Steel Princess (Royal Elite 2)

For the rest of my life, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully face him.

Aiden, my bully and my tormentor, is a victim of my parents.

He was just a boy back then. A little boy with tousled black hair and innocent grey eyes.

That innocence was tortured in that basement and killed when he returned to find his mother dead.

There was something abnormal about that basement. Something that makes my skin crawl.

He lost a part of himself in there. Hell, I feel like I lost a part of myself in there, too.

I just don’t remember it.

Aiden isn’t like me. He didn’t erase his memories. He remembers everything.

Every. Fucking. Thing.

A shudder goes through me at the thought of what could’ve happened to him.

Since I left Dr Khan’s office, my heart has been hollow. I’ve been on the verge of a breakdown.

I wanted to go to Birmingham and stand on my parents’ grave and shout at them.

I wanted to kick their dead bodies and tell them to give me back my life.

But that would be useless. No one will give me back what was already stolen.

Just like nothing will bring back what Aiden has already lost.

My heart aches the more he touches me, but I don’t want him to stop. I never want him to stop even if I’m in pain.

Even if I bleed open.

It took me ten years to remember and I don’t even remember everything.

He’s been living with this pain for a decade.

He’s been seeing my face for two years and recalling what Ma did to him.

No wonder he looked at me like he hated me. No wonder he wanted to destroy me.

What Jonathan said makes sense now. My parents did kill Alicia, although indirectly.

She was on her way to search for Aiden after he was kidnapped, but she had an accident and never saw him again.

Aiden lost his mother.

And it’s all because of Ma and Dad.

My breathing deepens and it takes everything in me not to break down in tears.

How could I tell him I loved him yesterday? How could I say that to someone who suffered every time he saw my face?

What the hell is wrong with me?

I focus on the little drawings on my back. It’s like he’s repeating the same pattern over and over again.

Wait. Is that…?