Page 24

B

I hated how the moonlight pierced through the grubby windows of the orphanage, illuminating everything I didn’t want to see: tiny finger smudges on the edges of doorframes, peeling wallpaper, shadows that clung to the corners like they were alive.

We shouldn’t be here. Nobody should. This place should have been burned to the ground a fucking long time ago.

As Cooper and I carried Alice’s body through the dilapidated halls, the stale, suffocating air clawed at my throat.

The wind still slipped through the cracks in the walls, just like it had all those years ago; whispering, moaning, making Alice believe it was the ghosts of the children who’d lived and died here.

The ghosts weren’t real, but they felt real. No matter how much I’d tried to stay strong for Alice back then, they always had a way of getting under my skin, burrowing into me like splinters I couldn’t dig out.

Cooper grunted ahead of me, walking backward with Alice’s legs in his grip. His breaths were loud, ragged, breaking the stillness with every step he took.

“This place gives me the creeps,” he muttered, scowling.

“Shut up,” I snapped. I didn’t need his fear adding to the relentless noise already screaming in my head .

He squinted at me, his gaze lingering too long. He was thinking too much. His fucking thinking was going to get him killed.

The moonlight spilled through shattered windows, carving jagged shadows across the checkered floor. As we passed the laundry room doorway, a memory clawed its way up from the depths I'd tried to bury.

Thomas Wexler.

His face haunted me still, pale and tear-streaked as his small body shook while he stood in the classroom that day.

He’d been seven, maybe eight years old, and trembling as Miss Hargrave towered over him, screaming until he lost control and the dark stain had spread down his legs and pooled at his feet.

"You're disgusting," Hargrave had spat, her thin lips twisting like a knife wound. "Clean it up. Now."

The classroom erupted in snickers, but Fred Kincaid's laugh cut the deepest. Fred and those four brothers of his, hulking assholes with dead eyes and heavy fists. They found Thomas later in the courtyard, cornering him like a pack of wolves.

"Piss pants Wexler," Fred had said with a sneer, grinding dirt into Thomas's face. "Even the toilets smell better than you."

Thomas didn’t fight back. He couldn’t. He just lay there, sobbing, as Fred and his brothers circled him like vultures.

I’d stayed hidden, watching from the shadows, my nails digging half-moons into my palms. I wanted to move. To do something. But I didn’t dare. We all knew what happened to kids who crossed the Kincaid brothers. The bruises. The broken bones. The ones who disappeared and were never spoken of again.

So I stayed silent, and lucky I did, because Fred Kincaid grew up to become Frank Morgan, head of ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.

Fucking ironic. He changed his name, traded his bloodied boots for polished leather shoes, and pretended he was better than the thug who grew up in Angelsong.

But it didn’t matter. He was still the same sadistic bastard who beat Thomas Wexler to death and buried him in an unmarked grave in the back paddock, along with all the others.

For twenty-one years after Angelsong, I kept my head down and lived a quiet, clean life with my beautiful Alice by my side.

I didn’t kill anyone. Didn’t break the law.

It was just me and Alice, savoring the simple things .

. . stunning sunsets, barbequing under open skies, sleeping tangled together in a hammock we’d tied between two trees or the softest mattress in the world that Alice had begged me to buy her.

Watching her paint and draw her art that came straight from her beautiful soul, and filled our little world with color.

I worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office and came home to Alice’s cooking, whenever she was healthy enough to scrape together a meal with what we had. Our little home wasn’t much more than a shack, but it was ours. And for a while, life was perfect.

Then Alice got sick. Really sick. And I couldn’t afford her treatment.

Desperation makes you brave. Or reckless .

I thought I could blackmail Frank. Thought the truth would be enough to bring him down.

I knew where Thomas Wexler was buried. I knew about the other kids, too.

The ones who never made it out of Angelsong.

I reminded him of the skeletons he thought he’d buried for good.

I threatened to drag his name, and his brother’s names through every filthy secret they’d tried to hide.

I told him I would go public, bring the media down on him like an avalanche, and watch him squirm unless he paid for her treatment.

But I’d underestimated Frank.

He found my weakness—Alice.

That bastard dragged me back into the darkness I’d fought so hard to escape. He put a leash on me and tightened it until I couldn’t breathe . . . until I had no choice but to obey.

