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 like 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.