away from the Grambs, dear." Nan gently took my hand into hers and tugged at my iron grip. I could almost hear the slight crunch of the lady's bones. 

"Let go of her, girl." I did, "Now speak. Speak only of what should be on your mind. Not what is."

Speak only of explanation to grave digging. Not murder of Hawthornes.

"Tobias Hawthorne..." I grit my teeth, my eyes never freeing Skye, "Is not the body in that casket."

"And why do you think so?" Nan glanced over her shoulders at me.

"Because Sarina was made to chop off his one finger at the age of nine."

·······•✦•······

The grave was restored. 
The casket was closed. 
The Hawthorne family was dispersed.

I was with my sisters and bodyguard in my room.
I was on the verge of crying. 

We wouldn't speak. We couldn't. What do we even start with?

Hey, you dug out the dead billionaire's body that wasn't even his body, what was with that?

The way you almost threatened to bury the very old man's daughter with him for slapping one of us who you are overly obsessed with was hypocritical since you were the first to disdain their family but hey, still super cool!

How do you know that one of the dead girls of this house chopped off the old man's finger?

The floor looked magnificent today. Exquisite. Captivating. 

"Sarina chopped off Tobias Hawthorne's finger at nine?" What a great way to start a conversation, Avie. 

"Made to." I look up into those beautiful caramel eyes, "She was made to. Which is a little more fucked up."

Avery blinked, letting out a restrained puff of air, "Holy..."

"How do you know this—No, screw Sarina," Libby stood up and my lungs joined the fake Mr. Hawthorne's body six feet below, "What is wrong with you?!"

I push up my lips into a shaky, meek curve, "Everything not wrong with you...?" 

"Arlene Amira Grambs, I have been trying to call you for hours! Hours on end! Phone, text, voice mail, what-the-heck-not! Oren has been scouring the entirety of the Hawthorne Mansion, the boys had been alerted, god—do you have any fucking idea—" Her voice raised to a fever pitch. I'd never seen her like this. This pissed off, this worried. Who was this girl?

She was absolute. Immaculate. Both of them were. 

I couldn't help the smile on my face, even as I flinched at the loudness.

"—how worried I was...?" There was the soft-spoken, overly caring, kind Libby I knew. 

"I know..." I did. I really did. "I'm sorry, I..." I didn't know how to tell you I'm a monster. "I had a lot going on in my head."

The silence was no longer a stranger to me.

"So..." Avery flashed that infuriatingly lightening smirk of hers, "We gotta hug it out first to know, or...?"

I leaped onto them.
Their laughter, like windchimes on a particularly breezy Sunday. 

I never wanted time to stop more than right now. Right at this moment, I would burn the world down to ashes to keep that smile on their faces. That beautiful curve that makes all the worries in my heart disappear into a mere thought of the past. That bright shine in their eyes that could bring shame to the glowing full moon. 

I never killed a man.
For them, I would gladly end everyone on this plane of existence, if needed be.

Now how do I live with myself after I'm the one who destroys that magnificent curve? I don't.

Well, if they have any say in the matter, it's a whole other story.

"Talk," Avery said, while Libby stroked her fingers through my hair. A habitual action. I remember all those days I got so close to finishing with that asshole, all those days I spent crying in her arms because of what I was capable of. She used to stroke my hair just like this. 

I wonder if the water on my cheeks was condensation or tears.

"Are you okay?" No. How would they be okay? Libby got slapped. Avery got shot. How the fuck would they ever be okay?

"We are." Libby smiled. "And no, you cannot go bazooka on Drake yet. Please remain legal."

That ripped a scoff out of me. "Legal? Yeah right. If only you'd know."

"If only you'd tell us." Avery grinned. I had no choice. I chose that choice. 

I crumbled into dust as I let away my biggest fears and nightmares free.

·······•✦•······

When I was born at the age of nine I had no one. I had not a mother, not a father, nor sister or brother. I was alone. I was alone in a lab of white. 

I could hear the screams. I never was one of them.
Or as much as I could remember.

