1
Caution: Violent scenes and abuse ahead. 18 and above.
Ouch, it hurts.
My skull felt like it was being hacked open with a blunt axe.
My eyes squinted in the dimly lit room, and the first thing I realised was the colour of the walls. This wasn't my room.
"Where am I?" I mumbled, trying to remember how I ended up on the hard, cold floor. My eyes widened when I registered the familiar scent of my brother's cologne, and the grey walls of his bedroom came into view.
What's that smell? The room smelt of iron and stale copper… blood.
I froze the next second when my feet brushed against something warm... something soft. Something human.
"B-brother Nathan?" The name left my lips like a prayer, my breath catching as I stared at the person lying a few inches away from me with bulging eyes.
"No! What happened? How…" I mumbled dazedly, my voice shaking as I crawled forward, but the slippery floors made it difficult. My palm slipped, and my knees nearly gave out as my whole body shook in fear.
My trembling hands reached towards him, and I felt my stomach drop when my hands landed in something wet.
It didn't feel like water; it was thick and dark.
Before me was the unconscious body of Nathan, my brother. The only person in the Swan family who still treated me like family.
There was a dagger protruding out of his chest, and his white shirt, the one he said was his favourite because it had been a gift from me on his birthday, was soaked with blood, and his entire body was lying in a pool of his own blood.
"Oh Lord, what happened? Brother, can you hear me?... Please say something," I cried, but my heart stopped when I got a closer look at him.
He was dead.
Who did this?
His lips had turned a ghastly pale, and his skin was so white it was as if all the blood had been drained from his body.
That was when I noticed the dagger, the one with that familiar design.
It was the same dagger Daddy gifted me on my sixteenth birthday. The one embedded with the pink diamond.
I didn't scream. Not yet. I couldn't.
The silence in the room was so heavy I could hear the blood dripping onto the floor…tap, tap, tap.
For a full minute, the world stopped. I wasn't the fake mafia princess or the disappointment; I was just a girl looking at the only person who had ever truly loved her.
I reached for the dagger, my fingers just above it, when the doors burst open, shattering the silence like glass and revealing the entire Swan family.
"Oh my god! Yvette, you killed Brother Nathan! Murderer!" Vanessa, my sister, cried, her trembling fingers pointing at me.
Everything came rushing back: Vanessa kissing Lucas, my fiancée, in the backyard garden; how they both professed their love for each other while plotting to frame me for embezzlement so that Daddy would kick me out of the company and the family.
How I had foolishly made my appearance known in my anger and told them I'd report everything to Dad and Brother Nathan.
How something hit me in the head from behind and everything turned black.
I realised I had fallen into another one of Vanessa's traps. The deadliest one yet, and I didn't need a psychic to tell me there wasn't an escape this time around.
After all, the evidence was too much to ignore; my hand was a mere inch from the murder weapon, which happened to be mine, my hands were wet with blood, and I was the only one in the room with Nathan's lifeless body.
"You jinx! What have you done?" My father's growl tore through the atmosphere, bringing me to the present.
He approached me like a beast out for blood, and he slapped me so hard that my ears began to ring, a coppery taste filling my mouth.
"No...Dad...Please...I didn't do this..."
"Guards!" He snarled, his eyes spitting fire. The hatred and disgust in his eyes were unmistakable.
"Drag this ungrateful schemer into the torture chambers!"
My heart sank hearing the fury in his voice.
I knew Dad's new favourite was Vanessa, and he only saw me as a charity case he was forced to raise because I had been swapped at birth with his precious princess, but I hoped he'd listen at least.
The guards approached me with cold gazes, and they grabbed me, forcing me down.
They roughly dragged me away, not giving me time to adjust.
My eyes found Madam Swan, who stood stiffly by the door, her eyes blank. She was the mother who had pampered me like her daughter for 17 years until the truth came out 3 years ago.
"Mom, please... Don't let them torture me... I swear, I didn't do it... Nathan is my brother... Y-you believe me… right?" I wailed, my voice hoarse, as I tried to reach for her, but she flinched, taking a step back as if I were a monster.
