by Rina Kent
I’ll figure it out. I have to. It’s the only way I’ll be able to escape the hell I’ve been living through during the last couple of months.
It’s the only way I’ll be able to start anew.
I wrap the coat around my body when a shiver goes through me, and I clutch the flashlight tighter. The graves in which Dad buried the women are still open.
Tears stream down my cheeks as I talk to them and apologise as I did to their families.
That’s all I’ve been doing during the trials — apologising. No matter how much I do it, it doesn’t seem to be enough.
Sometimes, when they hit or throw insults at me, somewhere in my brain, I feel like I deserve it. I’m the one who smiled and laughed and danced with the monster who ended the lives of their daughters, wives, and mothers.
I’m the one who didn’t see the devil, even though he was right in front of me.
If I’d searched before, looked before, maybe I would’ve noticed it. Maybe I could’ve stopped him.
But it’s useless now. It’s already done, so all I can do is apologise.
When I reach the empty grave, I kick dirt in it. My stomps are fuelled with the rage and the injustice I’ve been living through. The lie. The smoke and mirrors.
“I hate you, Dad!” Stomp. Kick. “I hate you so much! I wish you’d killed me first. I wish you’d never let me see you like that. I wish I was never your daughter.”
My throat burns with the force of my words, but the tears won’t stop soaking my cheeks and slipping into my mouth, making me taste salt.
I throw my head back and stare into the night, just like I did that day I begged for all of this to be a lie. A shooting star crosses the moonless sky, and instead of finding the beauty in it, a wave of grief hits me again. My sister loved shooting stars, but now, she’s no longer here to enjoy them. Alicia used to tell me to make a wish whenever we saw one, but I said those don’t come true, because Dad never let me believe in illusions. He never let me believe in Father Christmas or in the bogeyman or in the Tooth Fairy.
He forced me to live in reality and told me that actual monsters are scarier.
However, he made me believe in him — my superhero without a cape. Then he pulled the carpet from underneath my feet and left me as this shell of a person with nothing behind or in front of me.
I don’t know what to believe in anymore. My own sense of self is starting to fade and I don’t even have Alicia to talk to.
There’s Jonathan and Aiden…
I shake my head frantically at the thought. I won’t bring my baggage into my nephew’s life. And Jonathan is scary — he’d probably be the one who’d chase me off.
As my tantrum against Dad withers away, only a bitter taste remains — the fact that I’m truly on my own in the world now.
The sound of the crunching of leaves echoes behind me. At first, I think it’s one of the night animals who roam around here, but then I hear it again.
In the days when I used to hunt with Dad, he taught me how to recognise the noises animals make. We were marvellous stalkers and could find prey in no time.
Now that I know why he was that way, I want to bleach those memories out of my head.
There’s something uneven about the sound coming from the bushes. It’s a bit like…hesitation.
Sure, it could be an animal, but an animal’s frantic movements would follow a pattern. If it were scared, it would’ve run by now. This one isn’t running. It’s more like he’s…stalking. Similar to when Dad and I used to do it in the past. If anything, he’s getting closer.
A shadow passes between the trees at lightning speed. I step back, my old sneakers crunching against the pebbles.
It can’t be the police since they would’ve already caught me for trespassing on a crime scene. Or worse, sent me back to the Witness Protection Program, where I heard the officers discussing me in an unfavourable way.
I don’t trust them.
I trust no one. Just like Dad always insisted I shouldn’t. It’s ironic that I’ve come back to his words now.
This leaves only a couple of other possibilities. The most probable one is that it could be a victim’s family member. Or maybe one of the many people who sympathised with the victims and made the trial period a nightmare.
I inhale deeply and slowly, letting my ears capture their movements. They’re behind the tree. But the thing is, my ears aren’t reliable with the amount of ringing in them.
Wait. Could I be imagining the noises?
For months, I don’t remember sleeping a full night. One, I’ve been scared they’ll attack me in my sleep. Two, whenever I close my lids, all I can see are the victims’ faces, duct tape, vacant eyes, and blood.
So much blood.
Sleep deprivation toys with the brain. Sometimes, I worry that either Dad or the families will come after me.
Tonight, it could be the latter.
I aim the flashlight in the direction of the trees where I suspect the shadow is lurking. “Who are you?”
No answer.
“If you want to take a jab at me, come out. You’re neither the first nor the last.” I’m proud of how my words are steady and confident.
I’m sure as shit not confident right now.
Those people and the hatred in their eyes frighten me. I always feel as if they want my head on a stick or wish I was buried six feet under like those victims.
“I’m here!” My voice rises. “I’m over here, so if you want to —”
My words cut off when the shadow runs towards me at supersonic speed.
I lift both my arms to protect my face. That’s what they go for the most — the face. It’s as if they want to erase anything that resembles his face. Mainly the eyes. The fact that I have my father’s eyes has made me a monster just like him.
Something crunches against my ribcage. At first, I stare with stupefaction, expression frozen, not sure what’s happened.
