Celeste's childhood wasn't something she loved talking about. It was filled with nothing but painful memories. Whether they were the ones from when her father, along with her brothers, left, or the ones from her mother's death and her stepfather's a...
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NOTHING BUT sheer suffocation grasped my lungs as my body jerked awake, endless beads of sweat racing across my jaw and dripping onto my neck. Salty tears accompanied them as they followed their trail across my skin, dropping to my hands and the T-shirt I had worn in the process.
My chest heaved in protest to the harsh thuds my heart emitted against it, and my vision scanned my surroundings in search for any possible source of danger. When finding none and realizing that I hadn't left Marco's room, I focused on evening out my rapid breaths.
A minute passed.
And then two.
My attempts turned futile. Panic lashed at my heart from all directions, a voice at the back of my mind telling me that I wasn't safe. That the nightmare was no less than a reality.
My feet were moving before I could get the chance to stop them from doing so as they helped my body scramble away from the bed and dragged it across the tiles and out of my twin's room. Agony rattled my head as my surroundings spun, my frantic gaze searching for Lorenzo throughout the apartment.
I couldn't breathe past the heavy lump that occupied my throat and the sobs that threatened to leave. It felt as though I were choking on my own breaths, deathly fists latching to my airways as they secured them with shackles, tying them up.
Tears blurred my vision, my hands shaking as they ran through my hair, tugging at its strands before they left to run over my face and my neck.
In my nightmare, I had failed to remain in the world of consciousness. I had slipped into the darkness, all while witnessing the agony getting inflicted upon my brother and hearing his hoarse begs for help and his sobs for the pain to halt. In my nightmare, neither of us had made it out alive.
My stomach churned as I went to the living room, searching for Enzo. I could've sworn I felt my heart drop to the deepest pits of my stomach once I took note of the neatly folded blanket that rested atop the couch, finding no traces of my brother.
Backing off slowly, I blinked.
I wanted to see him. I needed to make sure that he was alright.
He wasn't in any of my brothers' rooms, the bathrooms, or the living room. The house was void of everyone's presence, and the silence creeping across its walls was deafening, tiring, and terrifying. It made me want to crawl out of my skin and hide forever, the farthest I ever could from the rest of the world.
A sob had settled at the edge of my tongue by the time I made it to the kitchen, finding no one but Armani who was seated on a chair with his back facing me and a small box resting on the table in front of him.
I took a subtle step back, failing to find my voice in order to ask about Lorenzo and the rest of my brothers. The words I'd said to him on Saturday—meaning three days ago—played at the back of my mind like a broken record.
