Chapter 1
I was still locked away in the mental hospital, watching my sister’s wedding livestream with unwavering attention. Then—chaos. A naked woman, her face smeared with blood, burst into the scene and dropped to her knees before my sister, bowing in desperation. “Caitlin, you ruined my face… tore my clothes to shreds. I’m no threat to you anymore. Please, don’t send me to the mental hospital. I’ll stay away from Preston…” My sister’s groom, Preston Flynn, erupted with fury. In front of the guests, he barked an order. “Slap her—dozens of times!” His men obeyed without hesitation. “She’s lived under someone else’s roof since childhood,” he shouted. “She’s always walked on eggshells, always kind and timid. And yet you, Caitlin—you treat her like this? Have I spoiled you too much?” He cast my sister a final, merciless glance. “The Flynn family does not harbor a vicious woman like you!” The wedding ended in disgrace. My sister was dragged away, tossed like refuse into a waiting car, and sent to a remote temple to repent. When I finally saw her again, she was no longer the radiant girl who used to visit me. Her face was torn with scars, her chest sunken, fingers bent at unnatural angles. She had been broken. My eyes blazed as I stared down the head of the hospital. I forced the discharge paperwork into his hand. “Sign it. Now.” Because whoever touched my sister—I was going to kill them. —— When I returned home and pushed open the front door, my mother flinched. She didn’t say a word. She just pulled me inside. In the dim glow of the lamp, my father lay unmoving on the bed. Grief had hollowed him out. My sister was dead. After her death, my father had gone to confront Preston. When Preston heard the news, he froze in disbelief. Next to him, Jessie Stout laughed aloud. She pulled out her phone with eerie calm. “Caitlin is dead? That’s strange,” she said. “I just got a video of her sleeping peacefully.” She tapped on her screen. The video played: my sister’s body, still and serene, her pale face framed by long lashes. She looked like she might wake up any moment. My father slammed his fist on the coffee table, voice hoarse with rage. “My daughter is lying in the morgue, covered in wounds! You killed her!” Preston sprang to his feet. His eyes flared with contempt. “Enough! Even now, you people fake drama to win pity? You want to blame me? Pathetic!” Jessie leaned back against the leather sofa, her crimson lips curled in a smile. “Uncle Victor, don’t humiliate Caitlin like this.” Preston adjusted his cuff calmly and spoke to the guards. “Throw him out.” The bodyguards obeyed. My father was hurled out of the house—his legs broken on impact. Later, as my mother recounted everything, I stood silently and lifted the white sheet from my sister’s body. Her face was marred with scars. Her chest collapsed. Her limbs were twisted grotesquely—like the remains of a butterfly crushed underfoot. Behind me, my mother wept. “When Caitlyn passed… she must’ve been in so much pain.” My name is Claudia Schultz. I am Caitlin’s twin. She was always the bright one—lively, brilliant, the sun in every room. I was the quiet one. Cold, serious. People looked at me and saw a monster, a lunatic. Only Caitlyn ever reached for me. Only she would press her only candy to my lips with that glittering smile and ask, “Sister, is it sweet?” Now, her eyes would never open again. When we were twelve, the school director’s son set his eyes on her. One day, walking home, she was ambushed—dragged into an alley by a group of men. But I had followed them. She ran out in terror, never seeing me behind her—drenched in blood. That night, under a full moon, I didn’t come home. Instead, the school director’s family was slaughtered. Every last one of them.