2: 2

2

The next morning, I woke to Brian shaking me. He was already in his delivery uniform.

His face was pure panic.

【Edna's brought in some old herbalist doctor. He's downstairs right now!】

【Sis, what do we do?】

He'd barely finished when Edna started knocking at the door.

Brian spun in a circle, wringing his hands, and blurted out the worst idea he could think of:

【When he checks your pulse, pretend to faint!】

【I'll carry you out on my back, grab a fake chart on the way, and we'll stall for now!】

I reached up and clapped a hand over his mouth, too lazy to even open my eyes.

Compared to the concrete floor that used to dig into my bones, the mattress under me was soft as a cloud. I could have happily died in that bed.

So the whole time he'd been chattering, not one word had gone in.

Then the smell of food drifted through the air, and I shot straight up.

It took me exactly three seconds to get downstairs and lock onto the table.

Edna trailed after me, her voice soft and wounded.

【Sis, I stayed up all night to bring in a famous doctor for you. He'll figure out exactly what's wrong and treat it properly.】

I ignored her, grabbed a glass, and gulped down a big mouthful of milk.

It really had been too long.

Long enough that I'd forgotten milk even tasted like this.

【Sis…】

She wanted to keep the act going. I raised a hand and cut her off.

I picked up the other glass of milk on the table, tipped my head toward the second floor, and called up:

【Brian, you're heading to work, right? Mind if I finish this one for you?】

Brian gave an awkward nod, then just sat down and started peeling breakfast sandwiches for me.

He peeled one, I ate one. We had it down to a rhythm.

Edna was probably used to being the center of attention. She couldn't stand being ignored.

She turned and threw herself at Thaddeus, tears welling up on cue.

【Thaddeus, does Sis hate me? She won't even see the doctor I brought.】

【Could it be that… Sis isn't sick at all?】

I'd just swallowed five of them in one go, and I answered around the mouthful I was still chewing: 【That's right.】

The air froze on the spot.

The whole family turned to look at me at once, every stare weighing me.

After a moment, my own brother Thaddeus spoke first, his voice a few shades lower than yesterday.

【What's that supposed to mean? You don't like Edie, or you're not sick at all?】

I let out a slow, satisfied belch, wiped the corner of my mouth with a napkin, and admitted it without a flicker.

【Both, obviously. I don't like Edna, and I'm not sick.】

The sixth breakfast sandwich Brian had just finished peeling snapped in his hand.

He turned to stone right there, eyes firing signals at me like mad.

As if to say, Sis, how could you just come out and admit it like that?

Exactly as I expected, the Masons blew up on the spot.

Thaddeus was the first to start sneering at me.

【I'd almost forgotten. Lying was always this sister of mine's specialty.】

【How else do you think she survived over there.】

Dad, silent and closed off as ever, was even angrier. He smashed a cup and shouted at me to get out of the house.

Edna tucked herself smugly into Mom's arms, waiting to enjoy the show of me getting thrown out.

But I wiped my mouth and asked just two questions, and they sucked in a cold breath.

【I'm not sick. Are you disappointed?】

【Or is it that seeing me come home alive terrifies you?】

3: 3

3

Mom and Dad traded one panicked glance, then snapped their composure back into place almost instantly.

They knew exactly what they'd done, played dumb, and turned it right back on me.

"Is that any way to talk to your elders? No manners at all!"

I fought my temper down and shot back.

"First you'd have to give me a chance to be raised at all before you get to lecture me about manners."

Because eighteen years ago, after I helped Thaddeus get away, I spent countless days pressed against the iron bars, waiting for him and Mom and Dad to come back for me.

But the others in the compound told me it was rainforest out there.

Without someone on the outside to meet you, no one got out alive.

Maybe my brother had already been torn apart by wild animals.

I felt guilty about it for days.

Until one of the traffickers got drunk, patted my face, and slurred out that I was his little cash cow.

That was when I understood: I hadn't set my brother free.

Mom and Dad had already paid the deposit to have the traffickers let him go on purpose.

And I was the child always meant to be taken.

I ran through every possibility I could think of and still couldn't understand why they'd abandoned me on purpose.

It wasn't until Brian showed up that I finally understood everything…

I was still lost in it when Edna's voice pulled me back.

"Mom, Dad, the way Agnes is acting now, could it be the early signs of mental illness?"

"She was in that place for so many years. She might have turned into a full-on sociopath by now."

"I'm just worried. When our brother's ready to settle down and get married, what if Agnes shows up and terrifies his future wife…"

That was when it clicked, why the Masons doted on Edna and not on Brian.

Because Edna's words snapped them awake in an instant.

Mom was the first to drop the act, seizing the opening.

"Right. Maybe we should send Agnes to a psychiatric ward first."

"Once Edie's marriage is settled, we can bring Agnes back. No harm in that."

On the surface Mom was asking Dad what he thought.

But she was really saying it for me to hear.

And I knew perfectly well that the second they put me in there, it would be them dropping me into another hell, one I'd never get out of again.

I didn't shout, didn't make a scene. Instead I politely showed the old doctor to the door.

When I came back, click, I locked it behind me without a word.

