Where Reality Ends

Where Reality Ends

I. HAWKINS

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My SATs were today, the day that felt like it decided my entire future. But then my phone buzzed with an unknown number, displaying a chilling message: "DON'T TAKE THE EXAM!" It was Michael, my older brother, who'd vanished three years ago on the morning of his own SATs. Another warning followed: "THEY AREN'T WHO YOU THINK." Suddenly, my parents' overly cheerful demeanor felt sinister, their familiar faces hiding subtle, unsettling changes. My dad wore his wedding ring on the wrong hand, and my mom' s distinct scar was now on the opposite brow. Every word they spoke, every gesture, screamed that something was terribly wrong. When I finally tried to escape, a long-time family friend, Ethan, ambushed me with a devastating truth: Michael was dead. He claimed it was suicide, and that I was suffering from a severe PTSD-induced dissociative episode, hallucinating everything. My heart pounded as I watched a video of Michael' s funeral, my phone now empty of all his warnings. Was I crazy? Was this elaborate nightmare all in my head, a cruel trick of my own mind? But then, a specific, unspoken childhood promise between Michael and me-a secret about a monster and a particular trip-failed to match. That's when I knew: This "recovery" was another layer of control, a sophisticated simulation orchestrated by the very person pretending to help. I wouldn't let him win.

Introduction

My SATs were today, the day that felt like it decided my entire future.

But then my phone buzzed with an unknown number, displaying a chilling message: "DON'T TAKE THE EXAM!"

It was Michael, my older brother, who'd vanished three years ago on the morning of his own SATs.

Another warning followed: "THEY AREN'T WHO YOU THINK."

Suddenly, my parents' overly cheerful demeanor felt sinister, their familiar faces hiding subtle, unsettling changes.

My dad wore his wedding ring on the wrong hand, and my mom' s distinct scar was now on the opposite brow.

Every word they spoke, every gesture, screamed that something was terribly wrong.

When I finally tried to escape, a long-time family friend, Ethan, ambushed me with a devastating truth: Michael was dead.

He claimed it was suicide, and that I was suffering from a severe PTSD-induced dissociative episode, hallucinating everything.

My heart pounded as I watched a video of Michael' s funeral, my phone now empty of all his warnings.

Was I crazy? Was this elaborate nightmare all in my head, a cruel trick of my own mind?

But then, a specific, unspoken childhood promise between Michael and me-a secret about a monster and a particular trip-failed to match.

That's when I knew: This "recovery" was another layer of control, a sophisticated simulation orchestrated by the very person pretending to help.

I wouldn't let him win.

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Other books by I. HAWKINS

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Hidden Heiress: The Maid You Betrayed

Hidden Heiress: The Maid You Betrayed

Modern

5.0

For five years, I was the invisible glue holding Damien Crawford together. I was the one who pulled him from a burning car until the skin melted off my back, and I was the one who donated bone marrow when he was on death's door. I even gave up a full-ride scholarship to MIT just to be his nurse. Yet, he believed his mistress, Hadley, was his savior. To him, I was just the maid's daughter who changed his bedpans—a piece of furniture he could abuse while he planned his wedding to another woman. But his cruelty didn't stop at verbal abuse. When my father suffered a massive heart attack, Damien refused to let me use the car, choosing to comfort Hadley over a fake panic attack instead. His mother even slashed the tires to ensure I couldn't leave. While my father died cold and alone, Damien stabbed a needle into my hand just to teach me a lesson about "respect," oblivious to the fact that the scars on my skin were the receipt for his life. He didn't know he was torturing the only person who had ever truly loved him. But the girl who begged for crumbs of affection died along with her father that day. I picked up my phone and dialed the number saved simply as a dot. "He's dead," I whispered to the man on the other end—Anderson Morrison, the city's most feared Don and my sworn protector. "I'm coming," he replied, his voice lethal. "And I'm bringing the army." It was time to show Damien that he hadn't just mistreated a maid; he had declared war on a Queen.

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