Page 22 of Infamous

I just needed her to sayyes.

At times,I wondered if I’d always see my sister’s killer when I looked at her.

If love could ever drown out that kind of history.

I told myself I hadn’t spared her because of mercy. Mercy was for saints, and I’d buried that part of myself with Billie. I spared her because I’d learned to measure grief like a debt, one that could only be settled in blood.

But when I tried to end her, the world folded in on itself. My hand shook. My control broke. The plan, once perfect, shattered. And in its place came something far worse than failure.

I fell in love with her.

That love didn’t quiet the hunger; it sharpened it. The urge to close my hands around her throat never left; it just learned how to breathe beside her. I became a man who loved what he once swore to destroy.

So I buried the monster under structure and silence. I became what the city whispered about - the man who hunted filth and left no traces. An executioner who didn’t kill for coin or pride, but for balance. I cleansed the destruction the law refused to touch - traffickers, pedophiles, the kind of parasites that hid behind clean suits and public smiles.

It felt righteous at first. Like every body I left cooling in the dark was a small redemption. But penance curdles when you start to enjoy the quiet after the kill. And I did. I told myself I wasn’t a murderer. I was the cure. A necessary sickness for a world that refused to heal.

It wasn’t mercy that stopped me from killing her. It was something blacker, heavier - the realization that if I took her life, I’d be no better than the world that threw Billie from a window and let others get away with bullying her out of that window.

Every time I imagined pulling the trigger, I saw Billie’s eyes. Not forgiving, not accusing, just tired. And in that look, I saw what I’d become.

So I didn’t kill Nadia. I watched her instead. I learned her rhythms, her silences, her fragility. And somehow, those things became the only language I understood.

It should have been simple enough to hate her, because hate restores balance. But hate didn’t want her smile, or the sound she made when she dreamed. Hate didn’t steady my hands the way she did.

When she cried in her sleep, it broke something in me. When she laughed, I wanted to be a man deserving of that sound. And when she flinched, I wanted to be uglier than fear itself.

That was the sickness love made of me.

I didn’t protect her because I forgave her. I protected her because killing her would have meant killing the only piece of my humanity left.

Sometimes, when she slept, I’d kneel beside her bed and watch her breathe. Her face soft, lashes trembling. I told myself I hadn’t chosen wrong. I’d chosen complication. I’d chosen the wound that kept me human.

Because inside the ruin of what I was, something else had taken root. A small, stubborn mercy. Not for the world. Not even for her. But for the man I used to be, the boy who once believed justice was good.

Maybe love isn’t redemption. Maybe it’s the hardest kind of revenge. Choosing life for the one who destroyed yours, and spending the rest of your days defending that choice.

THE PAST

Death Row

14

NADIA

My life reads like a string of bad choices.

All people do is whisper when they think I can’t hear. Their voices follow me down hallways, through classrooms, around corners.She loved a killer.

And maybe they’re right. Because loving Lucian Cross ruined everything.

Men don’t stick around when they find out who he was.

Doesn’t matter how quiet I am, how much I try to hide it - the truth seeps out like a bad smell.

Her?They say it like a warning.She was engaged to that serial killer, Ghost.

Then come the looks. Curiosity first - sharp, probing - like they want to see if he left marks. Then disgust. Sometimes morbid fascination, eyes dragging down my throat, wondering what it was like to love hands that strangled women.