“Not true, she was sleeping with Dad.”
I can’t believe I enjoyed throwing that in her face. The adrenaline is only heating my skin, sweat pouring out of my pores. I need to run, exercise, eat, something other than stand here with my feet aching in a five-thousand-dollar dress.
Pearl snickers, her eyes going to Max. I could see the admiration she showed for him. “He wanted to find a way to force a psychotic break. He wanted to make someone psychotic, Isa. He used me as a test dummy for five fucking years. What you put up with for six months, I endured for sixty.” She clears her throat, her shoulders squaring. As if she cracked and showed a shimmer of weakness and had to quickly compose herself. “Max finally came into the asylum and he and father agreed that I would take your place and he would continue on you until he found a cure to help Mom, and get props for finding the first cure for a mental illness. When the wedding happened, Max seemed to convince Father that you were ready to bring in to do the switch, only when you came in, you fought the drugs that they were feeding you. You compartmentalized half of yourself into my Brooke, and the other into Isa. They needed you to be all Brooke so they could finally work on trying to cure you. Father never wanted to hurt Mom. Ever. She was to remain intact until the drug was absolute. But you, Isa Royal, you fought the hardest. So, they kept us both there, until Max set up the plan with Father. When Dad noticed that you were, in fact, not going to come to with the drugs, he allowed Max to break you out. To get close to you. Gain your trust.” Pearl steps forward. I didn’t realize I was crying until tears drip from the curve of my jawline and onto my sternum.
“Come a step closer, bitch and I’ll rip all that pretty hair out,” Brianna growls, her grip around my hand tightening. I couldn’t relish in the protectiveness of my sister, because I was still trying to wrap my head around all of the truths that were spilling out.
All of them this time.
I was played a puppet. All this time, I rebelled, defied against normality, only to be controlled all along. They’re the winners here, not me. They were controlling me without me even realizing it.
Pearl stops a few steps ahead of me, and it’s then that I feel the strong presence behind me. No doubt Devon and Bryant. A war is about to rip out between us, and I don’t want the residue of it to land on Bryant’s hands. “Gain your trust. Kill you and place me in your life.” Her eyes darken, enough for me to see beneath the shadows of the streetlights. Pearl and Brooke. I can’t move past that piece of information.
“And what do you mean you and Brooke?” Everything else she had said was what she had already said, only with different words.
“She was my fiancée,” Pearl whispers, her shoulders sagging in defeat.
If I was a lesser woman, I’d attack her while she was down. But I’m not. I prefer a challenge.
“Who, by the way, you also took from me. You were her only mission in the plan, and you even managed to have her sucked in. So I snapped. When Max updated me on her falling for you and screwing everything that walks—including our father—I told him that I didn’t want her. She turned to hate me, resent me, and in turn, took it out on you.” Memories flash through my head of the final words Brooke spoke to me. “She can’t have everything.” Pearl runs her fingers through her hair. “She knew I was going to leave her behind because of it, and because she couldn’t gain access to me in the asylum, she figured she’d kill you, since doing that would eliminate me gaining my freedom under your name. Kill you, and Isa is dead. I couldn’t replace a dead person. I lose, you lose, she wins.”
Information is heavy in my brain, though now everything makes sense. Brooke makes sense. Her insane instability makes sense.
“You could have never pulled that off. Replacing me.”
“Oh, I could. Easily.” Her eyes swing to Bryant, dropping low down his body and coming back up. “In bed with your husband, playing mommy with your daughter…”
I fly forward, and my hand is on her throat before her tongue can even curl around the first syllable of her next word. Slamming her body up against the car, I squeeze roughly until the tiny bones and fragile muscles in her throat crack beneath the palm of my hand.
I smirk. “That would have never worked.”
“Really?” Pearl tilts her head. “I would have been the trophy daughter your father would have always wanted, the wife Bryant always needed, and the mom that wouldn’t have put Harper in harm’s way with her shit decisions for friends!”