I closed my eyes as my arms trembled. There were no good choices in this scenario. And nothing in the dozen or so self-defense classes I’d taken could help me now. I said a silent prayer that Hunter would keep breathing until help arrived. Then I slowly released the pressure on his wound. Blood soaked the shirt, and my palm was covered in the dark red substance.

Michael’s eyes seemed to glitter as he took in the sight. “Not sure that blood will ever come off your hands. Just like all the blood before it.”

Anger, swift and hot, flowed through me. Was everything he’d already taken from me not enough? My parents. My life as I’d known it. Any hope for a normal future. No, it wasn’t. Nothing would be enough for Michael. Not until I was completely destroyed. But what then? He would be totally and completely alone. Maybe that was what he’d wanted all along.

I stared at the man who was both monster and brother and let my anger show in my eyes and expression. I let it flow free and unchecked. “What now?”

Michael straightened. “Yes, tap into that rage. It feels good, doesn’t it? I never understood why you didn’t let yourself go there as a child. It’s so much more fun not to be encumbered by what the world sees as right and wrong.”

His words might as well have been made of ice as they poured over me. “I’m nothing like you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, sister dearest. We’re made up of the same DNA. You just haven’t activated that part of you that will change everything. Maybe this will be what does it.”

My stomach cramped. That was Michael’s plan? To turn me into him? I’d wondered time and time again how two people from the same parents, raised in the same household, could turn out so differently. It had often seemed incredibly unfair that Michael’s mind had turned against him in the way it had. Almost as if we’d both had bombs in our brains, but Michael’s was the one that had been rigged to explode.

I searched his face. “And what happens if I turn into you? Then what?”

He beamed. “We’ll have so much fun. Think of the list of people we can take revenge on. The people who locked me up. That bitch of an aunt, who turned you against me. The possibilities are endless.”

This was Michael’s existence. A constant tally of those who had wronged him and plans for how he could take revenge.