Hey there! I'm glad to see you join me for another part of the family's salacious story. As always, your feedback is incredibly valued.
All sex is between characters eighteen or older. Any resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental.
Stay safe and enjoy!
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Chapter Fourteen
I was lucky to learn about my aunt's arrival before she could ambush Emily's birthday. As soon as possible, mighty early in the morning, I rushed to her hotel for a confrontation.
The last time we saw Terry, she tried to blackmail us with a video of our incest. This was after she pushed my sisters to arrange sex between her and our mother — her twin. It was the kind of betrayal that couldn't be easily forgiven, if it could be forgiven at all. When I met her that morning, she began telling me a story. It's a story that different people would keep telling for the rest of my life. It all began with twin sisters a few decades ago; my mother and her sister, age nineteen.
Aunt Terry met a man in a college class and fell hopelessly in love with him. No one involved in the story has ever said his name out loud, so I'll call him John. Terry and John had chemistry, some have even said that they were destined for each other. There was one small hiccup though... Terry was engaged to her high school sweetheart and was in no mood to leave behind that stability.
In a move that makes very little sense, my aunt decided to push for a relationship between John and her twin. By matchmaking the man with my mother, she hoped she could keep him close. It was a cruel plan that was bound to fail and both Mom and John resisted at first. Yet, after much poking and prodding, it actually happened. In their own way, they fell in love, and got together.
Of course, the relationship was on shaky ground from the start. Terry's engagement crashed in flames, and she was soon knocking on John's door. She set out to viciously split up the relationship she'd created between her sister and this man. Part of that meant whispering lies into his ear until she'd convinced him that Mom was cheating.
"She's a whore, John, always has been and always will be," said my mother's beloved twin.
Feeling that her sister wouldn't lie about such things, John began despising my mother. He never confronted her or tried to get her side of the story. No, he bottled everything up while paranoia consumed him. Then, some small argument triggered a massive falling out and John hit the road. At the time, my mother didn't believe him when he told her about the things Terry had said. Yet, as time passed and Mom realised that her sister had behavioural problems, she reached out to John.
There was peace for a while. John and my mother enjoyed a few more months together before Terry got back to her old tricks. This time, she threw herself at the poor guy while keeping up a constant slew of lies.
Now, you might say that John should've known better. My dad explained, "Poor John, he was too decent to confront it head on and the twins denied him any closure."
What my father meant was that John had long given up. No one wanted to talk to him about the things Terry said or the way the sisters felt. They deflected, denied, distorted... When she found out, Blake summed it up in stark terms, "It was textbook abuse, Josh."
Of course, there was another falling out. John got in his car — 'crying like a baby' — and was in a deadly crash only minutes later.
"I think we killed him," my mother once said. "Maybe it was an accident, sure. That's what people said, but everyone blamed us. Hell, the only person who didn't think we had any responsibility was Terry."
Mom did her best to make amends. She visited his grave, spoke to his family, honoured his memory at every chance she got... The same wasn't true for her sister. John faded from Terry's memory while her behaviour became more anti-social by the day. Yet, twins cannot stay mad at each other for too long. They buried this part of their lives, until I found Terry in the hotel that morning. She told me the story. Her version.
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"You're a sociopath, but why tell me this?" I asked.
Terry looked at me with swollen eyes, dressed in a loose shirt with raggedy sweatpants. We were in the hotel restaurant at 3 AM with no other soul in sight. Her hair was back to its natural brown, messy and long. Like my mother, the woman looked 'rich' like a New York socialite with a strong jaw and soft cheeks. Yet, they weren't carbon copies of each other.
My mother had a sincerity that her twin lacked. Whether it was because of what she did or who she was; she seemed so cold to me.
My aunt cleared her throat, "I'm telling you the story because it explains why I made the mistakes I did. Something in my brain broke after all those things happened."
"Let me guess, you're working on it?" I spat out.
"Yes," Terry's eyes plead, "and I really want to see my sister again."
I shook my head, "Never. No, not after what you tried to do to us."
"There will come a time that you won't be able to stop me."
"Try me."
I passed a single sheet of paper to the tired woman. My older sister had influence, connections, sources... The page was a list of facts about our aunt; a gentle threat that showed we knew everything about her. It was our 'in case of emergency'.
Terry recoiled as she read all her personal information listed in neat bullet points. Then she steeled herself, "This is not enough to stop me."
If it was going to be a game of chicken, I was convinced that I would win. I fixed Terry in my gaze, and we stared angrily into each other's eyes. When she saw I wouldn't yield she dropped her shoulders and a sadness overcame her body. For a moment, I saw so much of my mother in her, and almost felt sorry for her.
"Fuck," Terry exhaled. "You'd kill me, wouldn't you? I mean you no harm. I... I miss you and your sisters too."
For the first time, I saw my aunt show her truly vulnerable self. Anger, aggression, didn't come naturally to me. But how could I trust her; how could I let her near the people I loved? Even if she had 'gotten better', I could never be certain that things would stay that way. The story she told me was horrific in that she was so honest about her motives. This woman would do anything to get her way — she'd even betray her own sister, like she'd done many times before.
"You're going to pack your bags and head back to whichever hole you crawled out of," I declared.
I felt like there was nothing else to said, got up, and left. As far as I was concerned, my point had been made, and she would buzz off. My family was safe because I drew a line in the sand, and I knew my aunt was too self-interested to risk crossing it.
Yet, before I reached the door, I heard Terry yell out with a crackle in her voice, "I'm going to keep trying!"
