No, this was impossible!
If life was playing some sick joke on me today, it was time for it to stop before I collapsed under its weight.
I hadn’t had time to properly process being almost raped, only to come home to this?
The room around me started spinning as the ringing in my ears reached its maximum. I stared at Ellie’s angelic face, not really seeing it from the thick veil of tears that clouded my vision.
I wanted to speak, but my mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
“Sophia? Please, say something.” Ellie’s words snapped me out of the trance I had slipped into.
I blinked frantically, trying to soothe the rising flood in my eyes while I could do nothing about the one in my chest.
I took one more precious moment to be quiet and accept what I heard as the truth.
With the traces of rationality hanging on the thread, I pulled my fisted hands behind my back in a poor attempt to stop myself from doing the wrong thing - slapping the shit out of her for what she had tried to do.
Ellie was in a desperate state of mind. She wasn’t thinking straight, and the last thing she needed now was her sister losing control.
Instead, I found the strength to ask, “How long?”
“I’m not sure… A…a couple of months,” Ellie whispered.
“You have been pregnant for a couple of months, and you didn’t tell me? Why, sweety?” I couldn’t stop my tears from falling.
“I was ashamed…,” my sister admitted reluctantly, not looking me in the eye.
“Was dying easier than telling me?” I was devastated. It was my fault, no one else’s. My failure.
Everything I ever did was for her.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie wailed. “I lost hope, sis. I saw no reason to live. No way out... You already sacrificed everything for me—”
“Shh.” I pulled her into my embrace. She needed her sister now, and I would be there for her. There was no place for anything but support in that picture.
Despite being a wreck myself, I once again offered to be the pillar for her to hold on to, an anchor in the stormy sea.
It seemed like hours passed before I felt Ellie calm down. Only then did I move back a little and reach for the dispenser on the floor.
“Ellie, we won’t need these, right?” I shook the bottle and waited for her confirmation before I got up and headed to the bathroom, where I quickly emptied the dispenser into the toilet and flushed it.
Water washed the pills away but failed to take away the fear that surged through my veins.
“Sweetheart,” I called, and her head snapped in my direction. “What’s going on with us? I thought I was more than a sister to you. I thought that you could tell me everything? I didn’t even know that you were dating someone.” Ellie’s hand on my forearm interrupted me.
“I’m sorry, sis. I truly am. I meant to tell you, but lately, you have been busy with work and trying to provide for us both. You were always too tired, and I didn’t want to bother you.”
It was true. I couldn’t deny it. This past year was the busiest because Mr. Saunders put a workload on me. Of course, the pay was better too, but I barely had time to sleep.
“When I realized my period was late,” she choked on her words, “I was scared and embarrassed, and I couldn’t look you in the eyes.
“You put your life on hold for me so you could feed me, get me through school, not to mention saving my li—”
“Don’t!” I shook my head. I didn’t like our past being brought into the conversation.
“But it’s true, Sophia! You killed a man to save my life and this is how I pay you back? I am the most selfish…”
I reached up with my hand and pushed the fair hair that fell on her face.
“Do you want to keep the baby?” I asked the most crucial question, the one I feared the answer to, as it would decide the course of our future.
Ellie sighed and cast her gaze on our intertwined hands. Her nod was barely noticeable.
And despite everything, a spark of happiness lit up my heart, making it swell, pushing its boundaries to impossible limits.
I reached up with my hand and lifted her head, but her eyes were still uncatchable.
“Ellie, sweetheart. Look at me,” I demanded. When our eyes met, I smiled. No matter what, I couldn’t offer anything but my support and undying love for my sister and her child.
“I’m going to be an aunt,” I laughed. For the first time today, I laughed aloud, wholeheartedly and sincerely.
I pulled Ellie into my embrace and squeezed her, hoping to transfer some of my joy to her. And it worked. She started laughing too.
“Sweetheart, who is the father?” I was sure he had something to do with Ellie’s attempt earlier. Being ashamed could not be the only reason.
Her silence told me what I needed to know. It told me my assumption was correct.
“Ellie?” I demanded, my voice laced with a threat. I had to know the truth. I had to know who I had to kill for inflicting so much pain on her.
“Well, that is another thing I need to tell you about. The father won’t be in the picture,” she admitted reluctantly.
I blinked.
And then again.
What was I supposed to say?
“There! I knew you would react like that. I knew you would be disgusted.” Ellie was on the verge of tears.
“No. No!” I ordered. “Never say that again. You’re my sister, Ellie! I love you, and nothing can change that. No matter what, I will always be here for you.
