Page 1 of Sin Like the Devil

PROLOGUE

1121 – HALSEY

RIPLEY

Present Day

Did you survive a tragedy if you never speak about it?

Some people would argue not. Well, they’re assholes. The lot of them.

Personally, I don’t give a fuck whether you want to air your dirty laundry for the entire world to pick apart or not. That’s your call. We all survive the aftermath of total self-destruction in our own ways.

But we’ve been programmed to view survival as being contingent on our later success—the capitalistic drive to monetise your demons and sell them to the highest bidder in the name of bullshit self-improvement.

There are survivors out there who remain silent. Invisible. Slipped through the cracks of society’s broken fringes, watching the parade of inspirational figureheads championing their own resilience.

We don’t all talk about our pasts. Nor do we all want to remember the struggle. The fight. The breaking. The cost of survival. These things are left unsaid in the shadows while the loud ones toot their own horns.

I’ve spent my life running from cameras and film crews, bloodthirsty reporters and foolhardy journalists, all determined to get the scoop on what happened ten years ago when the whole country burned. The fuse was lit inside the country’s psychiatric institutes. I had the honour of being incarcerated in one.

Harrowdean Manor.

It’s the last unsolved mystery.

When the biggest failed experiment in modern medical history was dismantled and exposed, the six private institutes embroiled in the conspiracy fell into ruinous violence.

Some made it out alive.

Others didn’t survive.

Already uncomfortable, I shift my short, barely five feet body in the stiff leather armchair that I’ve been assigned to after having my hair and makeup done. The blinking eye of the camera set up catches every sharp breath I suck into my lungs.

Tucked off to the side, Elliot O’Hare—the eagle-eyed investigative journalist who’s spent the best part of a decade harassing me—is fiddling with the microphone attached to his grey lapel.

Any sane person would be nervous for this interview. But any sane person wouldn’t have survived what I did. Perhaps that’s what shielded us from harm—the poisonous cloak of our insanity.

It protected us from the horrors we endured because we were already broken in the first place. That’s the whole reason we were all trapped inside of Harrowdean Manor. Society deemed us all unfit for their picture-perfect world of falsehoods.

“Okay, then.” Elliot straightens his narrow frame, an overflowing notebook clasped in his wrinkle-lined hands. “Are you ready to start, Miss Bennet?”

Staring down at the oil paint-stained tips of my fingers, I absently pick at my chipped purple nail varnish. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“If you’d like to stop for a break at any time, please let me know. I understand this will be difficult for you. We’ll go at your own pace.”

Difficult.

The word weighs heavy on my tongue like acrid cigarette ash. Escaping Harrowdean wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t even hard. In the end, it extracted a simple toll. I left one thing behind.

My broken heart.

The splintered remains… they took with them.

“Three… Two… One. The camera is rolling.”

When the blinking red light of the camera begins to strike its deathly knoll, I sit up straighter, attempting to conceal my anxiety. My heart has been trying to tear free from my ribcage ever since I arrived.

After spending hours trawling through my meagre wardrobe this morning, looking for something other than my studio clothes, I shed my usual sweatpants in favour of plain black jeans and an off-white blouse that complements my tawny hair and pale complexion.

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