Then pain explodes in my side and hot liquid spills from me, soaking my coat, and when I look up, I see the shadowy form of a masked man snatching a knife away. A trail of blood flows from the wound and drips onto the dark ground. The dim glow from my flashlight turns the view gruesome, haunting even. The blood is nearly black — like a demon’s.
Unable to carry my weight, my legs stumble and I twist my foot as pain spreads across my nerve endings and shoots straight to my brain.
Then I’m falling.
To keep myself from going down, my fingers dig into his mask and I pull, my nails scratching his skin.
I make out a tattoo on the side of his bald head. A dragon.
He hits my hand, and the flashlight slips from my trembling fingers. I follow soon after. My energy fails me and I drop backwards.
Straight into the eighth grave.
My head hits the dirt, and a metallic taste fills my mouth before blood gurgles out from it.
The dark shadow stands over my grave, the light from the flashlight forming a halo around him. His black-gloved hands rest over each other, the blood on the knife he still holds glinting under the moonlight.
He’s watching me so intently, as if he’s my father and I’m one of the victims he suffocated to death. He doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound. He just…watches.
My eyes roll back, slowly closing. The last words I hear are Dad’s.
When I see you again, either I kill you or you kill me.
5
Jonathan
Aurora is back in her old house.
Not her flat, but the fucking place she escaped from as a teen to have her rebirth.
Fuck.
It takes us an hour to fly with my private jet from London Heathrow to Leeds Bradford Airport. An hour I don’t fucking have to spare. And currently, Moses is driving us straight to that house, which is taking another thirty minutes I don’t have.
Why would she come here, of all places? If this is a ploy to escape me, then she doesn’t know who she’s dealing with. She must’ve felt li
ke she had some leeway just because she’s spent a couple of months with me.
The fact that I claimed her as mine means something simple — she’s not allowed to disappear.
Not even if it’s to face her ghosts.
That part still doesn’t make sense. Considering the way she completely cut herself out of Maxim’s life, she shouldn’t have returned here willingly.
It’s like she’s gutting herself by her own hands.
I know for a fact that she gave up ownership of her house in Leeds, so why the fuck would she come back?
Loosening my tie, I pull my phone, then dial Harris. “What else do you have on her from the time she dropped out of the Witness Protection Program?”
That period of her life is still a blur and I need to find out everything there is to learn about it. If she’s keeping it under wraps, something important happened. Something she likes to keep between her and herself.
But here’s the thing, she’s not allowed to hide anything from me, including her demons.
Harris’s unaffected tone comes over the line, “I told you, she forged an identity and her age and then flew to Scotland.”
“What happened exactly between the end of the trials and Scotland? There’s time that’s unaccounted for. A week to be exact.”
“It’s…” He seems to check something. “Unknown.”
“So make it known, Harris. I need a report of her every movement from back then.” The fact that she even managed to forge an identity and make herself eighteen is already impressive for a girl that age. And not just any girl — a sheltered one. She didn’t live in the streets or have a hard life prior to Maxim’s arrest, so that survival instinct wouldn’t have come easily for someone with her background.
But something tells me that’s not all she’s been through.
And I need to know everything about her — the nitty-gritty, the good, the bad.
Every. Fucking. Thing.
“Hold on.” There’s a flipping of papers from his side. “She was caught on a pharmacy’s security camera near Bradford a few days before her trip to Scotland.”
“Send me the footage.”
I hang up, and almost immediately, my screen lights up with a video from Harris.
The black and white footage shows a girl dressed in a dark hoodie, her hair sticking out from a baseball cap that’s covering half her face. However, I recognise her, even though she’s hiding.
She’s holding her side and slightly leaning over so that the counter will carry her weight. When a female employee addresses her, Aurora tells her something.
Since there’s no audio, I wait to see what she ordered. The employee returns and places some items on the counter. Pausing the video, I zoom in. Bandages, a bottle of antiseptic, and what looks like antibiotics.
I hit Play again, and my suspicions are confirmed when Aurora shoves a note across the counter with shaky hands and practically jogs out of there, still holding her side. Then, at the entrance, she stops and clutches the door for balance.
She remains there for a few seconds, her back bowing and her hand wrapping around her middle, before she raises her head and leaves the pharmacy. The video stops with her holding the door for an elderly woman. Part of Aurora’s face is caught on camera and her lips are…bloodied.
She was hurt, and if my calculations are correct, she’s clutching the same part of her right side where there’s the knife scar and the closed eye tattoo.
The injury was from back then, from when she was fucking sixteen. Aurora was stabbed and she had to self-medicate and probably suture herself. That’s why the scar is a bit messy.
The sense of pride I feel for her strength is doused by the need to ruin the fucker who dared put his hands on her.
So what if she’s Maxim’s daughter? She’s not him. It’s a fact I apparently need to incinerate into people’s minds in the hardest way.
The car slows to a halt, pebbles crunching under the tyres in front of the crime scene. This is the cottage where Maxim used to suffocate women with duct tape, before Aurora reported him.
