I Was the Monster, They Were the Lie

I Was the Monster, They Were the Lie

Gavin

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The splintered wood of the floorboards pressed into my cheek. Another girlfriend gone, another brutal beating from my father. Each woman I brought home to Redwood Creek, to seek the "blessing" at our family's Pioneer's Home, emerged twisted with rage, screaming that I was filth. My step-brothers found happy marriages after their girls went inside; I was almost thirty and still a pariah. My father, Jedidiah Thorne, the town's esteemed mayor, finally showed me why. He strapped me into a chair in a hidden room beneath the Pioneer's Home, then played a horrifying video. On screen, a figure with my very face, my movements, was brutally torturing animals, then attacking my terrified girlfriends. He confirmed it was me, every single time. My world shattered. I was a monster, a broken thing deserving only death. I sought release in the old quarry, a plunge like my mother's alleged accident. I survived, but the narrative was set: Ethan Thorne, unstable, suicidal. My father reinforced it, holding me captive, ever-monitored. I faked insanity to finally be institutionalized. Numbed by medication, I accepted my cage, a safely contained monster. Until one grey day in the drab yard, I saw her. Sarah. My first love. The girl I was told I'd killed years ago. She was undeniably alive. And her eyes held a fierce, angry truth that ripped through the fog, promising to expose a horror far greater than I could ever imagine.

Introduction

The splintered wood of the floorboards pressed into my cheek. Another girlfriend gone, another brutal beating from my father. Each woman I brought home to Redwood Creek, to seek the "blessing" at our family's Pioneer's Home, emerged twisted with rage, screaming that I was filth. My step-brothers found happy marriages after their girls went inside; I was almost thirty and still a pariah.

My father, Jedidiah Thorne, the town's esteemed mayor, finally showed me why. He strapped me into a chair in a hidden room beneath the Pioneer's Home, then played a horrifying video. On screen, a figure with my very face, my movements, was brutally torturing animals, then attacking my terrified girlfriends. He confirmed it was me, every single time.

My world shattered. I was a monster, a broken thing deserving only death. I sought release in the old quarry, a plunge like my mother's alleged accident. I survived, but the narrative was set: Ethan Thorne, unstable, suicidal. My father reinforced it, holding me captive, ever-monitored. I faked insanity to finally be institutionalized.

Numbed by medication, I accepted my cage, a safely contained monster.

Until one grey day in the drab yard, I saw her. Sarah. My first love. The girl I was told I'd killed years ago. She was undeniably alive. And her eyes held a fierce, angry truth that ripped through the fog, promising to expose a horror far greater than I could ever imagine.

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Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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