All I Ask

by KT Webb

  “Just as I was about to leave the way I’d come, I saw it. Your mother’s ring. The chain and ring were lying on the floor amidst the blazing remains of the sitting room. I knew it would be hot, so I picked it up with my jacket, exposing my face to the fire. The wall of flames boxed me in and kept me from getting back to where you were. I was forced to exit through the back. The kitchen was a dangerous option because of the gas line to the stove, but it was my only choice. I tucked the ring in my pocket, dropped my jacket and ran through the back door just as another, bigger explosion took the house to the ground.

  “I could hear the sirens, but none of it registered in my mind. I wandered away from the house. Adrenaline still coursed through my body enough to allow me the ability to move without recognizing the full extent of my injuries. I have no idea how I ended up at Madame Rossi’s door. To this day, my memory is completely blank from the time I left the house to the moment I woke up with my wounds cleaned and bandaged days later.”

  Aria couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Erik had survived, he’d gone to Lena for help, but instead of telling everyone he was alive, she hid him away. It just didn’t make sense. Who took care of his wounds? Did she take him to a hospital? Why did they decide it was better if everyone believed he was dead?

  “Lena took me in. She told me you survived, but everyone else was dead. From the beginning, I told her not to tell anyone I was alive, not yet. I had to see how things played out. Nothing added up. There was no reason for the sitting room to explode. If the fire had originated in the kitchen as the police report indicates, there may have been a chance that one or all of our parents could have made it out alive. Lena was my connection to the outside world; she was the one who began to suspect that Drew may have had something to do with the heinous act that orphaned us all. The more we thought about it, the more it fit. Suddenly, Drew was living my life. He was showered with attention; the sole surviving member of the Overland family was sure to be the future of Broadway. My uncle made arrangements for Andrew to take my place in his home and under the tutelage of those who had already planned to work with me.

  “Beyond any of that, Drew never shed a single tear. Lena was there when they told him about our parents; that was before I showed up looking like a zombie with rotting flesh and clothing stuck to the open wounds on my body. She was there because she’d been our teacher, she knew us better than anyone else alive.”

  Aria couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if the truth had been exposed years before. By not coming forward with their information, they’d allowed Drew to continue to kill to advance his career. Lena herself may still be alive if they’d only brought the truth to light.

  “Drew made strange comments about your survival; he seemed obsessed with how you lived when the rest of us died. Madame Rossi was terrified for your safety. It was evident that Andrew had intended for all of us to die that night. The fact that I survived could not be known, not until I was healed enough to do something about it. Lena began the process of gaining guardianship over you to ensure your safety. She was the one who continuously went to the police with new bits of evidence that threatened to expose Drew. They never took us seriously. They wanted to close the book on that tragedy. Apparently, it was easier for them to stomach the idea that some moron installed a stove incorrectly than it was to accept the possibility that someone was twisted enough to murder their own family, a well-loved man, and a little girl.”

  It wasn’t hard to understand how the police may have been reluctant to believe there had been foul play. Aria herself would have found it hard to believe if she wasn’t in the middle of it all. So far, everything Erik told her only seemed to circumstantially point to Drew’s involvement. The police weren’t about to go after a teenage boy who had just lost his entire family in a tragedy; not without hard evidence.

  “What made you so certain your brother was the one who killed them? Some may argue that his odd response to the fire was a form of shock. His entire family was supposedly wiped out in one night,” Aria argued.

  “It was the metronome. I suspected Drew had something to do with the explosion because the man who made the metronome told me it had been picked up three days before the day my brother told my parents he’d gotten it,” Erik seemed to be trying to remember a lost detail. “I called pretending to be an insurance investigator. I wanted him to think I needed the details to determine what property had been in the house at the time of the fire.”

  “You think that because he had it before he told your parents that he may have put a bomb inside?” Aria was still struggling to fully understand what led him to be so firm in his belief.

  “No, I knew he did it because Drew was always tinkering with things in his room. My parents insisted that he keep a fire extinguisher on his desk because things had caught fire on more than on occasion. He loved explosives; it was a hobby. Obviously, it became more than just a hobby when the opportunity presented itself. Information I found in London gave me the concrete proof I’d been looking for.”

  Aria nodded her head, processing all the information was taking far more concentration than she wanted to give. If they knew Drew was responsible, they were wasting time talking beneath the theater. She wanted to know everything, but it seemed like the longer they were alone, hidden away from the world, the longer they were giving Drew to destroy more lives.

  “So, Drew went to London, you went to the Webber Academy, and I hid myself away from the world. When my wounds healed enough that I could care for myself, Lena started working on the plan to renovate this place for me. There’s already a tunnel system beneath the majority of Broadway. It connects the theaters and allowed bootleggers to transport their wares during the prohibition era. Most people don’t even know they’re down here anymore. I have ways of getting places that limit my exposure to the outside world.”

