The temptation of my brother-in-law-Chapter 144 - One Hundred and Forty-Four

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Four

Sasha’s POV

I was running through the mansion’s hallways, my bare feet slapping against cold marble that seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction. The corridors twisted and turned, familiar and foreign at the same time, walls closing in while simultaneously expanding into impossible distances.

Emily was behind me. I could hear her dragging something, a wet scraping sound that echoed off the walls. When I risked a glance back, I saw her. Pale and rotting, her beautiful face half-decomposed, that white dress she’d been buried in stained with dirt and something darker. She held a knife, the blade catching moonlight that shouldn’t have existed in these windowless halls.

"Sasha," she whispered, her voice like wind through dead leaves. "Why didn’t you help me?"

"I didn’t know," I tried to say, but my voice wouldn’t work, came out as nothing but air.

"You knew. You all knew. And you did nothing."

She was getting closer. The knife raised. I ran faster but my legs felt like they were moving through water, each step taking forever while she glided behind me effortlessly.

The mansion changed around me. Hallways became rooms became hallways again. Doors appeared and disappeared. Emily’s rotting face was everywhere, in mirrors, in windows, in the shadows that moved like they were alive.

"You’re going to end up like me," she said, her breath cold on my neck. "Dead and forgotten. Another body this house swallowed."

The knife came down.

I woke up gasping, sweat soaking through my sheets, heart hammering against my ribs. My room was dark except for the digital clock that read 3:47 AM. Just a dream. Just another nightmare in the collection I’d been having since Emily died.

Since Tyler was banished.

Since everything fell apart.

I lay there trying to calm my breathing, trying to convince myself that Emily’s ghost wasn’t real, that the mansion wasn’t haunted, that I wasn’t slowly losing my mind like Isabella.

A knock on my door made me jump.

"What?" I called out, my voice rough.

"It’s me. Let me in."

My father. Of course. Mario only came to my room when he needed something, when he had another demand or threat or manipulation disguised as paternal concern.

"Come in," I said, not bothering to hide my exhaustion.

The door opened. Mario stepped inside, closing it quietly behind him. He looked like hell, dark circles under his eyes, his usually perfect hair disheveled. Whatever he was involved in was taking its toll.

I rolled my eyes. "What do you want?"

He moved closer to the bed, his expression hard. "We need to talk."

"It’s almost four in the morning. Whatever you need to say can wait."

"No. It can’t."

Before I could react, his hand shot out and grabbed my throat. Not hard enough to cut off my air completely, but enough to make his point, enough to show me exactly how serious he was.

"You don’t tell anyone what you saw last night," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "Do you understand me?"

I should have been scared. Should have struggled or pleaded or done something normal. Instead, I smiled. The kind of smile that I’d perfected over years of watching this family destroy itself, the kind that said I knew things too, that I had my own secrets and plans.

His frown deepened. "This isn’t funny, Sasha."

"I don’t care," I managed to say around his grip. "Whatever stupid thing you’re planning, whatever scheme you and Tyler have going, I don’t care. Do what you want."

"You’re turning into a monster."

The words should have hurt. Should have made me feel something. But I’d heard worse from him over the years, heard all the ways I’d disappointed him just by existing, by being his daughter instead of the son he’d wanted.

"I’m the monster you abandoned," I said, my voice steady even with his hand on my throat. "So deal with it."

His grip tightened for a second, anger flashing in his eyes. Then he released me, stepped back. "If you say anything to anyone, I’ll send you abroad. Some boarding school in Switzerland where you’ll spend the rest of your teenage years freezing and miserable. Do you understand?"

An image flashed in my mind. Tyler. Years ago, before the banishment, before everything went wrong. He’d been happy once. We’d been close, cousins who actually liked each other, who talked about getting out of this family together someday.

Then whatever he’d done had gotten him banished, and my father had helped make it happen, and Tyler had disappeared into whatever dark places people went when the Blackwoods decided they didn’t exist anymore.

"I understand," I said.

Mario stared at me for another moment, like he was trying to figure out if I was lying. Then he turned and walked to the door. Paused with his hand on the handle.

"You used to be a good kid," he said without looking back. "I don’t know what happened to you."

"You happened to me. This family happened to me. Take your pick."

He slammed the door on his way out.

I sat in bed, listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway, listening to the mansion settle around me with its creaks and groans and all the secrets it held in its walls.

The mansion did this to people. Turned them into monsters or ghosts or both. Emily had been the exception, the one pure thing this place had ever held, and look what had happened to her. Dead at twenty-two, buried in a white dress, haunting my nightmares.

Maybe we were all haunted here. Maybe that was the price of being a Blackwood or being connected to them. You either became a monster or you ended up dead.

I was choosing monster.

I picked up my phone from the nightstand. Scrolled through contacts to a number with no name, just a series of digits I’d memorized months ago when someone had offered me a way out, a way to burn this whole thing down.

I’d been hesitating. Unsure if I wanted to go through with it. Unsure if I was ready to cross that line.

But my father’s hand on my throat had made the decision easy. His threats, his casual cruelty, his complete inability to see me as anything other than a problem to be managed.

I typed out a simple message.

I’m in.

The response came almost immediately.

Good. Instructions to follow. Don’t back out now.

I won’t.

I set the phone down, lay back against my pillows, stared at the ceiling. Somewhere in this mansion, my father was probably congratulating himself on handling me, on keeping me quiet about whatever he and Tyler were planning.

He had no idea I had my own plans. My own alliances. My own burning desire to watch this family’s empire crumble.

Emily’s face flashed in my mind again. Not the rotting corpse from my nightmare, but the real Emily. Smiling. Kind. The only person in this family who’d ever treated me like I mattered.

"I’m sorry I didn’t help you," I whispered to her ghost. "But I’m going to help destroy the people who hurt you. Does that count for something?"

The mansion didn’t answer. Just settled around me with another groan, another whisper of secrets buried in walls and floors and the bones of everyone who’d suffered here.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, knowing the nightmares would come back, knowing Emily would chase me through endless hallways again.

But this time, I’d welcome her. Because we were on the same side now. Both of us victims of this place. Both of us ready to see it burn.

The monster they’d created was finally ready to bite back.

And it was going to hurt.