REprisal - Kathy Coopmans Page 0,2

my failed attempt to join him forever obviously failed, so any torture or abuse she wants to inflict on me, I welcome.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“I’m going to make you suffer.”

Her long painted fingernail lifts my chin, forcing me to look at her.

“I had to fuck that nasty scum James Calloway because of you. He was the worst. I can still smell his stench whenever I think about him. But Trent, he’s the one I really wanted. God, and once I had him, my plans shifted.” She grips me even tighter. “Remember the day I came to visit you a few years ago? When your handsome husband all but threw me out of your house, I did some digging around about the presumptuous bastard and found out exactly how wealthy his mother is. It doesn’t take a genius these days to get information on people. I hired a private investigator to find out exactly how much your husband and his family were actually worth, and to my pleasant surprise, that’s when I found out he wasn’t an only child. Can you imagine the joy I felt when I found out he had an identical twin and that Turner was about to inherit twenty million dollars?”

The elation in her voice is pitched so high it’s like hearing fingernails scratching down a chalkboard, making my skin crawl. Shivers run down my spine. Jesus Christ, she is fucked up.

“So.” She releases my chin, moving to stand at the edge of my bed, tapping her nails on the railing. “I left Caleb. He was a boring fuck, anyway.”

She makes a sweeping motion with her hand, as if leaving her husband was no big deal. I cannot believe this woman standing in front of me is my mother. My God, I am so glad I am nothing like her. She even smells like venom, like the evil, slimy, deadly snake she is.

“I left him and tracked down James and Trent. They were a little harder to find, but with the right words and a hell of a lot of sucking my private investigator’s tiny dick, I found them. James, of course, knew about the family’s wealth, but knew nothing of the inheritance until I told him. It took a little more convincing on Trent’s part, though.”

She begins pacing back and forth in front of the bed.

“He was shocked to find out about his brother. He wanted to find him right away. He didn’t care at all about the money. It’s funny how men can be convinced over time when they have willing pussy staring them in the face, though. Men are all sex-deranged animals. They think with their little head and not the big one. You wouldn’t know anything about that, though, would you, baby girl? Being that the brother you married had more of a pussy than a dick? Good thing you’ve only had one. Oh wait, that’s not true anymore, is it?”

A nasty trill of laughter spills from her lips. Tears lurk in my eyes waiting to fall, but they don’t. Whether it’s the drugs invading my body through the IV strapped to my arm, or the mental and emotional exhaustion weighing down on me, I’m overwhelmed to the point of non-responsiveness. Every emotion possible mixes in with whatever substance is slipping through my veins.

“It was a brilliantly mastered plan. And then . . . he saw you.”

Her well-manicured hand swipes across her forehead, smoothing back hair that is not out of place in her high, slicked-back ponytail. Her gaze burns with wrath, shooting angry, seething daggers my way.

“It took a lot of convincing for me to get him to agree to this. Hell, I even had to get the man to have a vasectomy to make sure he didn’t knock you up in the process.”

“Somehow, you put a spell on Trent. He’s become obsessed with you. I don’t particularly care for people getting in my way of what’s mine, Clove.”

This is too much for my head to take.

“Get the hell out of here!”

The tangy taste of blood is on my tongue. My mouth is so dry that my lips are cracked and bleeding.

“Not yet. You can fall back into the land of the dead as soon as I’m done. Now where was I, before you so rudely interrupted me? Maybe I should have stuck around and raised you after all. You have no manners whatsoever.”

“Who gives a shit where you were? You have me drugged up like a zombie,