Page 196 of Sins of the Hidden

"Fuck!" Knight gasped, cradling his arm. "V, what the hell?"

Tyrant pushed Knight behind him, facing me with his palms open. "Brother, you need to breathe."

"Don't fucking touch me!" I snarled, advancing. "You all watched. You all let them?—"

"Let them what?" Grim demanded, positioning himself between me and the others. "What are you talking about?"

Husk appeared in the doorway, taking in the scene. "Jesus. V, put the bat down."

I drove the bat toward Husk's stomach. He jumped back, the wood missing him by inches.

Law's face was in front of me, then it wasn't. His features melted, reformed—Mother's eyes looking through his. Mother stood behind the men, needle raised high. "They're just like you,"she whispered."They wanted to hurt her. You wanted to hurt her. You're the same."

"V!" Multiple voices called my name, but they sounded distant, echoing.

My reflection caught in shattered glass—fractured, wrong. The mask moved when I didn't, the eyes behind it showing nothing human. Mother stood behind me in the mirror, her needle poised. Beside her, Oakley bled from invisible wounds.

"V," Tyrant said softly. "This isn't you, brother."

The mirror whispered in Oakley's voice, but it was wrong—too slow, vowels elongated. "You're just like them, V," it said with Mother's twisted expression stretching Oakley's lips.

"No," I whispered, then louder. "No!"

The mask spoke to me without my lips moving. "Now you see," it whispered from inside my head. "Now you understand."

I blinked. The mirror bled. Letters cut themselves across the surface:SQUEAL PIGGY.Each letter pulsed with its own heartbeat.

Sarge didn't react.

My hand moved without command. The bat felt lighter than before, almost weightless. Everything slowed. I watched it rise, watched it stop at the apex, watched it descend toward my own skull.

Law lunged forward despite his injured shoulder. "Don't you fucking do this!"

I need to stay here. To stay real. The bat cracked against my temple—controlled, measured, but harder than before. Liquid warmth traced down my skull. Pain was the only thing I hadn't lied about.

"V!" Knight shouted. "Put it down."

I lifted the bat again, bashing my head over and over. Each impact sent fractures through the madness, keeping me tethered to something real. Her voice slipped between the cracks in my skull—softer now, quieting the screams.

I spun away from his reach, my consciousness fracturing into shards, each one reflecting a different truth. In one, I was still a child, mouth sewn shut. In another, I was burning men alive. In a third, I was holding Oakley. In the end, I was nothing but an empty vessel.

Mother's laughter came from inside my skull now. The needle found its way home. The thread pulled tight. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. Not with my mouth sewn shut.

All their voices blended together as I fell upward into the dark.

Around me, my brothers closed in—Law still gripping his shoulder, Knight cradling his arm, Chet holding his ribs, all of them calling my name. Sarge reached for me again without speaking.

In the moment before consciousness fled, Oakley's face appeared before me—her soft curves, her chestnut hair, her jade eyes that saw something in me worth saving. She was the only pure thing I'd ever touched. My obsession with her wasn't just desire—it was worship.

In the moment before madness swallowed me whole, Mother's hands covered my face as she whispered,"Look what we made of you."

It was what I’d always been.

A fucking monster.

The dirt clung to my fingers as I pressed another seedling into the earth, my knees sinking into soil freshly turned and waiting. I didn't want to think about how many versions of myself I'd already buried this year—Valerie's daughter, the bakery girl, the one who used to cry at sad movies. My fingers trembled as I pressed the seedling deeper, like I was trying to grow something from the bones of who I used to be.

The evening sun stretched long shadows across the garden, painting the newly formed beds in shades of amber and gold.

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