My face went dark. I grabbed the chair beside me and drove them back, step by step.

Edna went stiff with fear and shrank away.

"What are you doing, Agnes?"

I smiled, warm as could be, and answered in her exact tone.

"Every field has its standards and requirements. I imagine a psychiatric ward is the same."

"So if you want to have me committed, first I'll have to prove I really am crazy."

Brian looked terrified and quickly lowered his voice to talk me down.

"Sis, where there's life there's hope. Don't do anything rash."

I ignored him completely, forced them all into the corner, and raised the chair high over my head.

Edna screamed.

The whole family curled up like startled quail, squeezing their eyes shut.

But the pain they braced for never came.

When they finally cracked their eyes open, trembling,

I was already pointing at Thaddeus, doubled over laughing.

"Aren't you the one who loves playing the perfect big brother? So how come, the moment things get real, you're the one hiding in the very back?"

"With a spine like that, if you never land a wife someday, you've really got the nerve to blame me for scaring her off?"

Humiliated and furious as he was, Thaddeus still had enough fear of the chair in my hands that he didn't dare move an inch.

After all, he was afraid I really was crazy.

I took the chance to stick out my hand at them. "Money. I want to buy something."

To salvage that pitiful scrap of pride, Thaddeus stayed frozen where he was.

The rest of them fumbled out their phones with shaking hands and started transferring me money, none of them daring to make a sound.

Then I glanced at Brian's work uniform and asked him.

"You make delivery runs, don't you? Buy me something and bring it over."

Brian caught on at once, whipped out his phone, and pulled up his favorites like he was presenting a treasure.

"Sis, you asked the right person."

"What do you want to eat, cake? Iced coffee?"

I gave him a wicked little smile. "All of it."

"But mainly, grab me a stun baton. That's the thing I handle best."

The words were barely out of my mouth when Thaddeus, who'd been stubbornly stiffening his neck to act tough, jerked up his phone like he'd been shocked and rushed a hundred thousand into my account.

He even quietly added a note: "Just ask if it's not enough."

4: 4

4

In the end, Brian never did buy the stun baton.

I made a loud show of threatening to leave him a bad review.

He just popped the lid off an iced coffee and slid it over, grinning like a little brat. "You never placed an order. Where exactly are you gonna leave that review?"

Then the grin faded fast, and he looked at me, serious now.

"Sis, you're the first in line to inherit, the one Grandma named herself."

"But if you actually get committed to a psych ward, you lose all rights to the estate."

"I'll just take some time off work and stay with you until the inheritance paperwork's all sorted."

I pinched up a bit of the cream and dabbed it on the spot between Brian's brows.

"Take time off? Just quit."

"Your sis is about to be old money, the stuff of legend. All you have to do is lie around and be a useless bum."

Brian gave a bitter little laugh. He clearly wasn't feeling that optimistic.

"Sis, you were probably still little when you got taken, so you've got no sense of the numbers."

"What Grandma left you isn't three or four million. It's three or four billion."

"And that whole fortune goes to you, and you alone. Even an outsider like me, no blood tie at all, would be tempted. So imagine that whole crew, the ones who actually share your blood..."

I was too busy shoveling strawberry cake into my mouth to worry, and I promised him with my eyebrows dancing:

"Relax. Your big sister's got an ace up her sleeve."

"Nobody but me is walking off with Grandma's estate."

Brian forced the corners of his mouth up and wished me luck with all of it.

But out of the corner of my eye, I caught it. He never mentioned quitting. He just quietly put in for three days off.

This time, though, I really wasn't lying.

Trouble was, Brian's gut instinct was terrifyingly on point.

Late that night, thick smoke choked me awake.

I could hear it clearly, the Masons shrieking downstairs.

"Somebody help! My daughter's gone insane and set herself on fire in the middle of the night!"

I rolled out of bed and grabbed for the door handle, and found the door bolted from the outside.

The smoke poured in, choking me until my vision went black.

Only when my strength gave out and I collapsed did I dimly make out a blurred voice appearing in front of me, calling out again and again:

"Sis, don't fall asleep, I'm here to save you!"

In that moment, I swore something to myself.

If I made it out of this alive, I'd raise Brian like my own son for the rest of my life.

When I opened my eyes again, I hadn't been reborn, and I wasn't in the morgue.

There was a ring of people around me, cops in caps or people in white coats.

And that so-called family of mine was gathered around the burned neighbor, weeping and wailing:

"This poor child suffered so much inhuman abuse out there, her mind broke, that's why she lashed out at society..."

"Whatever we owe, we'll pay! We will never dodge our responsibility!"

Edna and Thaddeus stood in the corner, wearing the smug look of the ones who'd started it all.

The next second, I caught the white coat trading a glance with my parents.

They were going to hand me over to psychiatric first.

I braced myself on the arms of the wheelchair and pushed myself up, swaying on my feet.

I walked over to my parents, and I said just one sentence.

The moment they heard it, the two of them almost on instinct spun around and shoved Edna forward, terrified someone might miss it:

"We got it wrong! We got it wrong! The one who started the fire was this daughter!"

"Not our Agnes! It was never her!"