Then he handed me over to Zǐháo Hàorán Chui.

Chui made my blood run cold. He was the only man who had ever truly terrified me. Not because of what he did, though his acts were monstrous beyond anything I'd imagined, but because of the way he did them. He didn’t just embody evil. He perfected it.

But that was all over. Those bastards were all dead now. Chui. Frank and his brothers. Every last one of them.

Now I was the one running the show.

Some show, though . . . when there was no one left to share the glory with .

“You were an orphan here, weren’t you?” Cooper’s voice cut through the storm of my memories, yanking me back to the present.

I shot him a glare sharp enough to silence anyone with half a brain. “Shut up.”

But Cooper wasn’t exactly the smart type. He kept going. “I see it in your eyes. Memories are like ghosts . . . they can either be your friends or scare the shit out of you.”

His words hit me harder than I wanted to admit, like he’d reached into my chest and pressed on something sore, a festering wound I’d tried to forget. It was like he understood. Like he really knew how my memories shackled me. The good and the evil, swirling together, fighting for space in my head.

Between us, Alice’s lifeless body swayed gently as we carried her through the orphanage. She'd been the only one who truly understood what I'd become, what they'd forced me to be. Every life I took, every crime I committed, she knew it was all to keep us both breathing. And now she was gone.

Everyone had darkness in them, waiting for the right trigger to set it loose. But living with what I've done, and telling myself it was necessary, that was the inferno that never stopped burning.

“It’s okay, B. I won’t tell anyone,” Cooper said softly, his tone digging into me like a burrowing insect. Persistent fucker.

“Just keep moving,” I snapped.

The ghosts of this place weren’t just memories. They were fuel to my rage.

We stepped out of the orphanage’s front entrance and onto the crumbling steps.

“What the fuck? You came on a motorbike?” Cooper’s tone was thick with disbelief.

“Yeah,” I said as we reached the bottom of the stairs. “Open the trunk.”

Cooper froze mid-step, forcing me to stop. He stared at me like I’d just asked him to chop off his own arm. “No way,” he hissed. “No fucking way. She’s not going in my cruiser.”

The moonlight twisted his features, carving dark shadows across his face, turning his expression into something feral .

I glared at him, cold and lethal. “Open the fucking trunk, Cooper.”

“No!” he snapped.

He shifted his grip on Alice’s body, fumbling as if her weight had suddenly become unbearable. Grunting, he lowered her feet to the ground, forcing me to set Alice down in the dirt, just a few feet from his cop car.

He crossed his arms like a petulant child throwing a tantrum. “I’m not driving around with that stink in my car. The stench’ll never come out.”

My hands trembled from sheer, volcanic rage. The world around us seemed to still. No crickets, no breeze.

“That stink in your car?” I repeated, my voice low and deadly like each word was sharp enough to draw blood.

“Yeah,” he sneered, his lip curling in disgust. “Not to mention the DNA evidence that body’ll leave behind. I’m not getting dragged into your shitstorm.”

Stink.

DNA.

The words rattled in my skull, igniting something I couldn’t control. I plucked the gun from my waistband and aimed it at his ugly fucking face.

“Wait! What are you doing?” Cooper’s hands shot up, his voice shrill with panic.

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I said, my voice raw with fury and trembling on the edge of breaking. “Do you hear me?”

My finger hovered over the trigger. I would shoot him right now if I didn’t need his help getting Alice into the trunk.

“Jesus, B, calm the fuck down!” he shouted, his voice desperate. His shaking hands seemed to glow in the moonlight.

“Calm down?” I barked, the words ripping out of me. My body trembled as I glared at him, seething, the gun unwavering in my hand. “You treat her like she’s trash. Like she’s nothing.”

“She’s dead!” he yelled, his voice cracking, his desperation turning to anger. “She doesn’t care what happ?—”

I shot him in the gut.

Cooper staggered, clutching his stomach, his face contorted in a grotesque mix of shock and pain.

Blood spilled between his fingers, dark and viscous, dripping onto the dirt in glistening spots under the pale moonlight.

He dropped to his knees with a muffled grunt, his breaths coming in short, sharp gasps that rattled like a broken engine.

“B . . . what the fuck!” he gurgled.