Her gaze moved from me towards the lifeless body on the floor, and when she turned to look at me again, her gaze was filled with something worse: disappointment.
"Take her away," she said, sealing my fate. The fight left me as my body slumped, my heart breaking into little pieces as the guards dragged me away.
~~~~
The torture chambers…
"Aaahhhh," I screamed, my body thrashing in agony as another excruciating pain tore through me, but the binds on my wrists and feet kept me glued to the electric chair.
I didn't know how long it had been, but it felt like an eternity had passed.
Another one of my fingernails had been yanked off after another session of electric shocks, and the pain was too much; I wanted to die.
This was the third one, and I wanted it to end already. I was calling on death to come for me, but it refused to answer.
At least death was better than this pain. Death was better than this torture.
"P-please… have mercy," I tried again, even though all my earlier pleas had fallen on deaf ears.
My voice was hoarse from screaming, and my throat was raw from pain, but my family… No, my adopted family only watched.
Are they like this because I'm no longer their daughter? Is it because there's no blood relationship between us?
To Dad, I'd always been the disappointment, too soft to be a mafia princess. I had no talent or skills, even after years of training.
I couldn't even hold a gun without my hands shaking, while Vanessa could hit a bullseye just after three months of training.
I should have realised they only tolerated me because they thought I was their daughter.
Brother Nathan was Dad's only son and his protégé.
Nathan was so good at handling weapons and the business; everyone looked to him to continue the legacy of the Swan family… So they left me alone.
Unfortunately, Vanessa appeared, and the comparisons began.
And now Nathan was dead, and I was the murder suspect. Was this the end of the road for me?
"I swear… I woke up in the room… I didn't kill my brother. He's my brother; why would I kill him?" I croaked, my voice sounding broken and desperate by the second, but no one cared.
I lifted my blurry eyes to look at Dad, who kept sipping his scotch as he watched me with detached eyes when my eyes caught Lucas and Vanessa standing in the corner of the room.
The words he had said in the garden earlier today replayed in my mind.
"You're the woman I love, Vanessa; Yvette was just a vessel… She was a prototype. I only got close to her because of you. I did everything because I wanted to be close to you," Lucas had confessed.
"You mean you still wanted me even when I rejected you?" Vanessa had asked.
"Of course. I still loved you. It has always been you," Lucas declared.
My heart squeezed as I locked gazes with Lucas across the dimly lit room. He glared at me, his eyes filled with scorn.
Vanessa, noticing our stare-off, tugged on his shirt, and Lucas leaned down, whispering something into her ear.
A small smile bloomed across her face, and she turned toward me with a victorious smile.
"It was Vanessa!" I yelled.
"She and Lucas framed me!" I declared, hoping my dad would believe me, but in the next second, he hurled the glass containing scotch against the wall.
The sound of shattering glass filled the room as the shards flew in all directions. "How dare you accuse your sister! Do you think she is as scheming as you?"
Of course, why did I even think Daddy would take my side? Ever since the truth was discovered and Vanessa was brought home, she had become the perfect daughter Dad had always wished for.
She aced her weapon lessons in a short time, and she passed every hardcore training with flying colours. She was a true mafia princess, not a disgrace like me.
The pain in my cheeks made me register that Dad was glowering down at me as he grabbed my chin, his fingers digging into my skin.
"You ungrateful brat!" He roared, his breath which smelt of scotch fanning my face. "I should have kicked you out of my family the day I found out you weren't my daughter. You killed my heir!"
"D–daddy…please…believe…"
"Continue the torture," Dad declared, releasing me like filth as he stormed out of the torture room.
Another animalistic scream tore through me as another nail was roughly yanked, and the collar around my neck tightened, cutting off my air.
Dad paused at the door and took one long look at me.
A violent surge of hope arose within me. Was Dad finally going to release me now? Does he finally believe me? But his next words killed all my hope.