Page 77 of Under the Bed

I’m selfish for hurting this bad. For missing you so much.

Daddy tells me I’m stupid. That you’re awful and the worst. That you would’ve killed me, too.

Would you?

I hope he’s wrong.

I hate that he says it so much that I start believing it.

You killed the boys that hurt me. Just them.

Right?

Right?

I’m so sorry.

Come back. Please. I hate it here without you.

Your stepsister,

Shiloh

Tightness eradicates the warmth in my chest. Darkness clouds my vision.

My mom forced him to keep me around. He couldn’t separate Shiloh and me while I lived there and behaved.

Then I murdered her abusers, playing right into his hands.

Sure, it humiliated him, being called downtown to the police station. Discussing his daughter’s assault. He was ashamed of her for being a victim, the motherfucker.

He must’ve gloated after I’d avenged her.

He hated me. He was scared of me, same as the rest of them. I didn’t let him hurt Shiloh.

I sure as fuck wouldn’t have let him send her off to a boarding school.

Right before the police came for me, I was about to kill him for hinting she should be shamed for being a victim.

Now that I’m out, he has to know I’m coming for him.

The bastard has done everything in his power to make sure I’d never get out. That Shiloh would never come back for me by sending her away and brainwashing her. By forbidding her from sending me these letters.

My nostrils flare as I continue to browse through them. At how lonely she’d been in LA. How, when she came home for the holidays—appearances, the letters say—his brainwashing had gotten worse and worse.

Shiloh’sI miss youandI’m sorryslowly dwindle. They’re replaced withYou scare meandplease, don’t hate me. Please, don’t kill me. Or if you do, be quick about it.

There’s no mention of my mom, obviously. A pretty, useless wallflower. An empty shell.

I slow down when the content of her letters changes. Again.

Shiloh was in her senior year and wrote to me about choosing her major.

She missed me. It says so right fucking there. She didn’t understand why she’d miss a man who could kill her. Why she’d develop feelings for the person inside her head, one shehadn’t seen in years. One who she shouldn’t like. Her stepbrother.

But it wasn’t all about her. She wanted to learn about me. She was curious to find out why I was the way I was.

She wasn’t selfish. Not her.

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