I stepped closer, the gun still raised, my grip steady as steel. My shadow fell over him, long and distorted in the moonlight.

“I warned you,” I said, my voice cracked like ice under pressure. “I warned you to respect her.”

He tried to crawl away, dragging himself across the dirt like a wounded animal. His blood smeared behind him in thick, dark streaks, marking the ground with every desperate inch he gained.

“Please,” he choked out, his voice raw, broken. “Please, B . . . don’t kill me.”

A faint sound from the orphanage made me freeze.

I spun toward the building but kept my gun aimed at Cooper’s head. My heart hammered in my chest as the shadows inside seemed to ripple and shift, twisting like they were alive and watching. But they’d been doing that for forty goddamn years .

A faint creak echoed through the still night, the kind of sound that wormed its way into the back of my skull; too soft to place, yet loud enough to chill my bones.

Is someone in there?

I stared into the darkness, my breath caught in my throat, and every instinct telling me to get the hell away from there. “Goddamn place is cursed,” I muttered.

Cooper writhed on the ground, clutching his stomach and moaning like every other bastard who learned too late there was no salvation.

Ignoring him, I dropped to a crouch and rummaged through his pockets, brushing against his blood-soaked pants until I found the car keys.

“B, please. Help me,” he said, his voice wet and broken.

“Shut up!” I snapped, and resisting the urge to kick him, I popped the trunk and tossed out everything that was inside.

My hands shook as I turned back toward Alice’s body and crouched down .

I’m sorry, my love.

With my back the way it was, there was no easy way to do this. Every inch of me ached as I gripped Alice's tarp-wrapped body and with a guttural shriek tearing from my throat, and a mix of agony and blind, fucking rage, I hoisted the top half of her body onto the edge of the trunk.

She wasn't Alice anymore. She was weight, dead weight, like a sack of dirt in my arms.

The thought hit me like a live grenade, the pin already pulled.

I fought to shove the pin back in, to keep my mind from exploding, and forced myself to keep moving.

I shifted her bulk, rolling her into the trunk with a grunt.

The tarp crinkled, catching on the edges of the car, but eventually, she slid into place with a dull, final thud .

My hands moved on autopilot, working quickly but carefully as I adjusted the tarp, smoothing it out and tucking the edges around her like I was wrapping her in a blanket. I made her as comfortable as I could, wanting to believe I was giving her peace again.

When I finished, I stood there, staring down at her form. My chest felt like it was caving in, my breaths shallow and ragged. The world around me blurred into nothing; just me and the unbearable weight of Alice still suffering, even in death.

With a trembling hand, I brushed my fingers over the tarp one last time. My fingers lingered on her shoulder, and the tarp was surprisingly warm against my skin as if she were still alive. Something inside me cracked wide open, raw and bleeding.

“Rest now,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “I’ll make this right. I promise.”

I pressed the trunk shut, and the hollow thud echoed in the still night, final and absolute.

Behind me, Cooper groaned, weak and pitiful. “B . . . please. I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Don’t kill me . . .”

I turned to him, my jaw tightening. He was still dragging his bloodied body across the ground like a dying animal. The sight of him, pathetic and desperate, only stoked the fire burning inside me.

“You don’t get to live,” I said, my voice calm, steady, almost serene. I inhaled deeply, savoring the air as if it were my first breath in hours. “Not after what you said. This is for Alice.”

“Beatrice!” he sobbed, his trembling hand reaching out toward me.

I cocked my head, studying him like he was nothing more than an insect under my boot.

“Huh,” I murmured. “At least you know who’s ending your miserable life.”

“You fucking bitch?—”

I squeezed the trigger, and the shot seemed much louder than the first, a sharp crack that echoed off the building.

Cooper crumpled. His final breath escaped in a soft hiss.

I stood over him, studying his face. Maybe he wasn't such a mediocre detective after all. He'd pieced together who I was and died with my true name on his lips.

A dark warmth spread through me. He’d known exactly who I was and who I was protecting – Alice Turnur. In that moment, our forbidden love that we’d always buried in secrecy and shame finally felt real at last.

My heart thundered with fierce satisfaction as I turned toward the orphanage.

In the moonlight, the fucking shadows still looked like they were watching me.

It was time to burn the whole fucking place to the ground.