping to latch on to something and tear it off. He jumped back, acting shocked that I wasn't going to just sit and take it. Soft, female laughter drifted in from the shadows.

"I don't think she likes you, brother."

The blonde nurse strode into the light, still wearing her hospital scrubs and still looking as strung out as ever.

"Brother?" I choked out.

"Regan!" Stephen exclaimed excitedly and threw an arm over the petite girl's shoulders. He beamed down at her and she up at him. "I'm so glad you two finally get to meet. Regan, this is my sister, Daphne. Daphne, meet my wife Regan."

So many things about what he just said warranted remarks. It was her name that stabbed into my thoughts, though, the screeching sound effect from "Psycho" echoing between my ears as I processed exactly who she was.

"Daphne," I repeated. "You're Daphne."

She nodded emphatically at me, uncrossing her arms. She held a gun in her hand, my body stiffening at the sight of it. "I've been wanting to tell you for so long. It's nice to finally meet the girl that ruined my life."

I remained silent, which she didn't appear to like very much. "Oh, don't be like that. After all, we're practically sisters."

Daphne. It was such a shock that all I could do was stare at her. I took in every detail of her face, wondering how the resemblance to Stephen hadn't been obvious before this moment. They had the same shade of hair, the same weird pale blue eyes - although Daphne's were much more unsettling in their paleness. As they smiled at each other, it was clear they also shared the same level of absolute, off-the-charts, terrifying insanity.

Clearing my throat, I decided to play along as best as I could. "Nice to meet you, Daphne."

"That's nice. You're lying, but I appreciate the effort."

"You're supposed to be in a mental hospital."

"I was. Where do you think my outfit came from?" She struck a few model poses.

Her drab blue scrubs. The ones that hadn't matched any of the other hospital staff. No identification badge.

"They let you out?"

"Of course! All I had to do was take my medicine and talk about my feelings. It's pretty easy, really." She came nearer, and my eyes stayed locked on the gun. Hopping up on a steel table near me, she used her foot to turn the chair and pull me closer so I was facing her. "Let's catch up. Just us girls for a bit, okay?"

I nodded.

"Once upon a time, there was a cute college girl who had fallen in love with a cute college boy. Let's call them Daphne and Noah. Daphne was so in love with Noah. He was perfect. Handsome, nice, and rich. She was going to marry him and have lots of babies and live in a huge house. Except one day, Noah told Daphne about this other girl. We'll call her Regan. Noah was in love with Regan. Daphne was heartbroken, of course. Not because he loved another. No, she was sad because some stupid whore had stolen something that wasn't hers."

"Can't steal something that was already mine, you crazy bitch."

Daphne backhanded me with the gun, the chair spinning wildly and careening over. My head bounced off the cement floor, teeth biting into my tongue on the impact. It felt like my brain was bouncing around in my skull. I kept my eyes shut and jaw clenched, waiting for the pain to pass and to keep my shout of agony inside. I would not give her the satisfaction of hearing me scream.

Stephen picked me up, positioning me back in front of his sister. Her foot came down on my shoulder, holding me in place.

"I tried doing everything I could to help Noah see he was being played a fool," she continued on as if nothing had happened. "He couldn't see it. Regan was such a good liar, he was under her spell. She was a homewrecker. She was stealing away the father of my unborn child.

"I had to get Noah to see reason. I thought giving him some time away from her would be best. If I couldn't have him, no one was going to have him. I booked a cozy prison getaway for him so he would see how wrong she was for him and come to his senses."

Jesus Christ. Daphne was even crazier than Stephen.

"But I got confused, and I forgot where I had hidden him away."

Stephen laughed behind me, and I jumped. "We were just having too much fun together, sister."

I really didn't want to know what that meant.

Change the subject. "What happened to your baby?"

She cackled, throwing her head back. "I got rid of it. It wasn't really Noah's, so there was no need to keep it."

"Without asking," Stephen snapped.

Gross. Had her baby been Stephen's? Her own brother? These two we even more twisted than any of us thought.

