Chapter 41: You don’t understand, do you?
I didn’t need to provoke Mark that way but if I didn’t, we wouldn’t be getting anywhere. I was convinced that he had a hand on Zane and I breaking up but for the other factors... I was going to find out about it.
"Haha," Mark laughed, and then his smile turned into a bitter frown. "You always know how to be a thorn in my flesh."
Yeah, there it was. That dick bastard’s true nature. He was over 36 years old but he was still playing such childish tricks on me.
"What did I ever do to you?" I asked. It was the question that had been simmering in my heart for the longest time. "You’ve hated me since I was born. You took my things, turned my friends away from me, and made our parents like me less and less with each passing day. What did I ever do to you, Mark?"
"What did you do?" Make asked and his lips curled. "You took my place, that’s what you did."
His words confused me.
"I don’t understand," I said. "What place?"
There was no way I took that bastard’s place in anything. In fact, he was the one always taking my place, my opportunities, and meddling in my affairs. So, how did I take his place?
"You were just a zygote, not even properly formed, and yet you managed to take the place I had been preparing my life for." He said but it made me even more confused.
If I was a zygote, then wasn’t that even more impossible for me to do? If he was going to start talking in riddles then he should at least speak in a way I will understand.
"If I’m going to understand what I did, you should at least speak in a way I’ll understand. And maybe then, I can make amends." I said but he suddenly burst out laughing.
His laughter was like a roar of mockery and amusement at my words.
"You? Make amends?" He laughed even more. "That’s impossible. It already happened and I had to suffer for it. So, instead of that, I decided it would be better to crush you and wish you were never born. That’s the only way I can feel at ease for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you snatched from me while you were in our mother’s womb."
This guy... did he drink till he lost a few nuts in his head? He wasn’t making any sense. What could a baby who wasn’t even born yet do?
"You don’t understand, do you?"
Obviously.
"Well, it doesn’t matter."
"It does matter!" I pressed on. "I need to know what I did. I need to know what I did so wrong that I had to suffer in your hands for so long."
"And I said it doesn’t matter." He glared at me and my words hung on my throat. "It’s not like it’ll make me feel any better talking about it with you and nothing will change either. Right now, the only way you can make amends is by suffering and dying like a worthless loser."
I froze.
So, he wasn’t going to tell me? Then, why do I feel like whatever happened was not such a big deal that he went so far with me?
"I decided to destroy your life even before you were born and make sure you never enjoyed the bliss you stole from me." He said and took out a cigarette from a cigarette pack.
One of the ladies next to him flicked a lighter and lit it up.
"And so far, your suffering has been music to my ears." He said and laughed, breathing out the smoke he inhaled. "It was so good I could make it into a movie."
This sadistic bastard. Was he seriously laughing at the kind of suffering I went through? All my tears and... Wait, what?
I looked at him, shocked, and found him grinning at me.
"Did you finally figure it out? You’re quite slow, brother." He said, putting the cigarette in his mouth, inhaling, and exhaling through his nose. "That’s why you could never get out of my trap." He said and laughed. "Every single one of the misfortunes that happened to you from the moment you were born wasn’t because you were cursed or had bad luck; they were all man-made and orchestrated by me." He said and I trembled.
No, no, it couldn’t be. He... He did it? All of it?
Every single one of my misfortunes?
"But I could say your fate was cursed the moment ’he’ chose you in Mother’s belly instead of me, who had worked my little brain off just to be chosen." He said and took a puff of his cigarette again. "That old man, he didn’t know talent when he saw one. It’s too bad, he lost his pick for making a wrong pick."
He was saying things that I couldn’t understand but I wasn’t even trying to understand those words. I was so stuck on what he had said about how he had orchestrated my bad luck.
My body trembled and I had begun to sweat profusely. The reality of it was so hard that I was drowning.
I knew my brother was evil but to this extent? Why?
Tears had begun to slide down my face. What did I do to suffer this fate?
"It’s painful, right?" I heard his voice like a slither in my ear. "That’s how it should be. You should suffer, tremble, and die in despair. That’s how it should be. I don’t know how you overcame the temptation to die after I unleashed my master plan all in one go, but I won’t let it happen again. You don’t deserve to be alive. You don’t deserve to smile. Die, die in despair and nerve crawl out of it."
"Let me ask you something." I finally spoke up, my face wet with my own tears but I met his eyes regardless. "Jessica... Did you also do that?"
"Oh, are you talking about how I fabricated your results for the low sperm count or how I fucked your wife every day before she got back from work and asked her to take contraceptives so she wouldn’t get pregnant with your child?" He asked with a sly grin and my core shook. What?
