Torn (Dark Legacy Duet 2)

I’m going to kill the bastard. I’m going to kill him.

It hurts so bad this time and the ointment Jasper snuck in here makes the open skin burn. I should have cried. If I’d cried, maybe he would have been satisfied and the whipping would have ended sooner.

But there’s a way out. Jasper told me there’s a way out. What I’ll have to submit to, though, it terrifies me.That passage stops abruptly leaving me curious. I scroll through several more pages to see if there’s more, but I can’t find details and I have to put the book down for a few minutes because too many of the entries are like this one.

Beatings.

Pain.

Hate.

I scroll through, skimming, until a dark stain on the corner of a sheet catches my eye.

Spring

We’re doing it tonight. Jasper has the irons and Benjamin, the youngest Scafoni brother, will bear witness.

And probably hold me down.

I’m scared. It’s going to hurt so much, but the alternative, I’m sure, is death.

Cain grows angrier and angrier by the day and his punishments leave permanent marks now.

Tonight, at midnight, I’ll meet Jasper at the mausoleum. God, I hate that place. It’s haunted, I swear.

And the ghosts mean me harm.

He showed me the secret door that leads to the room beneath. I am chilled thinking about it. But he’ll be there waiting for me and after tonight, I’ll be safe. Cain will have no choice but to give me to Jasper when I wear his mark.

I am terrified.Six days later

I know it’s six days because I’ve started to tally it on the back of the headboard.

I endured the marking ceremony. Benjamin signed the contract as witness. According to the Scafoni family’s own rules concerning the Willow Girls, I belong to Jasper now.

Rules.

It’s sick. This family is sick. These rules, I swear, have been put into place to ensure their cruelty and to guarantee our suffering.Part of this page is missing, torn out. And the next entry is only a few lines:

This morning, I woke to news that Jasper has left the island.

Benjamin won’t tell me anything.

I wonder if he’s alive. If Cain didn’t hurt him, or worse, for his betrayal.

And I am lost.She doesn’t describe what happened. She never says what they did, but I remember my dream of her. I remember the edge of that mark on the back of her neck and how she tried to cover it up. Is that what it was? A mark of ownership?

I endured the marking ceremony.

The thought of cattle being branded crosses my mind.

It’s what Willow Girls are. Property. Living, breathing property.

Cattle.

I kneel up on the bed, touch behind the heavy wooden headboard. I can feel ridges, the lines she carved into the wood to mark the days.

Getting off the bed, I shove it forward a little. It must weigh a ton, but I can see the scratches Aunt Helena left. It makes me feel like she’s here again. Here with me. Like I’m not alone.

Shoving the bed back in place, I resume my seat and pick up the notebook to read the passage again.

There’s a secret room under the mausoleum? I have to go there, search for it. I have to find out what they did to free her from Cain.

I read a few more entries, then get to this one:

Summer

They did it.

I couldn’t write the plan here because I think Cain has been reading my journal. How could I have thought, for one single moment, that he wouldn’t? That was my own stupidity. It’s exactly the reason he gave it to me.

But they did it and it doesn’t matter! He’s dead. Cain is dead.

I heard the brothers from my room. Heard them enter, heard the struggle, heard Cain’s muffled cries. It didn’t even take long.

I went into his room after they’d gone. He looked like he was just sleeping but he had no breath and his color was already graying and I stood over him and smiled a real smile for the first time since I was brought to this island.

And then I did something terrible.

I took the dagger he keeps in the nightstand. I know about it because he held it to my throat enough times. He liked that when he had me. Liked scaring the life out of me. It made the sick bastard come.

Well, tonight, I took his knife and I put his hand on the nightstand and I cut off his finger and I didn’t even care that I had blood on me. They’ll accuse me of killing him anyway. I didn’t care.

I took it back to my room and peeled the skin off like I’d peel a potato and flushed it down the toilet and I carried those bloody, wet bones to my secret place and hid them.

And I don’t even care what they do to me. I don’t care because now, I have a piece of them.