He came to me that day. He was breathtaking in every single way possible humanly. He had a masculine face, features sharp enough to slice through marble with ease. His cheeks were well structured and his eyes. Oh, his eyes were, in all senses, mesmerizing. 

They were gold. Gold as the first drop of sunlight. Gold as the most meticulously crafted jewelry. Gold as the hottest flame of the fire. As gold as the brightest of colors can be. 

"Come, child." He called me. For the first time in nine years, I walked. And I walked perfectly. His hand was much larger than mine yet still so gentle. His eyes were windows to sunlight, warm and caressing.

If only I knew how much of a lie they were.

Those around him gave him many names. L'Imperatore. Ring Master. Emperor. Boss, sir, and more. 

He called himself Lorenzo Salvatore. 
He told me to call him my father.

That was a lie too.

I grew up in ways no child should ever. 
I grew up with the name Annabelle.

The cursed doll.

The first entire month was the only time I had ever been close to Salvatore. He treated me like his own. He fed me with his hands and held me in his lap. His smile felt so genuine it made me sick. I met her as well. My mother.

Arlene Ivanova. 

If only I had inherited her beauty, you could understand the feeling of first laying eyes on my mother. Her hair stretched and reached to her lower hip. The locks cascaded and flowed down like a river of the smoothest chocolate one could make. Her face was round, yet defined. Her eyes were hued diamonds. Her cheeks were rosy, her skin was pale and her hands were almost always cold. So much like mine.

But whenever she'd pick me up and spin me around. My face would burn with joy and laughter.

That ended quickly too.

The day after the month ended, everything shattered. Salvatore kicked me until my ribs fractured into myself. He beat me until I could barely stand and when my mother tried to stop it. He hit her away too.

He lost any resemblance to the man I first met when he dragged my nine-year-old, blacked and bruised corpse and threw it in the spotlight of a stage. Maybe a theater, maybe a circus. Because there were hundreds—no, thousands of black figures staring at me. Studying me as if I was a topic of utmost interest.

"Ecco, vi presento l'erede del palcoscenico rosso," he began to speak. I could understand every single word he said. I liked none of it. "L'arma che desideri veramente. Quella che ci porterà alla massima estensione," Those once soft, loving golden eyes put away the mask and revealed their true, dagger, piercing, cruel selves. At me. Then the thousands around.

"Questa. Questa è la tua occasione per unirti a me. Unisciti a me e porta il potere sul Palco. Unisciti a me mentre portiamo giustizia a coloro che lo meritano e penitenza a coloro che distruggono." His hand yanked up my body and lift it up, a rag doll to show to the world.

"Diamo il benvenuto alla nostra nuova artists," The crowd awoke, cheers, claps and bravos. As if my battered state was one of the biggest achievements made in history. Then, I got my other name.

"La Bambola Mortale."

A week passed by, and I still don't remember what exactly happened. But I knew what they did. They tested on me. They made me one of the very few selected, compatible lab rats. What they injected in me, what they made me do, I don't remember. I never could ever remember.

That would be the only thing I would ever be grateful to them for.

The start of the second week was one the training really began. It was hard. Imagine giving special ops training, the highest level of military skill teaching to a nine-year-old. She would break in the first day.

A 'friend' of mine did. She got shot in the knee for discipline and endurance. 

Then, we were made to learn every single cultural art possible. A reason why I know and can dance at least ten different forms of dance, can paint almost forty-two types of painting, and recite one hundred twenty-three poems. By heart. 
That was the sane part. That got over soon.

Then we learned to skin animals.
Though I was always taught on... live animals.

I never told anyone, but after the classes, I would sneak away the animals I hurt and tend to their wounds. Give them food and hide them until they recovered enough before I could free them from the facility I never knew where was. I would watch them escape, wondering who would take pity on an animal like me.

The training lasted for over two years. And I mean rigorously, blood, sweat, and tear shedding. In most cases, literally.

To no one's surprise, The Deadly Doll was the first in every category. To everyone's surprise, I, the weakest, smallest, frailest of them all... was the Deadly Doll.

