“Where’s Tom?” He’s a decent butler, but he’s usually hanging on to her robes, waiting for an order. I’ll send him to Aurora’s flat and Moses will go to her work since she has no other place to go.

But there’s also Layla’s family restaurant. Harris will go there. She better not be spending time with Layla’s brothers, or the night will take a dramatic turn that will end with my handprint on her arse.

I have no tolerance for other people in her surroundings, not even people I trust, like Harris and Moses. It doesn’t matter that she’s known Layla’s brothers for a long time, as she likes to remind me. They didn’t come into her life first — I did.

“Tom stepped out for an errand, sir. Is there anything I can do on his behalf?”

“Have him find me as soon as he’s back.”

“Yes, sir.” As Margot disappears, I retrieve my phone and call Aurora again. She’s still not answering.

I type an email.

 

From: Jonathan King

To: Aurora Harper

Subject: Where Are You?

Must I remind you of who demanded a date tonight? My time is gold, Aurora, so answer your fucking phone.

 

As soon as I hit Send, the screen lights up with a call from Harris.

“You’re just in time. I want you to go to —”

“We have a situation,” he cuts me off. Harris never cuts me off, which means this is serious.

“And?”

“I just got updated when we left the meeting. Maxim Griffin is giving an interview for the first time since his capture.”

“What?”

Harris’s voice continues in a grim tone, “From what I’ve seen, he’s accusing his daughter, saying it’s time she’s brought to justice, too. There’s an uproar from the victims’ families and the media about this. It’s not looking good.”

Fuck!

“Where’s Aurora?”

“What?”

“She must’ve seen it and that’s why she disappeared. Find her. Now.” I head out. Moses is stepping out of the car, but when he sees the expression on my face, he slides back in.

“I’ll get in touch with my men. Give me ten minutes.”

“You have five, Harris. I don’t fucking care what you have to do to find her. I need a location sent to Moses immediately.”

I hang up without hearing his reply. There’s no way in fuck I’m going to let her slip between my fingers now.

Aurora Harper sold her soul to the devil. It goes without saying that she’ll never be able to escape me.

 

 

3

 

 

Aurora

 

 

Disappearing isn’t easy.

I tried it before and it was like pulling my own teeth from my mouth. It’s not about changing names and going blonde for a few years. It’s not about cutting my hair and picking a different clothing style. It’s not even about losing my northern accent.

Those are the easiest parts of disappearing. Everything else that’s hard to change is the problem.

It’s about altering the way I walk so people don’t recognise me from afar.

It’s forcing myself to become a right-handed person after living for sixteen years as a left-handed person. That’s why my handwriting is rubbish, and when I’m exhausted, I switch back to my left hand without realising it.

It’s stopping myself from eating the food I like the most so that I’m not recognised through it. Over time, I’ve lost all joy in eating altogether and it’s become a chore.

It’s about erasing my habits and everything I used to take for granted, one by each bloody one.

Disappearance is about rebirth.

When I first escaped the Witness Protection Program, I kept watching over my shoulder and under every bed I slept on. I searched the wardrobes and installed three locks on my doors. I never slept with my window open, even if it meant drowning in my own sweat due to summer’s heat. For a few months, I moved from one motel to the other and covered my tracks in case anyone from back home was following me.

I stopped being Clarissa and threw everything about her life behind me. I stopped believing in superheroes and in love. I stopped dancing and singing in the shower.

I stopped living.

So when I find myself at the site of my rebirth again, I’m not surprised.

After watching the snippet of Dad’s interview, being attacked by Sarah, and hearing the message Alicia left about her own death, I had no actual presence of mind to think.

I still can’t.

My fingers shake, my knees, lips, and palms sting. I haven’t stopped for a bathroom break and I survived on a bottle of water through the entire four-hour drive here.

I’ve returned to where I was born and reborn.

The cottage in the middle of the forest.

Dad’s site of murder.

On the internet, there are articles about how this place is haunted and many curious teenagers film themselves inside it to prove they’re fearless.

A few years ago, I gave up ownership of our house in town. I signed it over to a charitable association and they’re now using it as a centre for disabled children. I had my solicitor make all the arrangements so that no one would know I was behind it.

However, I didn’t give up this cottage. One, it’s not really worth much, and just like back then, it’s as if a part of my soul is still trapped in there, along with those dead women’s bodies.

It’s black outside except for the silver moon. Its ghostly fingers creep between the stilled branches and the silent, black earth. The silence is like that in a cemetery, long and deafening in its uninterrupted quiet.

A shiver claws up my spine as I watch the place where many lost their lives without being heard. Death reeks from every pebble and every tree. From the sky and the night. They stand witness to the time everything started and ended.

The moonlight casts a shadowy silver light on the old architecture that Dad built with his own hands. He was so good with them, his hands.

He knew how to snap necks, then fix me breakfast. He knew how to set traps for helpless animals, then brush my hair as if he was the most doting father on earth.

It’s been eleven years, but it’s almost as if I saw Dad dragging a dead woman across the ground only yesterday.

Time is…immeasurable in this place. It has its own metrics and its own haunted memories.

It’s been a few hours since I arrived, but I haven’t left my car. My fingers keep tracing my watch, back and forth, as if that will fill me with the needed courage. I told myself I would get out when I could control the trembling of my limbs, but that hasn’t happened.

My hand is still quivering as I open the door and step outside. I follow the moonlight’s trail, my unsteady heels crunching against the pebbles.

My ankle pulses with pain; I probably twisted it when Sarah pushed me to the ground.

I limp my way to the cottage, then stop in front of the door. The need to destroy it — or better yet, burn it — rushes to the forefront of my brain.

But that won’t bring back the women who died. It won’t bring back my life or everything I lost that day.

I do a detour and hobble to behind the cottage. When I came here eleven years ago, this place was circled by police tape. All eight graves were opened up and the corpses were taken for autopsy, and eventually the women had a respectful burial. However, only seven corpses were found — including the woman I saw that day. She was the last addition to Dad’s collection.