My Girl by Jack Jordan Page A

at the photos. She turned around.
    It was as though a completely different man stood before her – someone deranged, a terrifying stranger. The candlelight flickered in his eyes.
    She looked at his shirt, and immediately knew why it was so familiar: it was Ryan’s. She had bought it for him.
    ‘Dad always tried to come between us. Locking your bedroom door, sending me away to study Christ. But our bond was too strong. It never broke, even after all these years.’
    ‘Maxim, what is this?’ She turned back to face the photographs, trying to remember the past he described. She could see her naked body in the photos. Bile crept up her throat.
    ‘This is love,’ he whispered in her ear.
    She turned and backed against the wall, tears rolling down her cheeks. He stepped forward and kissed her. His warm tongue slithered slowly into her mouth. She sank her teeth into it until she tasted blood. He staggered back with bloody lips.
    ‘You’re my
brother!’
    ‘You love me.’
    ‘As a
sibling!’
    ‘
It’s more than that. It’s always been more.’
    ‘No it hasn’t! What the hell is wrong with you?’
    ‘For years I’ve protected you, waited for you to remember.’
    ‘You’re sick. You’re sick in the head!’
    ‘Don’t be like this. Not when we finally have the chance to be happy.’
    ‘What are you talking about? This can’t be happening.’
    He stepped forward again, as though she wasn’t looking at him in terror, as though she hadn’t bitten him to be free of him. She slapped his face so hard he reeled backwards.
    ‘You’re
sick
!
’
    He looked at her again, his eyes filled with blind rage. ‘This isn’t how it was supposed to go.’
    She couldn’t speak. She could only stare at him, trying to understand what sort of man he was, what sickness hid beneath his skull.
    ‘You’ve always been my girl. Always have. Always will. And now I have you.’
    He lunged at her and pinned her against the wall. Photos of her slipped from the wall and burned against the candles. He kissed her hard, one hand around her throat, the other clawing up her T-shirt to touch her breasts. She brought her knee up into his crotch. As he staggered back, she ran for the door, only to scream out and fall back as he grabbed a fistful of her hair.
    ‘You’re finally mine again,’ he spat into her ear. ‘And I’m not losing you a second time. I’m going to keep you where you’re safe.’
    ‘Maxim, please!’ she sobbed as he dragged her down the stairs by her hair. This was her brother, not a stranger. This madman was her own flesh and blood.
    ‘I thought it would be enough,’ he said. ‘I thought it would be enough to fill the void you left in me.’
    He dragged her from the stairs to the locked cupboard door beneath. She couldn’t think straight; she could only cry, bent over, her hair held tight in his fist. He turned the key in the lock and pulled her up until she was standing upright, his face inches from hers. ‘No one could take your place. I finally know that now.’ He kissed her, and growled in frustration when she squealed, before yanking open the door to reveal a stairwell.
    ‘You’ll come around,’ he said. ‘You’ll remember what we had, and you’ll learn to love me like you used to.’
    ‘Maxim—’
    For a brief second she was in mid-air, before she crashed down onto the staircase and tumbled to the cold concrete floor. She heard a gasp and scream. Everything was spinning. Paige looked up the stairs to see Maxim slam the door shut; she heard a key turn in a lock. She could taste blood in her mouth and feel tears on her cheeks.
    The room was bright – too bright. Squinting, she looked around and saw them: a woman and two children. All of them had auburn hair, pale skin, and wide eyes. The children were scared, and cowered against the woman who Paige seemed to recognise. The long red hair, the freckles on her nose and cheeks, the cool-blue of her eyes – the woman who stared back at her, the woman