  “How long have you been down here?” Aria asked.

  “I moved in nine years ago. I lived at Lena’s for a few years. I refused to be seen by any plastic surgeons. Those were dark days for me. It felt like I deserved to look like this; like there was something about me that made my brother hate me enough to kill me. I’d failed to save my parents and your father. I didn’t deserve to live the life I had once dreamed I would,” Erik struggled to maintain eye contact with her, he was afraid to see any hint of rejection cross her features.

  “And what made you change your mind?” Aria asked.

  Erik stared across the room. He wasn’t sure he could pinpoint an exact moment that made him realize that none of it was his fault. Erik still felt partially responsible for every person who died at his brothers’ hands. Murder wasn’t an offense that could be forgotten by those touched by its presence, but Erik may have been able to forgive his brother if he had embraced the life he’d been handed. Erik once believed his brother would find redemption in London. He’d hoped Drew would stop focusing on what he didn’t have and realize his life had turned out better than it could have.

  “It’s going to sound cheesy, but you made me change my mind. Above anything else, I wanted you to be able to live whatever kind of life you wanted to live. As long as Drew wasn’t here, I knew you’d be safe. I hadn’t planned to directly interfere with you until you moved into the theater. Believe me when I say that your voice inspired me to write music in a way I hadn’t been able to write in years. You brought something inside me back to life.”

  Aria took his hand and held it tight, “You’re right, that does sound cheesy.”

  Erik laughed at her, “Thank you, seriously.”

  “Erik, you probably don’t fully understand just how much you changed things for me too. Moving into this theater was my last-ditch effort to bring myself back to the person I thought I should be. My father wanted so much for my future, but I was too scared to become the person he believed I would. You brought me out of that. You taught me how to let the music come to life through me,” Aria pushed a tear from her cheek.

  Erik leaned ove
r to kiss the spot where the tear had rested, “We have a lot to live for, together. There’s so much more for me to tell you about what I found in London. It’s enough to expose Drew for who he really is and bring this whole thing to an end.”

  Drew listened to the phone ring as he waited for Aria to answer. He had to at least pretend to care that Christine had been taken to the hospital. When the annoying little bitch collapsed, he took the opportunity to slip out the door. The revelation that his brother was indeed alive put Drew on high alert. He’d often felt deep down that Erik could still be out there. Drew hated the concept that twins were connected or could feel what the other was feeling. It was all bullshit to him, but he never could shake the feeling that Erik was out there somewhere.

  If Erik was the composer he claimed to be, Drew had to face the fact that he’d allowed himself to be impressed by his brothers' work. He hated that. Finding Erik impressive was the farthest thing from his true feelings. From the very beginning, Erik had been considered “more”. He was more talented, more sensitive, more personable, more scholarly; all Drew ever heard was how much better his twin was than him. They were identical. Nothing upset him more than to have it rubbed in his face that his identical twin was somehow better than him. Not only had he robbed Drew of the love and attention he deserved as a child, now he was trying to take away the one woman Drew felt was worthy of being his.

  Aria wasn’t answering the phone. He had tried to call her seven times in the hours since he left the theater. He had no idea if Christine lived or died. If he was honest with himself, it didn’t really matter. She was taken by ambulance. He didn’t like her enough to let her live, but the game had changed. Nothing mattered anymore except getting Aria to see Erik for what he really was; a monster.

  She’d described his skin as though it had been burned horribly in the blast. That was at least a small consolation for Drew; he knew Erik was ugly. A beautiful woman like Aria shouldn’t be saddled to a hideous creature that had been hiding in the shadows like some kind of freak. The only way he was going to get Aria to see the mistake she was making was to ensure that she saw that everything was Erik’s fault.

  “Before I went to London, I followed the man who was supposed to be following me. He was a bit of a weasel, but not exactly a high-class criminal. When I cornered him, he spilled his secrets like a nervous schoolgirl. Apparently, he witnessed Drew staging the scene of an accidental drowning.”

  Aria sat up straight, “Detective Pahl talked to me about that! He said there was no concrete evidence to indicate that Andrew had been involved, so the police weren’t able to investigate him any further.”

  Erik offered her a sad smile, “Well, there wasn’t enough evidence because, for the first time, Drew had help. He murdered that man out of rage and jealousy. It wasn’t as calculated as his plot to kill us. He was trying to make it all look accidental when my new friend found him. This man has become a bit of a lackey for Drew.

  “He saw an opportunity to make a steady income from a stupid rich kid, and he took it. He was blackmailing Drew to keep quiet about what he saw, but my brother also offered him bonuses for information and when he needed someone to take care of things for him. I offered to pay him more than Drew ever had, and he flipped without much work.”

