Page 11 of Distorted Obsession (The Distorted Trilogy #1)

cooper

There’s so much blood.

My gaze darts around the room, searching for first aid supplies. She panicked herself into unconsciousness. The stench of her despair coats the room, blanketing everything inside with a thick layer of grime.

“ Rah, where are you? Didn’t you hear us call you?” I question, pushing her room door open when she remains silent. She probably has on her noise-cancellation earbuds.

“We need to—” I freeze, swallowing the remainder of my sentence as I take in the scene before me.

Slowly, my blurred vision comes into focus.

“You need to stay away from my sister.” I hear someone warn.

Where the fuck is that coming from?

“Stop calling her, you fucking stalker. I mean it.”

There’s a familiar timber to whoever is speaking, but recognition eludes me, stamped out by the pounding in my ears.

Farrah lies on her purple plush carpet peacefully. Her eyes shut as if she’s napping on the floor. Everything else comes rushing into me like a Mac truck barreling down Highway 95 with no brakes.

My nostrils flare, and my eyes widen in shock as I fail to react. There’s blood—so much blood you can taste the metal in the air.

“Rah?” I shout, closing the distance between us. “No… no… no… no… no.” Crimson saturates the carpeting like it’s sucking the life fource out of her.

“Here,” Colter huffs, ripping me from reliving the worst day of my life. He shoves the first aid kit into my side. “We need to move, Coop. Snap out of it.

Nodding, I move on autopilot, kneeling on Eva’s bed. I fix her towel to cover while I attend to her self-inflicted wounds.

“How the fuck didn’t we know she’s a cutter?” I seethe, wiping the blood from her hip.

My hands glide over the other lines, more silvery than the rest of her complexion. She looks angelic like this, almost like the girl we used to know. The one who would’ve conquered worlds to protect my sister.

“Stop ogling her, and get your ass in gear before her roommates return,” Colter demands, breaking the spell.

Standing, I take one last look before setting everything up. I almost feel bad for what we have planned for Eva Rose.

Our sister would traverse the heavens to hand us our heads. She wouldn’t want any of this—it’s not who she was.

My jaw tenses at the reminder. Farrah is not here to have a say in the matter. If she were, none of this would be happening.

Spinning, I walk to the other side of her room and into her closet. Then I pull down her shoeboxes, taking time to purposely fuck with her shit. Smirking, I swap out one foot from each box and pocketing one black stiletto.

I wonder if she’s noticed all the subtle changes we’ve been making to her room.

As I reach to put everything back, my gaze lands on a book of some sort.

“Coop, we need to leave now,” Colter snarls.

“Impatient, much?” I retort while turning the boxes upside down and hiding the style information.

Perfect .

Then I snatch the book and tuck it into the pocket of my hoodie without examining it. I’ll do that back at the house.

“I swear if our faces weren’t an identical match, I wouldn’t believe we were or related,” he grunts as we both stride toward the front door.

The August air punches me in the face as we walk silently across campus to the parking lot—our hoodies hiding our faces. Neither of us speaks until we’re in the car.

“How did we miss this? I ask again when the purr of the engine comes to life.

“Fuck if I know, we checked all her files. She’s never had an issue like this before,” Colter replies.

The mention of Eva’s records gives me pause. It could be a newly acquired destructive coping mechanism to stave off her guilt.

But the lines on her skin . Some of them healed so well that they almost blended back in.

“This doesn’t change anything,” Colter adds. “The endgame for us is still the same.”

Doubt curdles in my stomach for the first time since we engineered this plan almost two and a half years ago. Not once did I hesitate in the months of planning and positioning pieces exactly where they needed to be.

“I know that look, Coop. We’re not backing down. So what if she feels guilty— she should . You remember the recording.”

Anger heats my skin—the hair on my arms stands like it fears being singed. The fucking recording .

Callum Pierce’s sharp words fileted the portions of my sister’s heart that she hid from us all. I still don’t understand what he gained from his words. There should’ve been another way to get his point across.

Frustrated, I slam the car into park, disregarding how Colter’s body jerks forward from the abrupt stop. It’s not as if we don’t know Callum—our families are… were … are very close.

Both our mothers came to the States to attend university together. It was the only way our grandparents would have approved. So, Callum and Eva weren’t strangers—they were family, which is why their betrayal festers like an open wound in the desert sun.

Colter, Lev, and I combed over the recording to find even a hint of doctoring, but there was none. Combine that with the text messages and voicemails from Callum to Farrah, there was no doubt in Callum’s part in our sister’s death.

We sit in the car, brooding, neither of us making any effort to get out—both of us lost in the depths of our thoughts. I still can’t reconcile the guy we looked up to as kids with the coldhearted asshat that pushed our sister into ending her life.

Sighing, I massage the bridge of my nose, desperately wanting the image of Eva covered in blood to stop blurring with the scene of my sister’s suicide.

“We need to change course. Eva’s behavior today makes it evident that she would prefer death to living.”

Peering at me, my brother’s eyes narrow to slits. “So,” Colter retorts. “That should mean we’re in agreement. She wants to die, and we want her dead. A mercy killing. We’ll push her over the edge into?—”

“No,” I snap, cutting him off. “That’s too fucking easy. And Eva Rose Pierce doesn’t get easy—ever.”

Colter hums his understanding, and the tight set of his shoulders begins to relax. “What do you have in mind?”

Inhaling, I cut the last portion of my care for the girl we knew from my heart. Then I turn my head slowly and meet Colter’s gaze before I state, “We make her want to live.”

He looks puzzled, not impressed with my plan. “Why the hell would we do that, Coop? She doesn’t get off. Fuck that.”

Smirking, I wait for him to finish whining. “Did I say she was getting off? Or did I say we make her want to live?”

The furrow in his brows deepens in confusion. “What?”

“We make her live,” I repeat, enjoying the annoyance on his face before I continue. “We make her want to live, give her a reason to fight.” My smile grows. “Then we rip it all away, leaving her scattered pieces on the ground as we step over what’s left of her.”

I watch as Colter registers my plan—each moment bringing new life to his demeanor, and I know he’s in. “So we’ll push her right into our arms?”

“Yes,” I confirm, turning off the engine and pulling the door open to exit. “We’ll make her life a hellscape so that only we can bring it peace.”

“And she’ll let her guard down enough for the damaging blow,” Colter quips gleefully.

Stepping on the sidewalk in front of our condo, I arm the car. “Then we’ll make her pray for hell because it will be far kinder to her than we will.”