Jaden (Jaded #3)

She frowned, pulling her hand away, and indicated to the phone. She picked hers up and waited, still frowning at me, her flawless skin marred from the lines in her forehead.

“What are you going to say to her?” Denton had asked when I told him I was coming here. He was wrecked by everything. Learning all she had done and the trial had been brutal on him. His career had taken a hit. Movies dumped him, but his agent spun it. Denton was urged to do a one-on-one interview with a primetime news channel. It worked. Some people cried out that he knew what she had been doing. They didn’t believe his tears. He was playing the sympathy card. But everyone else, like me, had been moved by his interview. He had been one hundred percent honest.

He loved his sister. She had been unloved by one parent and ignored by the other. He tried to protect her, and he knew she had problems, but this—everything—had been unprecedented.

Denton welled up then, and he fought to keep the tears from falling.

The image of one of their A-list actors so raw and so exposed had swept through the nation. There was renewed Denton love, and it created pandemonium. All his old roles came back, and he had offers like he had never had before.

Everyone loved Denton.

Everyone hated Mena.

But the two of us, Denton and myself, we were in the middle.

He asked one time in the courtroom, we had both remained seated as everyone left so the entire room was empty except for us two, “How can I still love her? After the destruction she caused?”

I had no answer. I only said, feeling the same dazed and numb sensation I heard in his voice, “How can I when I just found out?”

“Do you?”

I didn’t look at him, but I knew that he had lifted his head, watching me. It was another question I couldn’t answer, but I didn’t not love her. That was all I knew. I only replied, “It’s all a mess. That’s what I feel. That’s all I feel.”

Denton still loved his sister even though he hadn’t come to visit her yet. And me—looking at her now, holding her phone to her ear and waiting—I still had no idea how I felt.

My hand reached for the phone. That old feeling of being dazed and confused came back to me now. It never left me during the trial. I pressed the phone to my ear, but didn’t say anything. My throat didn’t work all of a sudden.

“Hi,” she breathed into her phone. The relief was so loud.

I almost put the phone back. I didn’t want to hear her relieved.

“Uh,” she glanced down at the table. Then laughed to herself. “This is so weird. Why is it weird?”

“Because you killed my friends.” I stared hard back at her. Anger stirred in me. “Because you hurt me.”

She flinched, “Sheldon, I . . .”

You what? YOU WHAT? I yelled at her in my head, but said nothing. I waited as chains started to wind around my body, starting at my feet, then calves, then thighs. It wrapped around my waist, looping around my chair and worked its way around my shoulders, ending around my neck.

I was weighed down. I was trapped and bound.

That was how I was feeling as I waited for her to talk.

“I love you. You’re my sister.”

I almost started laughing. “That’s it? That’s what you say?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say?”

I didn’t either. I shook my head. “Why am I here?”

“I’m glad you are. I didn’t think anyone would come, but,” she hesitated, “how’s Denton?”

Hurt. Angry. Devastated.

I was holding back. I couldn’t do that anymore. As I gripped the phone tighter and cleared my throat, Mena raised her head. She knew something was coming and she was ready.

Oh, no, honey. You’re not. I sneered at her then. “You want to know how your brother is?”

She opened her mouth to respond. I didn’t give her a chance. I kept going, “You destroyed him. Acting like the broken man he is might’ve helped his career, but you ruined him. I have no idea if he’ll ever come to see you. Hell,” a bitter laugh came from me, “he couldn’t believe I was coming here. You manipulated Marcus and turned him into a killer. I don’t know if he would’ve been one without you, that’s the sad part. I might not have killed someone if you hadn’t been involved. I had friends who would still be alive. Alive, Mena. They aren’t, and that’s at your hand. You’re a psychopath. And as I’m staring at you, you don’t care. You have no remorse. You’re just,” I was gutted. Her eyes were beaming back at me. My words weren’t making a difference. “A statue with a fucked-up moral compass. You’re fucked-up.”

I was done.

I started shaking my head and I looked down.

“No.” She pressed her hand to the glass again. A whimper left her. “Sheldon.”

I couldn’t look at her anymore. I stared at her, but I wasn’t seeing her. I was seeing Leisha behind her. Bailey. Grace. Guadalupe. Maria. Even Marcus. All their blood was on her, and she had done it because she loved me.

Their blood was on me.