Chapter 4

The frantic shouts of doctors and the beeping of machines pulled me back from the darkness.

I was on a gurney, being rushed down a sterile white hallway.

I could hear voices, muffled and distant.

"...multiple rib fractures... needs surgery immediately..."

It was a doctor, talking to Jackson.

Then I heard another voice, a soft, insidious whisper. Keira's.

"A rib necklace," she was saying, her tone musing. "I read once that it's the most romantic gift. A man giving a woman a piece of himself, taken from the part of his body closest to his heart."

She sighed theatrically.

"But of course, I could never ask for something so precious, especially not from you, Jackson."

My blood ran cold. I knew what was coming.

"I know," Jackson's voice replied, a low, automatic response to her manipulative bait.

"Oh, don't be silly," Keira said, her voice light and teasing. "I would never want you to hurt yourself for me. I'm not worthy of it. I'm just a poor girl..."

"You are worthy of everything," Jackson interrupted, his voice thick with an emotion that made me want to vomit. "You're worthy of my life, Keira."

The words hit me harder than the chandelier.

This was Jackson. The same Jackson who, when I was eight, had found me crying after I fell off my bike and scraped my knee. He had carried me all the way home, whispering, "Don't cry, Brook. I'll never let anything hurt you again."

He was the gentlest of the three. The most considerate.

Or so I had thought.

Had it all been a lie? Was I just a placeholder until someone better, someone like Keira, came along?

I remembered all the times I had bent over backward to please him, to earn his praise. I remembered tolerating Keira's petty cruelties, her constant demands, all because Jackson asked me to "be nice to her."

My fingertips were trembling. Tears slid from the corners of my eyes, hot against my cold skin.

The anesthetic was starting to take hold, but it couldn't numb the pain. Not the physical pain, and certainly not the agony in my soul.

I heard Jackson's voice again, sharp and clinical now.

"Doctor, how many of her ribs are broken?"

"Three, Mr. Graham. On her left side."

There was a pause.

Then, Jackson's voice, devoid of all warmth, all humanity.

"Take one out."

The doctor sounded shocked. "Mr. Graham? I don't understand."

"I want you to surgically remove one of her broken ribs," Jackson stated flatly. "I'm giving it to Keira. She's going to make a necklace out of it."

"But... sir, that's completely unnecessary! The bones will heal on their own. There's no medical reason to remove it. It would be an act of..."

"I am her brother," Jackson cut in, his voice like steel. "I am her legal guardian in this matter. You will do as I say, or I will personally see to it that this hospital loses every penny of the Stanton family's funding. Is that clear?"

There was a choked silence.

"...Yes, Mr. Graham."

Then I heard Keira's sweet, poisonous voice again.

"Oh, Jackson, thank you! But... what if Brooklyn finds out? She'll be so upset."

"She won't find out," Jackson soothed her. "I'll make sure of it. This will be our little secret."

I heard every word.

Every single, soul-destroying word.

It wasn't just that he didn't love me. It was that he would mutilate me for her. He would take a piece of my body, a piece of my pain, and turn it into a trinket for his real love.

He knew I was terrified of pain. He knew. When I broke my arm at age twelve, he had held my hand the entire time at the hospital, promising me he would never let me feel pain like that again.

Another lie.

My fingers were ice. My heart felt like it was being submerged in a frozen ocean.

I tried to scream, to protest, but my body was too heavy, my throat paralyzed by the drugs.

The last thing I felt before the world went completely black was the cold, sterile air of the operating room as they wheeled me through the doors.