𝐅𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 [𝟏𝟖+]✓

37

Thank you for waiting patiently. This chapter should answer all your questions. Also how about 300 comments and I'll start writing the next one?

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The quiet hum of the fireplace filled the room, but the tension between Hayden and Talin was louder than anything else. My brother stood near the window, back straight, hands clasped behind him like a judge preparing to deliver a verdict. Talin sat on the couch, poised, her expression cold but guarded. I stood to the side, an unwilling witness to a story I never wanted to hear.

"Tell me, Talin, what would you do if someone stole your child?" Hayden's voice was soft when he finally broke the silence. Too soft. She didn't respond, her perfectly arched brow lifting ever so slightly. "What would you do," he continued, pacing slowly toward her, "if someone replaced your flesh and blood with a lifeless body? If they handed you a dead daughter, while someone else walked away with your living one?"

Talin's lips parted, but no words came out. She had no chance to cover up her sins anymore. I knew Talin Halifax was always power-hungry. I knew that she had been raped by a politican, wanted to birth his child and use that child to marry him--to increase her political power. The fact that she had chose to birth the child in London did not surprise me because she had grown up there. But what repulsed me was the fact that she had swaped her dead baby with my twin in the hospital. While my mother had mourned, thinking one of her daughters died, Talin had used my twin--Corrine to marry her rapist.  

"I'll tell you what you'd do," said Hayden, stopping in front of her. "You'd tear the world apart to get her back. You'd destroy anyone who dared keep her from you. Isn't that right?"

"What is this, Hayden? Some morality lecture? Did you know Romeo's father sent his men to kidnap one of your just born twin sisters that night? Because I gave him a fake promise to return that baby to them, he let me go away. And I had raised Corrine away from them. I did everything to protect her and gave her everything." Her chin lifted, defiance flaring in her eyes. 

"You gave her nothing," I cut in, my voice trembling but resolute. "You gave her a life of abuse and neglect."

Talin shot me a glare that could've burned through steel. "Don't speak of things you don't understand."

"I understood perfectly," I argued, tone sharp enough to slice through stone. "I lived it, through my fugue and through her journals which you used to manipulate me into thinking I was Corrine. Every word, Talin. Every cry for help you ignored. Every act of cruelty you justified. She didn't have a life anyone would envy. She had a life no one should endure."

"She was a pathological liar," Talin snapped, rising to her feet. "Corrine made everything a tragedy. She twisted the truth, blamed everyone for her failures. I gave her every opportunity to succeed, and she threw it all away."

"She threw it away because you broke her!" My voice cracked as I stepped forward, shaking with rage. "She wrote about the abuse, the assault, the way you dismissed it all. You called her a liar because it was easier than admitting what you did to her."

Talin's eyes narrowed. "I gave her a life of privilege. Wealth. Power. What more was I supposed to give her? Gratitude? Sympathy? She was a spoiled brat, Saoirse. And now you're here, judging me? You didn't even know her. Would you think she would have a better life if she was forced to grow in the Farbear mansion's basement?"

Hayden tensed for a brief moment, like he had actually imagined how unfair it would have been for Corrine to grow up in the Farbear mansion's basement. Every bone in my body knew Corrine's life would have been far more tragic if she had grown up in their basement, but Hayden wouldn't have left her there. My brother would have gone to hell and back to save her.