When I turned eleven, we got our first 'performance'. I met my team. My family.

And I had a huge family. One that I came to despise and adore.

There was her, the woman I first met. The Ballerina. La Ballerina. I met her the day I had my first mission. The day when the ground was liquid and my hands tainted with human blood. For the first time, I cried in that woman's arms. The closest resemblance to my mother's warmth that was ripped away from me. 

Her name was Vallerine. 
Her skin was as pale as the moon and her every twirl, jump, or leap was as elegant as that of a swan's.

She was a dancer. Who had the memory of stone.
She was another one of me.

On my second—twenty-second performance, I was tasked to 'assist' the child of a wealthy landlord and local politician—who happened to be a corrupt drug dealer. My assistance was quite messy really. 

I don't think anyone ever saw that brat or his father ever again. My fault. 

The show had ended smoothly. I was smiling the way I was always supposed to; calm, gracious, and adorning. When I heard something in the alleyway beside me—something like tapping. Ten careful, almost ghostly steps later, my head poked into the narrow space.

A boy. 
A beautiful boy.
Laying on the ground. Petting the rats that ate his own limbs.

Now, what was that?

I walk into the darkness, noticing how training my eyes in dim light seemed to help me here. He looked up at me. He had beautiful dark eyes. I couldn't decide between a sapphire blue or emerald green.

His ruffled blond hair was stained with red and so was his entire body. Or at least the half that remained of it. 

He intrigued me.

I squatted down onto my heel and smiled at the boy. I wanted to talk to him. I never had a boy friend before. Too bad I had to end his misery first.

I slashed his heart.
The Deadly Doll took mercy on the boy. I took mercy on someone for the first time.

As I turned to leave, his hands wrapped around my wrists. 
I glanced back at him.
He was laughing.

He was laughing a bright, delighted laugh. As if the mere sight of me brought him more relief than death could ever offer. I realized that he hadn't passed yet. Looking down, I saw something that made even my framed smile and cool eyes drop. 

His heart... was encased with metal. 
In fact, all the metal around him seemed to be vibrating. 

Gold met that dark sea of eyes.

I couldn't help it.
I had to know who he was.

"What's your name?" A singular finger reached out to trace the lining of his skinny cheek. 

"Arthur." If a man could purr, I believe he would sound exactly how the boy—Arthur did. 

"Are you in pain, Arthur?"

He smiled, drinking in my existence as if I was a reminiscence of the past. As if I was a lone star in the empty sky. As if I was a single dot on a flawless canvas. His entire world narrowed into my eyes. "Not anymore."

He was weird. He reminded me of someone. Someone I too looked at the same way. Maybe in a one-time life.

"Do you want to come with me, Arthur?" I let the curve on my lips widen. Scooting closer to the boy. 

"Take me. Take me to the end of the world with you."

I leaned into him and smiled, kissing his cheek.
"Welcome to the Stage, Arthur."

The Stage gladly accepted a new performer. 
He was given two prosthetics—a right arm and a right leg.
He was given the same training as me.
He was given his dress.

He was given another chance.

And so came Il Mimo. The Mime. The one who could control metals with a glimpse of an eye. 

Arthur spoke to no one. No one aside from me. He didn't speak so long that I wondered if he'd gone mute. But he had a lot to say at nights when he would sneak into my room, lay his head on my lap, and watch me listen to him so intently.

He really did remind me of someone dear.

He became someone 'dear' when I was in my fourteenth year of living. He turned from my boy friend to my boyfriend. 

I think I was desperate for affection from anyone aside from Val at that point. 

So came the twenty-third of August. So came my birthday.
The Ring Master gave me a gift.

The assassination of Arlene Ivanova.

The assassination of my mother. 

And I had no choice but to follow it through. Because no matter how much I screamed, no matter how much wreckage I created, no matter how many of his men I 'killed'. He had the one thing that completely chained me to him. He had the one thing that I wasn't willing to lose. 
He had my family.

I had to kill my family for my family.

