Devastated (Anger Management, #1)(67)

“They kept you pretty isolated, only letting you leave the house when they had no choice or they needed you to do something for them and even then, they only let you around people who believed them. If you mentioned any adult in a favorable manner, they went out of their way to make sure that person didn’t trust you,” he said, as Hunter got up from the couch and walked over to the double patio doors.

“Y-yes,” she said, because that had probably hurt more than anything.

They’d taken away every last hope that someone, anyone, could care for her. She’d lost count of how many teachers who’d once greeted her with a smile, stopped talking to her, yelled at her, or threw the things that her parents said about her back in her face. The parents that once told her that she was welcome in their home made sure that their child stayed away from her after one talk with her parents. With her parents’ reputations and the fact that most of the town hated them because of the things that they did and said, it made her existence very lonely.

“They allowed other people to treat you like shit and probably encouraged it.”

“Yes,” she said, as she watched Hunter’s hands clench into fists as he stood there, staring out the patio doors.

“They expected your sister to grow up to be something special, but instead she has problems holding a job, gets fired a lot, steals, does drugs, and has a serious problem with alcohol, but none of it is ever her fault. Your parents still cover for her, but now your sister is the one spreading lies and embellishing her life. Even with that, they still treated her better than they treated you. They went out of their way to make you feel like there was something wrong with you, made sure that you hated yourself, made sure you failed and once you did, they made sure that they rubbed it in your face. The fact that they worshipped your sister and couldn’t do enough for her when she was just as hateful and cruel most likely confused you, made you wonder what was wrong with you.”

“I thought she knew a secret to make them like her,” Kylie admitted because that was something that she could never understand.

Her sister had been spoiled, lazy, rude, and just generally a horrible person. Most people didn’t like her, other kids avoided her, but her parents acted like she walked on water. They took her everywhere, introduced her to everyone, and always treated her like she was an adult, like she fit in while they’d left Kylie at home unless they needed her to clean the restaurant or fill in when one of the employees quit because they got sick of her parents stealing from them and treating them like garbage. No matter what Denise did, her parents always stood by her, got her out of trouble, and covered for her. But when Kylie struggled…

They rejoiced and rubbed her face in it.

“They were very controlling and when you didn’t do what they wanted exactly the way they wanted, they punished you. They did the same thing to their friends and everyone they knew. Anything could set them off. It could be something minor and they’d do everything within their power to destroy someone’s life and pretend they didn’t know anything about it,” Grey once again guessed correctly.

“How do you know this?” Kylie asked, because even though she hadn’t read the entire file that Hunter’s men had compiled on her family, she doubted that any of this was in there.

“What would you say if I told you that you weren’t alone, that other people had gone through what you had, and that your family treated you the way that they did because you were everything that they could never be and they hated you for it?”

“I…”

“What if I told you that they really didn’t love your sister, because they’re not capable of loving anyone but themselves. What if I told you that your sister was favored only because she was weak and easily manipulated into doing what they wanted, that they favored her because they saw her as an extension of themselves. All that attention and care that she got was because she wasn’t like you. Your parents latched onto her and made sure that she turned out just like them. She never had a chance at a normal life and that you are actually the lucky one, Kylie.”

She shook her head in disbelief as she got to her feet. “Lucky? How exactly am I the lucky one? She never had to worry about anything, never went without, never had to go to bed hungry, or worry about what would happen if she didn’t get out of the way fast enough! She never had to sleep with the lights on or lie about the bruises and cuts on her face! She never had to worry about what would happen if she got blood on the floor or couldn’t wash the blood out of her sheets because the cuts on her back wouldn’t stop bleeding!”

“Because despite what your parents did to you and put you through, you thrived, Kylie. Because you have a chance at a normal life, and she will never have that chance. Once your parents decided that they could use her to make themselves look better, she was doomed. I can’t diagnose your parents without meeting them, but from everything I’ve seen, your parents, and most likely your sister, have a personality disorder. They’re narcissists among other things. They are incapable of love, incapable of kindness, or empathy. They’re incapable of feeling remorse. They have to fake emotions, manipulate people into liking them, control them, and destroy them to make themselves look better and to protect themselves. They crave attention and desperately need people to believe that they are better than they are. It’s why they don’t surround themselves with people with a backbone or conscience. They prefer people they can control, who are desperate, and need them. It’s the same reason that they latch onto people in power because it makes them feel important. They love to be victims, crave sympathy and get a rush out of other people’s misfortunes especially if it makes them look good. Death, illness, divorce, it doesn’t matter. They will latch onto people during the worst moments of their lives and feed off them, loving the attention it gets them even as they mock and belittle the person who is going through hell behind their backs.”