“For example,” he said, as if I had given some indication that I actually wanted to hear his tinny little voice. “I bet you would assume that my own parents made me into the monster that you now think me to be, don’t you?”
Alright, I’ll bite. “I would assume they had something to do with it, yes.”
“And see, that is where you would be wrong,” he said as if he were correcting my answer on a test. “My parents had nothing to do with shaping who I became. You can blame your own mother for turning me into the monster that I am.”
“My mother?” I laughed. “Yeah, right. Okay. That’s cool.”
It wasn’t funny, but instead kind of ironic. And the mere mention of my mother out of his mouth made me want to slap him.
Still, I kept my poise as I tilted my head lazily off to the side. “My mother was an excellent parent, a decent human, and a strong woman. There’s nothing that she could have possibly done to you that you can put such blame on. Besides, she wasn’t even your mother.”
Typical for him to blame anyone other than himself, and to choose a person that he thought would hurt me the most.
David clicked his tongue. “True, she was not my mother. And that was precisely the problem. She didn’t need to do anything to me in order to cause me such suffering that it would one day be the driving force behind everything that I would do. All your mother needed to do was show me what I didn’t have. That was enough to tip the scales of which path I would take in life.”
I scoffed. “My mother never did that. She never showed you what you didn’t have; she always tried to include you with us in everything. Hell, sometimes I even felt like she was being more lenient with you than she was with me.”
“She was, and that was part of the problem. She always tried so hard to make me feel like I was wanted there with you and her. She tried so hard to include me and to give me fun things to do that would take my mind off all the awful things that went on in my own family behind closed doors. Your mother tried too hard. It made it obvious that I was the guest and that I didn’t really belong there.”
I rolled my eyes. “Jesus Christ. So, instead of blaming our murderous father or your evil mother, you choose to blame my own mother who had never been anything other than kind and accepting of you?”
“It’s not something that I chose, Lisette. It’s just the way that it was.”
“Fuck you,” I snarled as I kept my gaze out the window.
He sat there staring at me while I ignored him and tried to calm my blood from boiling over with rage. How dare he blame my mother for his own malignant choices in life. I didn’t know why she helped him as much as she did. She should have thrown him right back to the wolves.
“Do you want to leave here?” he asked after a little while.
I was still really hoping that you might leave. “Is that a trick question?” I asked.
Because of course I wanted to leave. Fucking idiot.
But still, David pressed on. “No, it’s a straightforward one. Do you?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“I’m going to give you one chance to leave, Lisette, without ever having to come back or worry about being followed.”
“Now that definitely sounds like a trick,” I said, knowing full-well that David would never just let me leave.
“No, not a trick at all. More like… a game.”
Wonderful. “What kind of game?” I asked.
“What do you mean what kind of game? A fun one! What other kind of games are there?” he asked as he mocked me.
“I don’t like to play games,” I answered flatly and continued to stare down at the little cemetery.
“Well I do, and I think I’m going to really enjoy this one. Play the game and you can leave, without ever having to come back.”
That obviously sounded way too good to be true.
Still, I was intrigued. If anything, it would give me more insight into how his twisted little brain worked for later.
“How do I play?” I asked.
He turned toward me, but I didn’t give him the courtesy of allowing him a glance of my eyes. “I’m going to make you a deal. The Lineage Academy Winter Gala is coming up. By the end of the evening of the gala, you can choose one of your three men to go with you, and you must also choose one of the three men to die.”
It took me a second to process what he had said, because surely he had misspoken. “What? No, I’m not going to do that so you can forget about your game. I’m not playing.”
David practically purred at me. “Oh come now, it will be fun.”
“That is not fun. I won’t do it,” I said.
“But you and one of your three boyfriends will have the rest of your time in life together completely unbothered by me. Isn’t that what you’ve been wanting?” he asked.
I snapped my head in his direction, making sure I looked him in the eyes as I spoke my next phrase. “I won’t choose one of the guys to die. We all stay together, and I won’t choose. It’s as simple as that.”
“You don’t want to choose,” David said. “Because you feel like you love all three men. But I’m afraid the game is not optional. You have to play.”
“And if I don’t anyway?” I asked.
He grinned so wickedly I wanted to vomit. “Then I choose which two will die. But don’t worry, you have plenty of time to think about it. You have until the night of the gala to tell me which one to let go of and which one to save.”
I couldn’t make a choice like that. I couldn’t even decide which of them I wanted to be with the most, let alone which of them I would be willing to sacrifice.
None of them. I wouldn’t sacrifice any of the three of them.
