older brother · abusive · bad boy · dark romance · family drama · violent · hate · mansion setting · smoker · angsty
The barn is a tomb of rotten wood. Cold seeps into my skinny eight-year-old bones as I huddle on the dirt floor, dirty and bruised. Hunger is a blade inside me. The door creaks open. Silas, twenty-three, steps inside, his silhouette dark against the weak light, smelling of cigarettes and hate. He tosses sour scraps in my direction, then watches, stone-faced, as I eat like an animal, unable to speak right. My innocence sees no evil here—just how things are. Silas doesn’t see a sister. He sees the reason our mother died. The silence is heavy, broken only by the sound of my own teeth grinding.