  Aria was struggling to picture Erik confronting the stranger in a dark alley. If he’d been wearing his mask, it probably terrified the man to the point that it wouldn’t have mattered how much money he stood to make from his silence.

  “Ultimately, he agreed to accompany me to London. He had a cache where he’d hidden evidence that incriminated Drew. After he gave it to me, I reached out to the only other person who could help me.”

  In London, Erik reconnected with his uncle. It had been a surprise to see the young man he thought was dead. He told Erik that losing everyone except Andrew had been difficult to stomach, especially since Drew was so moody and distant. As Erik relayed everything he learned to Aria, he realized just how much worse his brother had gotten.

  “My uncle was my mother’s brother. He was always a lot of fun when we were kids, it was hard for us when he moved to London full-time. When I called, I warned him that I wasn’t the person he remembered. At first, he thought Drew was playing a cruel joke on him; it wasn’t until I showed up at the front door that he realized the awful truth. He let me inside without a moment’s hesitation; it didn’t take long for me to explain that I suspected Drew was responsible for the deaths of his parents and your dad. In fact, it was as though his own fears had finally been acknowledged by someone else. He was almost relieved.

  “He let me go to Drew’s old bedroom. The bedroom itself was bare. It was inside a lockbox that I found a contract for a storage unit rental. My uncle accompanied me to aid in getting the owners to believe I was Drew,” Erik paused and shook his head, “That storage unit had everything we needed. I was disgusted by the arrogance my brother displayed when he thought he was safe from discovery. Inside, he had multiple journals on shelves and even had plans hanging on the wall for a complicated explosive system. It was like walking onto the set for a movie at the point when the lead detective finds the bad guys’ lair.”

  Aria laughed, “That’s a bit dramatic.”

  “I know, I know. But wait, you’ll understand what I mean. I looked through the journals. Nearly every one of them outlined things Drew wanted but felt he couldn’t acquire without some means of violence. I assumed it was a coping technique; you know how they say therapists want their patients to write their feelings in journals so they can process them? I thought it was an exercise like that. Until I found a journal from the year he moved in with my uncle.

  “It was one of the most disturbing things I’d ever read. My own brother hates me, Aria. He thinks I’m responsible for taking everything away from him. I could hardly believe what I saw; in the journal, he included the plans he’d drawn up for fitting the metronome with a bomb. My first thoughts were revulsion, but I soon realized how sad his life had to have been to think up something so terrible.”

  “I’m sorry, Erik. So much of this seems completely unbelievable. Do you think part of him wanted to get caught?” Aria asked without really thinking he would have an answer.

  “I know what you mean, it felt like he was handing me the evidence I needed to prove that he was the monster I’d thought. I don’t know if he was subconsciously trying to get caught or if he had been lulled into a false sense of security when he moved to a completely different continent. Maybe he thought no one over there would even care to investigate his involvement. My uncle himself admitted he hadn’t gone into Drew’s bedroom after he moved in; my brother was very private and became volatile if he felt like someone was invading his privacy.

  “There’s more I have to tell you. I found something that made me drop everything and head home. One of his journals was all about you. He had articles about you glued onto the pages. I won’t tell you all the things he had written about you, but it was evident that his obsession with you has been going on for years. He tried to find you on social media, but when that failed, he paid paparazzi to follow you. When he returned to New York, he had every intention of claiming you for his own.”

  Aria noticed that Erik had begun to shake. He was visibly bothered by the idea that his brother had been planning to be with her from the beginning. Thinking back to her first encounter with him in eleven years, she didn’t find it all that unbelievable. What he probably saw as a romantic gesture had been strange for someone who hadn’t seen her since she was nine. Drew ignored the script and kissed her. Erik had balled his hands into fists as though recalling the things he saw in that journal made him irrationally angry.

  “Hey, you know that I haven’t fallen for any of his tricks. I thought he was my friend. I tried to be more than that, but no matter what, I always found my heart leading me back to you,” Aria shifted on the couch until she was staring into his eyes.

  “I love you, Aria.”

  “I love you
too, Erik.”

  He pulled her into his arms. The act of claiming her lips was nothing short of magical. She was his. Erik kissed her back, the passion between them was hotter than any fire they’d survived.

  They lay in each other’s arms, knowing they would have to leave the moment behind to focus their attention on Drew again. Aria heard her phone vibrating in her purse on the floor. For a moment, her mind went to the darkest possibility. Christine was in the hospital, what if something happened? What if Drew had returned to finish what he started?

  She leaped from the bed and grabbed her phone. It was Drew. She hit “ignore” and dropped the phone back into her purse.

  “It’s time to take care of this once and for all,” Erik said.

  Aria looked back at him with fear and regret. He was right and she knew it, but her heart was broken just the same.