“You can never ever disgust me.” I would die for her. Repulsion was never an option. “Now, tell me everything.”
I had millions of questions and things to figure out before I could plan how to make this right for her and the baby.
Ellie tried to pull her hands from my grasp, but I didn’t let her. She needed to know I would never let her go.
“I met Philip last October on campus. He was there as a guest; he gave a lecture.
It was love at first sight, sis. It was one of those moments you read about in romance novels; your eyes meet, and you know he’s the one.”
Ellie was not here with me, I could see it on her face. She was somewhere else, in some other time, reminiscing about when she and that Philip guy met.
“We started spending time together, and after a couple of months, he admitted he loved me, and I did the same. But things went on from us being blissfully happy to…this.”
A fresh wave of tears escaped her eyes.
“I believed in our future together. We dreamed about it, and in that dream, everything was perfect—so perfect, I should’ve known it was impossible.” Ellie sobbed, her voice breaking.
“Last week, I realized my period was late, and I took the test. I thought Philip would be happy, but I never had a chance to tell him.”
Another cry followed, and it felt like a knife stabbed into my heart because I knew what she was about to say.
“He said…it’s over…he said it’s over. He said not to look for him…” She had trouble forming coherent sentences, but I got the point just fine.
What could I even say about this? I was boiling. I was ready to kill. That bastard hurt my sister! I would annihilate him if it were the last thing I did.
She was inconsolable, and I wasn’t any better.
“I understand, sweetheart…” I pulled her into my embrace again.
“I promise everything will be fine. We’ll get through this together, like always.” I planted a kiss on her temple and tucked her head under my chin.
But imagining a little boy that would call me aunt—and I was sure it was a boy, a boy that I would love and spoil and fight for—kept me sane.
“I don’t understand how you’re not mad at me,” Ellie said, surprising me. “How you... Don’t you hate me for destroying everything?”
“Ellie, I could never hate you. But I am angry. No, I am furious that you kept this all to yourself.
“I’m mad because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was going on with you. Ellie, no matter how busy I am, you are always my top priority. Don’t ever doubt that, please.”
As we sat on the couch holding each other, a spark fired up in my mind—an idea. I could predict it would be a terrible one, but I didn’t care.
“What’s his name?” I asked casually, trying to sound as inconspicuous as I could.
“Philip King,” Ellie blurted out, and my lips turned upward involuntarily.
King, King, King…why did that sound familiar? This was a big city, but I could swear I had heard that name before.
And then it clicked.
“King as King Enterprises?” I was taken aback by the mere possibility of my sister being involved with one of the biggest business sharks in the country.
But when I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised she got her heart broken by some filthy-rich bastard whose only intention was to play around with her.
Ellie had a good heart, and despite everything that had happened to us, she still had faith in people and saw only the good in them.
“I guess…why? Please, tell me you’re not going to do something stupid!” Panic was evident in her demeanor, and I hurried to reassure her.
“No, sweets, don’t worry.” I reassured her. However, my plan was already set in motion. “But you have to promise me something in return.
“You will never, ever, not by any chance or under any circumstances, try to hurt yourself like today. Do we have a deal?”
Ellie nodded her head, and indeed, her eyes were telling nothing but the truth. I got up and offered her my hand, which she accepted immediately.
I had my sister back, and being aware of how close I was to losing her, I made a silent promise never to let her drift away from me again.
“Come, let’s get you to bed. You need rest. You’ve cried enough, and from now on, it’s forbidden. Understood?”
Ellie’s lips twitched upward in a smile that, for a change, reached her eyes. There was hope in them.
I helped her get into bed and pulled the cover over her before closing the blinds and turning the light off.
“Sophia?” she called out when I was about to close our bedroom door. “Why did you come home so early? Is everything okay at work?”
“Sure, Ellie. What could be wrong? I’m just exhausted, so Mr. Saunders gave me time off to recharge my batteries,” I lied through my teeth.
There was no chance in hell I would tell her what happened.
As soon as I shut the door, I took my phone from my purse and began Googling the Kings. Their company was, as I expected, the top search result, and I recognized their building downtown from the pictures.
It was late afternoon, and by the time I got there, he would probably have left the office and I wouldn’t be able to catch him and hurt him as I intended to.
Finding his home address was a challenge, but after some digging, I got it.
Sinfully excited, I wrote it down on the piece of paper, locked the door, and headed right toward that posh part of town where the King’s residence was.