The night’s air is chilly and seeps underneath my suit when I step out. Moses follows, holding a flashlight. His other hand is at the gun in his waistband.
He’s an ex-intelligence agent and works as both my driver and security, if needed. For all these years, he’s been efficient in warding off unwanted attention, and I’m counting on his skills in case something happens.
There are only two people I trust — Harris and Moses. It didn’t happen arbitrarily, because I’m naturally distrustful. I tested their loyalty with underhanded methods more than once. I made them offers through my business associates and gave them the chance to stab me in the back and leave, but they never took it. That’s why they’ve been with me the longest.
I push at the door of the cottage and a rotten smell hits me in the face. When Moses directs the light inside, we see the corpses of a rat and a rabbit, decayed and almost unrecognisable, their guts spilling out.
Since Aurora isn’t there, I motion at Moses to follow me behind the cottage to where the burial happened.
The first thing I make out is a black shadow leaning over a hole in the ground. Upon seeing the light, he jumps and sprints in the direction of the woods.
“Follow him!” I bark at Moses.
He springs into action, his legs racing after the shadow.
I turn on my phone’s flashlight and quicken my pace to the hole he was perched over. My extra sense kicks into gear, and I know, I just know something is wrong.
Sure enough, the sight I find in the hole makes me pause, my chest constricting.
Aurora is splayed on her back in the grave, her legs and arms lolling in awkward positions.
Her pink dress is bunched at the middle of her thighs, covered with dirt and…blood.
It’s all over her clothes and her translucent skin. Her knees are scraped, her palms are bleeding, and her lip is busted.
Her eyes are closed too tightly, as if she’s enduring the pain.
Fuck!
Fucking fuck!
If I’d known she would pull this, I would’ve had security follow her at all times.
Leaving the phone on the edge, I hop down to the grave and cradle her head in my hands. Dirt and dry blood smudges the soft skin of her face.
Aurora’s body jerks in my hold and she starts scratching, clawing, and pushing me away.
Fuck me. Even unconscious, this woman has the strength of a warrior. She can protect herself, and she can do it so well. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to take all the pain away so no one dares come near her again.
So that she doesn’t need protection anymore.
“I…am…s-sorry…” she mumbles. “S-so s-sorry… Don’t…h-hurt me… Don’t…”
“No one will hurt you anymore, Aurora. Not on my fucking watch.” I run my finger on the cut in her lip. The fact that she’s marked in this brutal way sits wrong with me.
Sits wrong? That’s an understatement. The fury that pulses inside me is like a beast with no restraints.
I want to bring hell on the world that had her apologise for things she didn’t fucking do. I want to eradicate the people who judged her without knowing her story.
She was sixteen. Just fucking sixteen, yet she abandoned the only family she had because she believes in justice above anything else.
No one, and I mean, no fucking one is allowed to treat her as if she’s the perpetrator in this.
Moses returns alone, his brows scrunching. “I lost him, sir. He…seems well aware of the area.”
I pick Aurora up and she whimpers, lips trembling. She must be having another nightmare. That’s when she’s most vulnerable and her walls crumble one after the other. When she’s had them while sleeping in my arms, she’s held on to me, her nails digging in my chest as if searching for an anchor she never had.
The fact that she’s been a loner her entire life is so similar to me. The only difference is that I used i
t to rise up, while she had to run. She’s had to suffer in silence, including during her sleep.
Soon enough, I’ll make all her nightmares vanish, even if it’s the last thing I do.
“Call Harris,” I tell Moses. “We need to arrange an underground meeting.”
If the fucker who attacked her today — which I assume is the same person who stabbed her eleven years ago — thinks he can escape me, he has no idea who he’s up against.
He can fool fate itself, but he can never fool me.
I’ll find the scum who did this to her, and I’ll enjoy ending his life in the slowest way possible.
Aurora is mine, and I’ll bring chaos to the world to protect what’s fucking mine.
6
Aurora
Meaty fingers wrap around my waist and drag me across the dirt. The black, merciless dirt.
It’s my turn now.
I’m going to die today.
But…why? What have I done?
I try to struggle, to squirm, to scream, but not one muscle in my body moves. I’m trapped in my own skin where no sound comes out.
As the dragging continues, my head bumps against the hard ground.
He’s here.
It doesn’t matter that I can’t see him. I know without a doubt that he’s returned for me, and this time, he won’t let me go. This time, I’m absolutely done for.
“Aurora…”
That voice.
My muscles relax into the dirt as it filters through my ears. It’s not Dad’s. It’s…someone else’s.
Someone I shouldn’t be thinking about, but the remainder of my energy is rushing to the surface so that I can recognise him.
There’s something about that voice. His presence and his entire aura.
Is he an illusion?
My shoulders shake. “Aurora!”
I startle into the clutches of wakefulness. My eyes snap open, and for a moment, I’m frozen in place. I’m in that grave, and now, I’ll be buried alive. I’ll be…