So I chased her down. 
While tears went down.
While the world went down.

She was waiting for me patiently at the place of my birth. Where we all started. Where it all would end. She didn't even look upset and that alone ruthlessly shredded something inside of me. Her smile.

Salvatore had changed.
Arlene was eternal.
She never lost me.

I lost her when she pulled me into a hug. And drove my knife into her chest.
When she gave me her name. 

When I no longer had to be who I was made to be.

That year, on my very birthday I received another gift. My dear Arthur was a liar. He willingly gave himself to the Ring Master so I could be controlled. His every word was a deception. He was an experiment to see how the doll would react to infatuations.
Love.

After that, I started to hate the idea of gift receiving. They never really did end well for me.

I remember lying on my bed.
I remember crying myself to sleep. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, the soft pillow under my head had been replaced with his lap. I remember being as silent as a ghost, looking up in those cool, moonlit gold eyes that seemed to shine with gloss. 

I remember stains of salted water, streaking his face.
I remember him looking at the moon with such love as he stroked my hair.
I think it was a dream to good to be true.

I think my entire life of white was a nightmare to real to be false.

·······•✦•······

'

"So..." I finally let my lungs breathe in the claustrophobic silence, "Yeah. That's that..." I stupidly fiddle with my fingers. Not daring to muster up to courage to look into their eyes.

What would I see? Hate? Repulsion? Fear?

I don't think my body made up of sand could even withstand a blow like that for even a second after all of... that.

I'm saying that too much. That's weird, shit I said that again—

"My baby," Libby lunged onto me, wrapping her arms around me and practically crushing my bones into powder. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Not even more so when Avery joined. My two sisters were sobbing.

I wanted to end myself for ever making them feel a hint of sadness.

"Oh, Arlene..." Avery whispered into my hair, stroking the loose waves. I smiled—I would've more if I wasn't negotiating with my tear ducts to keep the dam closed. "God... you went through all of that... alone..."

"I can't believe even half it is real but..." Libby croaked out, her eyes glued to the scars on my legs and arm, "I'm so sorry," she strained out, her voice hoarse and cracked, "I'm so sorry, Leena..."

"Hey," I gently patted her back, "Hey none of that. Why are you apologizing?" No one should. I deserved everything that happened to me. "Besides..." I looked away, knowing my words were just about as wise as an ostrich shoving its head in the sand to avoid a sandstorm. "It wasn't that bad."

The rage, shock, confusion, pity, and annoyance in their eyes were the sparks that lit my lamp in the dark. "How dare you, you little shit—!" 

I couldn't help it. I fell back, laughing all my sorrows out. I laughed. As loud as I could. As loud as it would take to wake up the whole mansion. As loud as my lips and vocal cords would let me. As wide as I could until my eyes crinkled and teared. The dam opened and I let it for all the other reasons.

"The audacity of this girl," Avery immediately went for the offense on my sensitive sides. I was a weak woman to tickles. "First you gave us a heart attack by ghosting us—" Her swift fingertips skimmed across the flesh on my ribcage, "—then again giving us another heart attack with Life Lore and now she's downplaying everything?"

 I don't think I laughed this lively for a long while, and this was saying after the whole Fan Language incident with Pretty Boy.

Pretty Boy. I wonder where you are right now?

Libby joined in on the playful torture and before I knew it we were sprawled on my bed, tangled up together, snuggling under the sheets. The air conditioner was so silent, if the cold wasn't so refreshing, it would've gone unnoticed. 

This silence was wonderful. Warm. Comforting.

"Leena," Avery's voice gently poked the still air of tranquility around me. 

"Hm?" I watched the beautifully extravagant fan rotate with grace over me. The noise grounded me in reality.

"How did you..." She let out a short breath, "How did you meet Ricky Grambs? After all of that...?"

"After the Red Stage?" I blinked. Oren was outside. I knew he heard every single word of my past. I couldn't help but feel the guilt clawing at my chest. I promised him I would never speak of the stage ever again.

When I did not know, I was the most important part of the Stage itself. 

Another