Lucas was the first to object. "No, it’s not safe there."
"Yes, Helena, your place has been uninhabited for years. It’s unlivable now." Dad agreed.
Only Mom was in favor. "Helena is twenty-three years old now. It’s normal for her to want to live on her own." She looked at me with undisguised disdain. "With so many houses under our family’s name, you can choose any to live in."
"No need." I said calmly, "You didn’t mean to cause the accident back then. The Specter has taken care of me for ten years, that’s enough."
Everyone at the table froze. Even Lucas looked at me in surprise.
"Helena... you know?" Dad asked guiltily.
"Yes, I know everything." Not only did I know that the car that lost control years ago belonged to the Specter, but I also understood why Lucas had been so good to me all these years. Why he indulged me no matter how much I acted out.
When the head doctor strapped me to the electric shock bed, he didn’t forget to humiliate me. "Do you think Lucas was good to you because he liked you? What a joke. If it weren’t for your parents’ lives, you wouldn’t even have the chance to serve him on your knees!"
That was when I learned the truth about the accident. And I understood my true place in Lucas’s heart.
I was an orphan.
When I was ten, my parents died in a car accident. It was then that the Specter took me in. Dad brought my bloodied, trembling self to a teenage Lucas and solemnly introduced me, saying, "From now on, he is your brother."
Lucas looked at me with a tenderness I had never known, promising to take care of me forever. From that moment, I clung to him with every fiber of my being. He didn't break his promise—he pampered me, loved me and indulged me.
Over the years, he gave me everything I wanted and my innocent dependence on him grew into a deep, consuming love. I loved him so intensely that I couldn't imagine a future without him. People whispered that I was a toad lusting after a swan, that I was repaying kindness with betrayal, even disregarding the sanctity of familial bonds.
Perhaps Lucas thought the same. To crush my hopes, he brought home a girlfriend on my twentieth birthday. I was devastated and hysterically tried to drive the woman away. That night, she was poisoned and I was accused.
The next thing I knew, Lucas had me committed to a mental institution.
***