My hand froze mid air.
It was exactly the same feeling.
In my past life, I’d heard this voice five hours before my parents got killed.
They were murdered by a mental patient who’d escaped from the hospital–stabbed over a dozen times.
Nobody knew why that psycho just happened to be on the exact same route my parents took home from working late.
But no one’s gonna dig into it. Because the killer was mentally ill. Even murder wouldn’t get him the death penalty.
At my parents‘ funeral, I’d worked up the nerve to tell Marcus what I’d heard.
He shut me down right away.
“That was probably just some recording or whatever on her phone. What’s that got to do with Lily?”
“Elena, can’t you just drop this habit of snapping at everyone and leave your sister alone?”
He never believed a single word I said, let alone bothered checking if I was right.
So this time, instead of just barging in, I called over a nurse and whispered some stuff to her, then hung back by the door.
The nurse went in, and I listened as she did the routine check I’d asked for, then said:
“Is your family not around? I could’ve sworn I heard someone talking in here just now.”
After a long pause, the nurse came back out and shook her head, pulling me toward the end of the hallway.
“She said she was watching TV–that it was just voices from some show.”
I nodded calmly without pushing for more details.
This was the Harrington family’s private hospital. If I wanted answers, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t dig up.
I’d see how long she could keep up this act.
“Audrey, what are you doing here?”
The elevator doors opened, and Ethan’s face lit up when he saw me. He walked over looking very excited.
“Actually, I came looking for you.” I nodded at him. “I wanted to talk to you about your new patient.”
Ethan wasn’t just some colleague.
In my past life, he’d been my therapist.
I’d gotten severely depressed after getting out of prison. During those final months, he was the one who stuck with me, desperately trying to pull me back from the edge.
Even though I ended up letting him down, this time we’d run into each other again at the hospital.
I wasn’t his patient anymore–I was his “colleague“, sort of.
And we weren’t meeting in all that pain this time, but on a perfectly ordinary afternoon.
When I found out he’d be working on Lily’s psychological treatment, I immediately hunted him down to warn him to watch out. Whatever secrets Lily was hiding, I didn’t want the people I cared about getting caught up in it before I figured things out.
Ethan listened patiently to everything I told him and promised he’d be careful.
n:– Hand Dofuses to Save Her
331.5%
He was kill pretty keren Idy mentor would be handling mest of Lily Arrgalmam plan with that her felting out
After we chatted for a bit, he pulled out a handful of canity from los porket like some magletan and shovin it into new paks
Just bought these yesterday. You get low blood sugar–keup thèse on you,”
I was staring at the candy in my hand, about to thank him, when Marcus’s voice anddenly came from behind ins
“What are you doing here?”
The second Marcus laid eyes on me, he tensed up right away.
But when he noticed the candy in my palm, he frowned and asked:
“Who’s this guy? Are you dating him?” He looked Ethan up and down, clearly not impressed:
“Don’t you know she can’t stand grape–flavored candy?”
He stood there acting like he was some caring big brother looking out for his little sister’s happiness.
“What’s that got to do with you?” I shot back flatly.
“Listen, family member of the patient–who do you think you are, and what right do you have to ask me these questions? Marcus froze up, his eyes fixed on me as I casually peeled a piece of candy, popped it in my mouth, and gave a little smile.
“Grape’s actually my favorite flavor.”
“It’s just that back then, anything I liked, some people just had to go and swipe it from me.”
Marcus stood there in a daze, watching Ethan and me walk off together, his mind drifting back to childhood memories.
The truth was, I’d been obsessed with sweets as a kid. But after Lily claimed I was always snatching her candy when I was eight, I never touched sugar again.
In my past life, he’d bent over backwards to keep Lily from feeling hurt, buying her candy for years and years.
But in this life, after he’d ditched me, earlier–all he got was:
“Brother, I don’t like sweet stuff.”
when he brought home all sorts of candy for Lily–hoping to make up for the “trauma” she’d been through
“Especially grape–flavored candy. It tastes absolutely awful.”
But in my past life, she’d sworn up and down that was her favorite.
Marcus pushed open the hospital room door to find Lily’s bright smile waiting for him, but for the first time ever, she looked like a total stranger.
“Brother, what’s on your mind?” Lily signed, her eyes looking concerned but with a hint of annoyance.
She already knew who I was.
And ever since Marcus had bumped into me, he’d been spacing out like this constantly.
These blood relatives of Marcus–every single damn one of them-
were so freaking annoying.
Lily thought to herself.