"Anyways, Noah must have been angry at me for forgetting him because he decided it was my turn to learn a lesson. And he was right. If our relationship was going to work, things had to be equal. Which meant I needed to wreck Regan as much as she had me. While I was away, I let my older brother take over."

"I don't think we need to review that part. Regan knows all about it." To emphasize his statement, his hand found its way between my legs again. I squirmed, trying to get the chair to roll away. The Daphne pressed the gun to my forehead.

I stilled, cringing as he continued to paw at me.

"Phillip did such a good job that he started to fall for Regan just like I had for Noah. I thought that was the perfect thing. We could be one big happy family together, go on double dates. Our kids were going to be best friends and grow up and marry one another."

The gun to my head made me swallow my retort.

"He found out all about Regan's friends and family for me. I just had to pick which one to kill. It was easy when he told me about her twin brother."

My blood froze. She sneered down at me, that horrifying gleam in her eyes. She waited while the piece clicked into place and laughed when she saw it in my expression.

"You killed my brother. It was you that night, the one he drove home."

Daphne had been the one I walked in on, naked with Riley in his upstairs bedroom. She was the "what's-her-face" he drove back to her apartment, only to never return home. Bile rose in my throat, and I had to turn and spit out the blood pooling from my bitten tongue before I choked on it.

I glared at her past the barrel of the gun still pressed to my head. "It wasn't a mugging. You just shot him."

"Yep!"

"What about the guy that said he overheard the whole thing?"

Stephen grabbed my ass."Come on, Regan. You're smarter than this."

My entire body started to shake. Not from the cold. It was white hot rage surging through me. I had finally found my twin's killer and was helpless to do anything about it. And Stephen was just as responsible for his death as she was. This whole time, ten fucking years, they had been plotting revenge on me, and it was for the stupidest reason. Noah lost seven years of his life, and Riley died all because this delusional bitch had set her sites on my boyfriend.

Because she had been jealous.

I began laughing. It was just too much. Too much for me to process and accept. I mean, come on! I'd rather Riley had died in a mugging. At least that way, it would have been for some reason other than the purely made-up world these two crazies were fucking around in.

She pressed the gun harder into my head. "Why are you laughing?"

"Because you both are so stupid!"

She was confused.

I took pity and explained further. "You have to see it, right? The more you tried to keep Noah away from me, the harder he fought to get to me. Nothing you did worked. And guess what? I still have him. Noah is mine, just like he always has been. You're nothing to him. You got locked away in your nice padded room, and he hasn't thought about you since."

The gun shook on her hand, and I saw the tears pooling in her wild eyes. Good. I hope my words hurt her.

Stephen saw her reaction and stopped whatever he was trying to do behind me. He was at her side instantly, wiping the tears away. "Don't cry, Daph. She's lying. Noah is yours. Just like she's mine. You'll see."

"I was never yours," I spat at him. "Even when we were together, it was Noah I thought about."

He whirled and punched me. Daphne's foot on the chair kept it from moving away. My cheekbone took the full force of his hit. He punched me again. And again. The shock of pain was unbearable, and it was too much to hold inside. It felt like he may have cracked part of my face. Blood and drool dripped from my mouth, my lips split from his knuckles and my teeth.

"Show her, brother. Show her that she's yours. Break this bitch."

Stephen bent to give her a kiss before moving behind me again. I was still reeling from his punches, pain vibrating in my face with every minuscule movement, making it impossible to concentrate on what he was doing. Whatever it was, it couldn't be worse than the agony he had just inflicted. If my mouth would work, I'd ask Daphne to put a bullet in me only so something other than my face was hurting.

She ran the end of the gun down my temple, digging it into the growing lump from where she had struck me with it. The whiny, high-pitched cry that escaped me was pathetic. It made her happy. She dragged the tip of the barrel through the blood on my face and brought it to my lips.

That's when I heard Stephen draw down his zipper and the unmistakable sound of him spitting. I felt it land between my ass cheeks. I opened my mouth to protest, and she shoved the gun in so far that I gagged around the cold, bloody metal.

Her finger was on the trigger.

I couldn't even move when Stephen forced his way into my body, tearing and bruising me with his brutality.

I was wrong. There were a lot of things worse than his beating.