Her ease and manner were a lie. Her indigo eyes shifted to Persephone the instant she moved. “You know this isn’t an accessory, little sis,” she hefted the gun slightly. “Take a seat.”
Eva moved on through the room while Persephone moved as ordered. A phony gasp of shock and confusion emerged when she saw Marcella.
“Can’t be...I’ll be goddamn...is that really you, Marci Cannon?” Eva maintained her grip on the gun, used her free hand to slap a knee in mock amusement. “You haven’t changed a bit! Why this really is a reunion! Old friends, family…” her eyes narrowed toward Persephone again.
“I’m sure you know by now that we’re all one big family.”
“What surprised me is that Mae didn’t know when you were so obviously aware of it.” Persephone felt somewhat less afraid than she believed she probably should have. “What E? She was good enough to be your top minion, but not your sister?”
Appearing casually amused, Eva leaned against the back of the sofa. “Maybe you should pose that question to our dear bitch of a mother. She saw fit to make us strangers almost from the moment we were born, isn’t that right mom?”
Tammy would not respond.
Eva gave a nonchalant shrug of her brows. “Figures. I never could get her to tell me much of anything.”
“But oh you fixed that, didn’t you?” Tammy’s voice made a quiet entrance into the room then. Her tone wasn’t accusing, simply matter-of-fact.
“Oh boo-hoo!” Eva poked out her lips into a pout, then smiled radiantly. “God, mom still stewing over Willard after all these years?”
“You were thirteen.”
“And he loved every minute of it.” Eva’s voice was then a sultry whisper. “I didn’t even have to stroke his ego by pretending that pathetic dick of his was doing anything for me. Just letting him inside me was enough. And what did you care?”
Eva resumed her walk of the big room. “You never loved me. What did you care if I fucked the whole town- you hated us the minute we were born.”
“It was you, Evangela.” Tammy’s voice, still quiet grew in strength. “I knew you were wrong. From the time you were old enough to reason-I knew it. Mae may have...had issues, but you were the one. Through and through. Wrong. Just like he was.”
“Wrong...hmph,” Eva gave a lazy eye roll and smiled. “Labeled-just like that. Did you ever bother to find out what happened? Why Mae came out so messed up?”
“Mae?” Persephone blurted on the verge of genuine laughter. “I think you’re pinning the ‘messed up’ label on the wrong twin, slut.”
Her casual smile still in place, Eva sidled up to the chair Marcella occupied. Without taking her eyes from Tammy, she unsheathed the frightening looking knife and slipped it beneath Marci’s throat. “Your mouth shut or her throat opened-your choice P. Anyway,” she continued, once more focused on the discussion with Tammy. She kept the gleaming blade positioned at Marci’s throat.
“I found someone who could tell me what happened. A scientist-into genetics and all that. Told me that Mae and I suffered from Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome. Simply put, it’s when one twin gets too much blood while the other gets hardly any. The imbalance causes one to grow faster and larger.”
Eva’s heated glare grew noticeably softer when she looked to Mae. “The doctor thought our case was exceptional, Mae. Given that you got the build and I got the brain, Doctor Shannon thought he could help your mental state.”
Marcella gasped, bristled. Eva moved the knife, though she continued to watch Marci with a hint of knowing reflecting in her deep eyes.
“Why Marci, you surprise me. Don’t tell me you know our Doctor Shannon? He was way before our time on the island though. Unless...my God...they took you to him, didn’t they? My, my you do get around.” Eva kept the gun fixed while replacing the knife in its sheath. “And here I thought they were taking you off to your death that night. So they shipped you off to the main lab, did they…? Ha! Talk about a mad scientist!” Eva went on delightedly. “The man’s inventions were out of this world. Too bad the island ran him out of his mind.”
Marci coughed up a laugh. “He wasn’t the only one.”
Proud of her friend, Persephone bowed her head and smiled.
Eva didn’t seem offended. “But we all went a little crazy out there, didn’t we?” Her gaze tracked back to Tammy. “Did you even care or think about what they did to me out there?”
Tammy lifted her chin. “I’m sure they were things you embraced.”
Eva endured the blow with a sneer. “You really are upset over old Will, huh? You should be happy the man had some pleasure and hadn’t had to spend his entire life fucking such a weak cunt. How do you live with yourself knowing what you left your own kids to suffer through?”
Evangela quickly unsheathed the knife again, that time pointing it in her mother’s direction. “You blamed me for what I did. Marcus for what he did. You should’ve been honored to have a Ramsey between your legs. I could’ve lived so well…”
Tammy remained undaunted by the ferocity she was met with. “Marcus Ramsey was the devil,” she stated with a quiet unflinching conviction. “You and Mae would’ve ended up someplace much worse if it’d been left up to him.”
“Save it Miss Tam, you probably have Maeva believing in you,” Eva snorted, airily waving the knife then. “She didn't have to suffer living with you. And then there’s your prize over there,” she flashed a venomous look on Persephone. “The renowned, beautiful doctor with her beautiful life… I'm sure you put her on so high a pedestal she thought you made the world turn.” She moved toward the side of the room where Tammy sat close to Mae.
“Maybe I was the only one who saw you for what you were-an inept submissive. Oh I watched you…” her whispered words glided lazily like the stride she used to move closer to her mother.
“I swore I’d never be like you,” her hand flexed around the knife’s hilt while her finger stroked the gun’s trigger. “I vowed to grow into someone as unlike you as possible- to never be helpless and sniveling like you and much of our entire, sorry gender.
Few of you realize that only two things control the world- control men. Sex and power. Sex, I’d mastered, but I wanted whatever it was that Shannon was rumored to have created because there was power. It allowed him to hold under his thumb the members of so many revered families.”
“But you knew what he’d created-what he was doing to those kids,” as the knife was no longer beneath Marci’s throat, Persephone took a chance on speaking.
Eva didn’t look at her youngest sister. “I would’ve shut that sick shit down in a day. I wanted something greater-he’d developed something there that could’ve would’ve given women their due advantage over men,” Eva shook her head, sending glossy curls of jet into her stunning face.
“Of course, the bastard was too much of a sexist prick to share the wealth,” she sighed. “I realized that when I reached out to him about supplying me with whatever he’d been shipping to the island to enhance Perjas’ army.”
He laughed at me-told me he was glad I was using my fine brain but that his...creation would only turn women big and mindless. He said empathy and the nurturing instinct were too much a part of our psyche.” She looked to Persephone then. “I mean seriously, P. You're a doctor- can you believe that?”
“Looks like he didn’t know your case as well as he thought,” Persephone said.
Evangela looked to Mae again. “They used it on her back at the island. She was too big to be of use as anything besides a soldier. Perjas thought its regenerative capabilities might trigger whatever went wrong while she was cooped up inside this pathetic sack.” Eva sneered Tammy’s way once more and then shook her head.
“It just made her worse. Gave her the worst nightmares and headaches...in the end, the only thing that did her any good was the anesthetic they administered during the weekly injections the soldiers got.”
“Re-Gen,” Persephone said.
