My Boyfriend and Brother Left Me in the Escape Room novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Open Mic

"You want the truth?" Lyla said again, and it rolled around the ballroom twice.

"Fine. Here it is."

Her hair had come half out of its pins. Her gown strap had slipped, and she did not fix it.

"Yes, I slid the bolt!"

Six hundred people stopped breathing.

"I was eight years old, and I had a suitcase and a dead mother, and I was a guest in somebody else's house!"

She pointed at my mother with the microphone.

"You called her your girl! Every night at dinner, my girl, my Veronica, my baby. I was the little guest. I got the spare room and the leftover cake."

"Lyla," my mother said, in a voice like paper tearing.

"I wanted to see what it was like to be afraid and have everyone run!" Lyla's face had gone red and wet, and none of it was for the camera. "And you all ran! You ran for her! I got to stand next to her and hold her hand and have you thank me for it!"

I stood very still beside my brother.

"Twenty years," she said. "Twenty years of everyone being so grateful that I stayed. And I let you be grateful. I built a company on it, and it was mine. It was the only thing in that house that was mine."

A man at the back said, quite clearly, "Jesus Christ."

Phones rose in every row.

"Then why the escape room?" I asked.

She wheeled on me.

"Because you had a man, Cori! A good one! Darius was good to you, and you didn't even know it. You never knew what you had. You never knew!"

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